Joyee Washington, MS, MPH, CHES
Public Health and Education Research Consultant
Joyee Washington Consulting, LLC
Here is a direct link to register for her LinkedIn training!
“Building professional trust and relationships using LinkedIn” registration link:
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=20144168&appointmentType=18616825
She also plans on having more courses in the future so if you would like updates on her offerings, you can go to her website and sign up for her newsletter. The link is below!
Joyee Washington, the owner of Joyee Washington Consulting, LLC, is a public health and education research consultant. In her business, she works with individuals, organizations, institutions, and communities to plan, implement, assess, evaluate, and manage public health, education, and community-based research and programs. As a native of Jackson, Mississippi, her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in biology from Millsaps College and a master’s degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). Before pursuing a degree in public health, she worked as a research assistant on projects with the department of physiology and biophysics at UMMC. In 2014, she graduated from The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) with a Master of Public Health degree specializing in health education. As a Certified Health Education Specialist, she has worked with the USM School of Social Work to assist with community-based participatory research of policies and practices affecting adolescent sexual health in Mississippi. With over 10 years of experience in health research including biomedical research and community-based research, her professional experiences also include working as an outreach health educator and outreach coordinator helping those in the community access health resources in addition to teaching as a visiting instructor in the department of public health at USM. Joyee is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Education with an emphasis on research, evaluation, statistics, and assessment.
Email: info@joyeewashington.com
Website: http://www.joyeewashington.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/joyee-washington
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joyeewashingtonconsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joyeewashington/
Homework
0:00:04.1 Professor Walden: Hey guys, it is about that time, so again, as usual, starting on time, and I’ll just wait for you guys to join for just a few minutes as we get started, but we are super excited today to bring this information to you, so welcome back. I know that it’s a lot of information that is flying your way, and we are excited to give it to you, so as you guys join, sit back, settle in and we are going to get started. In a few minutes, we’re gonna wait for a few more people to join, but other than that, I hope everyone’s day is going well. I hope that you are, again, just kind of making it and surviving through what is this COVID season. And also being safe, ’cause I know that a lot of you are still out there working, so being very, very careful about that. So fantastic. What I’m gonna do is I’m going to read our special guest’s bio, kind of set her up, and then she is going to share some wonderful information for you, because as you know, we are talking about themes and we are talking about jobs, and that is gonna be our theme for the next three to four months, because at the end of the day, what we are looking for is we are looking for you guys to either transition from your current position and have a good understanding of how to do that and set yourselves up for the future or we are looking to transition you into a new position as you graduate and look for that first job, right?
0:01:37.5 PW: So that’s what we’re doing. So we spoke before kind of just that starting point of jobs and when to start looking and how that whole process works, but now we’re gonna start deep diving, we’re gonna start looking into the mechanics and getting into the mechanics of how we do that. So with that being said, we’re bringing to you today, we’re bringing to you a LinkedIn learning session, right? So we are super excited about that, and I know you guys are too, because you guys were telling me that you need help in order to do that. So we are gonna bring that information for you and we are excited. So with that being said, our special guest is Joyee Washington, so I’m gonna read you her bio and we’re gonna go from there. So Joyee Washington is the owner of Joyee Washington Consulting LLC. It is a public health and education research and she is a public health and education research consultant. In her business, she works with individuals, organisations, institutions and communities to plan, implement, assess, evaluate and manage public health education and community-based research and programs. As a native of Jackson, Mississippi, her educational background includes a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from Millsaps College, and a Master’s Degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
0:03:02.5 PW: Before pursuing a degree in Public Health, she worked as a Research Assistant on projects with the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at UMMC. In 2014, she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a Master’s of Public Health degree, specializing in health education. As a certified health education specialist she has worked with USM School of Social Work to assist with community-based participatory research of policies and practices affecting adolescent sexual health in Mississippi. With over 10 years of experience in health research, including biomedical research and community-based research, her professional experiences also include working as an outreach, health educator and outreach coordinator, helping those in the community, access health resources in addition to teaching as a visiting instructor in the Department of Public Health at USM.
0:04:00.3 PW: Joyee is currently a PhD candidate in education with an emphasis in research, evaluation, statistics and assessment. And that brings us to why she is here, Joyee with all of her background has gone ahead and developed a LinkedIn training, during her process of going through this and going through all of her education, she noticed that there was a gap, and there is a gap between how we interact with LinkedIn and how we connect with individuals. A lot of us don’t understand how to use it and how to make those meaningful connection, a lot of us just go and connect, and that’s not exactly what we wanna do.
0:04:41.3 PW: We want to have a systematic way of who you are connecting to and why you are connecting with them, so that’s what she’s going to talk about, so she’s gonna go ahead and she’s going to give you all of that, drop some gems and some pearls for you and we’re excited to listen. So with that being said, let me bring her on up to the stage. Alright, here is Joyee. Hey Joyee.
0:05:05.1 Joyee Washington: Hey. You can hear me, right?
0:05:06.5 PW: We can hear you.
0:05:07.3 JW: Awesome. So definitely glad to be here, thank you for having me, and I’m excited to share all this information about LinkedIn, ’cause like a lot of you… I was stuck and lost and confused on it too. So…
0:05:19.3 PW: Exactly, so we’re excited. So guys, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna kinda fade to the black, and I’m gonna let Joyee give her presentation, Hey Lisa, so we’re gonna let her give her presentation, if you have any questions at any point in time, please go ahead. We will address them in due fashion. Okay, so she’s got a presentation for you, so here we go, if you wanna go ahead and bring your screen up, but we’re super excited to listen.
0:05:49.0 JW: Yes, I am bringing it up now. Okay.
0:05:51.9 PW: Fantastic. Alright, guys, here we go.
0:06:00.0 JW: And you can still see that. Correct?
0:06:01.4 PW: We can see that. Here we go.
0:06:03.6 JW: Awesome, so I’m really glad to be here today and to do this LinkedIn training, and what we’re gonna talk about today is how to use LinkedIn to really jump-start the networking process.
0:06:15.9 JW: So this is just the outline of what we’re going to cover for this session, so I’m gonna do a little bit of a welcome, and a introduction. So as you already know, my name is Joyee Washington. I’m a public health and education research consultant, and basically all of that stuff that was read about me, basically what that means is that I work with organisations, institutions and communities to help make their research and programs more effective. That’s what all of that meant, but I also work with helping students to professionally prepare for their career in public health, education and research as well. So I just wanna give you a little bit of background about my LinkedIn story. So like you heard already, I’m a PhD student, and the first time that I actually had a chance to jump on LinkedIn was because my graduate school professor actually told us we needed a LinkedIn page for job searching. He told us that it was important, you needed to have a professional social media presence online, so I got on LinkedIn and I had about eight connections, I figured it’s just an online resume, I put up my information and I kinda waited for LinkedIn to do its magic, I don’t know, I don’t know if I was supposed to say Abracadabra, I just wanted it to go ahead and do its thing, and nothing happened.
0:07:31.2 JW: So that’s where I was with LinkedIn. So after a while, I just had to really kind of figure out what works, and I knew from experience that fundamental networking strategies is something that has worked for me in the past. So I really wanted to take that and try to apply it to LinkedIn. And guess what, it worked. I really started getting on LinkedIn and then I started connecting with other people, engaging with other people and serving other people, and it has really been one of my strongest tools in building my career because LinkedIn and networking is about building professional relationships. Okay, so in this outline, we’re gonna also talk about what is LinkedIn, and we’re gonna talk about what is networking, we’re gonna talk about the LinkedIn profile a little bit as well, and then we’re also gonna talk about what else you need to know because I’m only going to give you a tidbit of information because we only have an hour so we can’t cover everything, but I’m gonna give you enough to get you started and you’re gonna have some actionable steps by the time we get to the end to really get your LinkedIn profile ready.
0:08:39.9 JW: So you’ve probably seen this, you’ve seen these memes that have the LinkedIn versus the Facebook versus the Instagram and how it all looks, right. So when you see these memes and you see the LinkedIn, you notice Kerry Washington and Dolly Parton, and Viola Davis they’re in their suits and their hair is laid, their makeup is on point, they’re looking serious, they’re looking professional. And there’s a reason for that, that’s because LinkedIn is a different type of social media, because it’s specifically for professionals, so we present ourselves a different way on these different social media platforms, and that’s completely normal, but when it comes to LinkedIn we really want to have that professional presence available, because there are many different reasons where we might be using LinkedIn, but one of the things that I really want you to understand is that LinkedIn is more than an online resume, and that’s what a lot of people think when it comes to that profile information, it’s more than that. LinkedIn is a place to build meaningful and purposeful connection, and I want to make sure that we make a distinction between meaningful and purposeful, so something that’s meaningful might very well be important to you, right.
0:10:00.5 JW: But something that is purposeful has a specific… Something specific at the end. There’s something you’re trying to get to at the end. So something might be meaningful to you, it might be important to you, but it might not necessarily meet your specific purpose at that time, so you really wanna make sure that you are making the right connections on LinkedIn so that you can meet like-minded individuals and then take that information and expand and cultivate your community so that you can have not only a bigger network, but a bigger network that is high in value, and that is also a high quality network, so that you can meet your purpose, if your purpose is to job search, then we want to make sure that you have the right connection that’s going to point you in the right direction for that particular job search, so we just wanna make sure that we make that distinction. So there are lots of different reasons for using LinkedIn, probably the number one reason is, of course, the job search, which is why you all are here. Right, but there are several other reasons why people use LinkedIn, so some people look for mentors on LinkedIn or people who are building their businesses, this is a place to network for potential clients, some people use LinkedIn just to find support, just to find like-minded individuals who can understand where they’re coming from.
0:11:31.2 JW: I know for me, I’ve had a recent experience being in graduate school during the pandemic, and I got on LinkedIn, I talked about my struggles and my frustrations, and I was able to start a support group for graduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I reached out for support and other people were able to tag each other for support as well, so that’s another reason for using LinkedIn, so you could look for other people who are striving to be nurse practitioners on LinkedIn, so that would be similar as well. Recruiting, so you have, of course, recruiters who are looking for people to give jobs to. Seeking information, some people just want to have information on LinkedIn, and then also you have researching industries, it might be maybe you’re making a career shift, or maybe you are interested in another industry, so LinkedIn is a great place to research industries, and then if you’re just looking to boost your social media presence professionally, LinkedIn is a great place to start doing that as well. But the number one reason that I want to stick to for using LinkedIn that anybody can use, no matter what, is networking.
0:12:47.0 JW: So this is a picture. Some of you might know what this is. Some of you might not know what that is. And this is okay, but this is a picture of a Rolodex, if you’re not familiar with a Rolodex, a Rolodex is this item that contains all these different business cards and contact information for people that you know. Now, the way that I think about LinkedIn is that I think about it like a Rolodex, when my dad, he had a desk at home while he was working, and he always had this big Rolodex, and hopefully you all can see me but this is his big Rolodex that he used to have on his desk, and he has all these business cards and all these people, and he’s written notes on them, but all these people are in his Rolodex and these are people that he can trust, people that he can call on, if he needs something, he has started building a relationship with these people, and he puts their contact information in his Rolodex, but it’s also important to realise that he may be in someone else’s Rolodex, so someone else may be able to call on him, so I think that the idea of the Rolodex is a great illustration to apply to LinkedIn because that’s essentially what you’re doing, you’re building your digital Rolodex, you are building your network so that if there’s something that you need… That you can call on someone if someone needs you, they can call on you.
0:14:16.0 JW: Because this is a relationship, this is about give and take, so we wanna make sure that we’re networking and meeting and connecting and communicating with the right people before we need them. Okay? Before we need them, we don’t wanna just call somebody when we need them, because I know people out there, you probably have those types of things going on, where people just call you when they need you, and that’s not a relationship. We wanna start building that as we go, we want that foundation to be strong. And we want people to see our value as a professional, and we want people to know that we’re here, we’re ready to serve. So what is networking? Networking is that process, it’s the process of building those professional relationships, and what we’re doing is we’re really taking time to get to know people, we want to know people on a genuine level, on an authentic level, we want to be ready to serve others, but of course, when it comes to networking, there are gonna be several benefits and challenges to networking, so we’re gonna talk about that a little bit, so what are some benefits of networking?
0:15:32.4 JW: Of course, pre-pandemic, right? Pre-pandemic, you probably heard about these networking meetings or the networking happy hours or cocktail hours, if you’ve ever been to one of those? But networking is an opportunity to get to meet new people. Okay, so you get a chance to meet new people, you get a chance to talk to them, you get a chance to understand what they do, understand how they serve, and then you exchange information. You might meet someone at a conference, you might have networking events that’s… Different types of meetings that you may go to, but it’s really an opportunity to meet new people, now, when you meet those new people, it is an opportunity to… Excuse me, reach out for support. So you’re having this opportunity to reach out for support and let them know what’s going on with you, how you can serve, how you can help them, or how they can help you, but this is the thing, networking is one of the strongest tools in your job search I can say for myself that every job that I have had since my freshman year in college, I have gotten because of networking, I have gotten it because someone knew me, someone knew my work ethic, I had built that professional relationship, and they literally called me and said, “Hey, I have this opportunity for you.”
0:16:54.7 JW: Or, “Hey, I have this job opening, and I think you will be a really good fit.” That’s what networking does for you. People get to know the real you. So they get to know the real you on a professional level, and when opportunities come up, if you have built that relationship ahead of time, they will have you in mind and those jobs that never get listed that you don’t see on Indeed or you don’t see on monster.com, or you don’t see on the job board, that’s because they’re calling people that they know, people who have built a relationship with them, and those are the people who they have first on their minds before they put it out to the public. So that’s one of the major benefits of networking, I tell you, I literally got a faculty position job because of networking, because they had a position that needed to be filled and they knew my work and they knew that I could do it. So if that gives you any example of the benefits of networking, that’s one, but there are some challenges, there are some challenges that we need to be aware of, building an effective relationship, it takes time, it’s not done overnight, it’s something that has to really flourish and be nourished at the same time. And it can be difficult to initiate.
0:18:19.8 JW: Some people might be shy. You might be reserved. I know I’m one of those people, I’m definitely an introvert. So it can be difficult to initiate those conversations, but if you know how to do it and do it effectively, it gets easier and it gets easier with practice as well, it’s also to know that bigger isn’t always better just because you have a bigger network, you have more people in your network, does not make it… Does not make it better. Social media has us conditioned to think that the more followers we have, the more connections we have, that that’s a better network, but if the people aren’t in your network who want to serve you or that you can’t serve them, then you don’t have the quality network that you need to further your job search, and then of course, face-to-face versus online can be really difficult, especially with the pandemic going on, but that’s why LinkedIn is a really good place to start networking. Okay, so how does LinkedIn help you network? It is going to jump-start your networking process because number one, like we said before, when you network, you get to meet people, so LinkedIn gives you access to everyone else who has a LinkedIn account, so you get to meet new people and see what they do and how they serve.
0:19:44.0 JW: You’re also going to get exposure to opportunities, because people will put opportunities on LinkedIn that don’t show up in other places. Okay. And you have people who are engaging and sharing their opinion, sharing what’s going on, these could lead to… And it doesn’t just have to be job opportunities, they could be internship opportunities, if you’re looking to shift careers, it could be any type of opportunity, not just… Not only the job search, so you really wanna make sure that you get that exposure from multiple places. And then it can help to increase your visibility. Because one of the things that LinkedIn does is it gives you a place to share your expertise on a regular basis. So you get to share the things that you know, you get to share your opinion on different things that may be happening with a lot of other people… And so they’re not just… They haven’t… They may not have seen you in the workplace, but it gives you an opportunity to share your expertise and your knowledge… Excuse me, online. So that’s really important. And then not only do you get to share that expertise, but you get to engage with those people who can see what you post in your comments or any videos that you post, or any opinions that you post, any articles that you post, you get to engage with those people who are in your network.
0:21:14.0 JW: So you get to have that conversation, you’re building that relationship along the way. So someone might say, “Hey, I saw… ” I’m not sure if anyone’s named Sally in the group, I’m just saying Sally. So, “Sally gave a really good explanation of COVID-19 on LinkedIn, I think she would be really good for helping us to explain COVID-19 to other people,” or, “She might be really good for this job opportunity, let me take a look at her profile.” So just being able to post and share your expertise and engaging with others can really help jump-start that networking process and get you seen by the right people, okay? So let’s talk about the profile piece a little bit. So the profile piece is what most people are talking about when they say things like, “LinkedIn is just a online resume.” But this is why your profile is really important, because your profile is the first impression, this is the first thing that people are going to see about you on your LinkedIn account. And here’s the thing, everybody can see it, everybody, anybody with a LinkedIn account can see it. So it’s not like Facebook, how Facebook if you’re my Facebook friend, then I can see your profile if it’s set up a certain way, LinkedIn doesn’t work like that.
0:22:40.3 JW: Whatever is on your profile, anybody with a LinkedIn account can see that, okay? So you really wanna make sure that your profile is polished. Okay. It is a living document, so you want to make sure that you update it accordingly when things change in your professional career. Okay. But you also want to make sure that your profile is based on a specific purpose. So if your purpose is to job search, then you want to make sure that your profile is reflective of that and that when people see your profile, they will understand, “Hey, this is someone who is looking for a job. This is what they do. This is how they serve. This may be someone I want to contact.” Okay. So I’m gonna take you on a little bit of a quick tour of LinkedIn, and we’ll talk some more about the profile piece. So these are just the sections, the different sections of the profile, and we’re going to go through each one. So we’re gonna talk about the different pictures, the headline, the about section, all the different sections of the resume portion, and then I’ll talk a little bit about your profile URL link and then your settings.
0:23:55.7 JW: So let’s talk pictures and headline. You’ve probably seen… If you’ve been on LinkedIn at all, you’ve probably, of course, seen somebody has their profile picture, and then there’s usually some kinda bluish-green picture that looks like connecting the dots, right? So the first thing you wanna do is you want to make sure that you have a professional profile picture. Think of a picture that this is how you show up to work, or this is how you would show up on a job interview, that’s the kinda picture you want in your profile picture. Okay. Now, in that long rectangle on your… And I’ll show you what that looks like. In the long rectangle behind your profile picture where it is normally kind of a bluish-green color with the connecting dots that symbolizes a network, you can actually put a picture there. So you can put a background picture that’s relevant to what you do, okay or how you serve, and I’ll show you what that looks like. But then the third thing that I really wanna talk about, and this is one of the most important things on your profile, is your headline. Now, your headline is a little, short blurb that tells who you are, what you do.
0:25:07.4 JW: Those are the two main things. You can also put in there who you serve, but you want it to be very clear and direct, because this is the thing that follows you everywhere on LinkedIn. So you can kinda think of it like a name tag. When you go to these conferences or meetings, pre-pandemic of course, you have a name tag that tells who you are, that’s what your headline does. Any comments you make, any post you make on LinkedIn, your headline tells people who you are. I’m gonna show you a picture of mine. So this is what my profile looks like when I pull it up, you can see my profile picture there in the circle. In the background, you can see that my picture says, “Community, prevention, equity, public health.” This is what I want people to know and see when they come on my profile. So they automatically know, “Oh, she is definitely heavy into public health. The things that she values is community, prevention and equity.” Okay. You can see my name there, and just under my name where you see it says, “Public health and educational research consultant,” all the way through evaluation, that is my headline. Okay. Many people do their headline different ways.
0:26:15.3 JW: But the most important thing is to tell them who you are and what you do in that short, little space. Okay. Now, just a little bit more, you can see at the top here, hopefully you can see my mouse moving, you have the search bar where you could search for people, you could search for groups, you could…
0:26:33.1 JW: Search for different companies. This is your Home button. You can also look at your network here. So in your network, you can see who you’ve invited or who you sent invitations to, who has invited you to connect. The Job section, here is the job board. So LinkedIn does have a job board, kind of like Indeed, where you can search for jobs and apply for jobs. You also have a direct messaging system. You have your notifications as well. You’ll see here where it says public profile and URL. So you can change your URL link, so that it’s simplified for your name, and you can send that link to people to check out your LinkedIn. Now you also see, you can see how many connections that I have, you can see kinda where I’m located. There’s also a place for contact info if anyone wants to contact me if they’re interested in my profile.
0:27:29.8 JW: And just below that, you will see a place where it says open to work. So LinkedIn has an option where you can have “open to work” on your profile and you can put the different [0:27:38.9] ____ you’re interested in applying for, you’re interested in getting a job in. Okay, and you can set that. You can see mine says only recruiters, so those people who are specifically recruiters on LinkedIn, they may be the only people who can see that, or you can change that setting to all members so that everybody on LinkedIn can see what roles you’re open to work for, and then that could also increase your networking for job searching as well.
0:28:04.8 JW: Okay, the next part of your profile is the About section. So the About section kinda expands upon your headline. Okay, so if your headline is your name tag, your About section just expands on that a little bit. Okay, so you go into more detail about who you are and the things that you do, and you wanna make sure that you have a call to action at the end that tells them how to contact you, how to connect with you, how to message with you. You can see at the end of mine, I have, “Send me a message. Connect with me on LinkedIn.” I have my website there. So one of the things about the About section is that you want to make sure that it is not too long. Okay, I would not recommend any more than three or so paragraphs. You wanna make sure you have a good bit of a white space because the longer it is, the less likely people are going to read it [chuckle] because it’s online and people have a short attention span already, so you don’t wanna have too much there, but just enough to make sure that people are interested and they understand and get a clear picture of who you are and what you do.
0:29:13.5 JW: Okay, the next section that you see under that is called the Featured section. So under my Featured section, I have a link to a podcast that I was a guest on. So if there was an article about you, if you were on a paper that was published, if you wrote an article, you can feature what you’ve done on your LinkedIn profile. Okay, then of course, you continue on through your profile and you can put all of your education. Of course, you wanna make sure to only put your education related to whatever your purpose is, so we don’t wanna put any high school stuff on there, right? We wanna make sure that we keep it college, undergrad, graduate school, professional degrees, have that in your education, and you can also put an explanation of what you did. So for me, I have what my dissertation was in case anybody’s interested, as well as who my advisor is, if they are interested in contacting her. I also have my graduate certificate there as well. So I have all my degrees listed on my profile. This is just an example, but I have all my degrees listed on my profile.
0:30:21.5 JW: The next section that you can have is you can put your licenses and your certifications. So any licenses or certifications that you’ve earned, you can also put that on your LinkedIn profile so that people can see what your skills are and what you’ve been certified in. Next, you’ve got your work experience, so you wanna have your professional experience on here. Once again, making sure that it’s only experience that’s related to your purpose. So if you’re looking for a nurse practitioner job, only have those jobs that are related to what’s gonna help you be a nurse practitioner. So if you have anything like… I know I work part-time for an organisation that has nothing to do with my job, I mean, with public health and education, so I don’t put that on there. If you work at Walmart part-time or you work at Kroger part-time, don’t put that type of stuff on here. We only want the things that is going to be related or aligned with your purpose, okay, because we don’t want any distractors. Okay, we want to keep people focused on our LinkedIn profile.
0:31:33.7 JW: You can also put your volunteer experience. So this is looking a lot like a resume, right? You can put your volunteer experience on here, but once again, we want to make it specific, so I keep my volunteer experience to those things related to public health and education. Okay, I’ve worked with food pantries, I’ve worked with the girl scouts or whatever, but I wanted to highlight those things, that volunteer experience that’s related to my purpose, and my purpose is to showcase my public health professional background.
0:32:10.6 JW: Now, here’s a section a lot of people have problems with. This is the Skills and Endorsements section. It has its pros and cons. The pro is, the good thing is, is that you can showcase the different skills that you have. So of course, mine says public health, community research, educational research as a few of them, and you can add… I can’t remember the number, but it’s a lot of skills that you can add. So the con or the bad side of it is, is that people can do what’s called endorsing you, and think about endorsing like hitting the Like button on Facebook, essentially. So they can say, “Hey, I endorse Joyee for public health. She’s good at it.” That’s basically what they’re saying, “She’s good at it.” But anybody can endorse you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve seen you in that space or they’ve worked with you in that space. So while it’s a good section to showcase your skills, it may not be as accurate or valid as far as those who endorse your skills. So be mindful of that.
0:33:15.8 JW: Then you have your Recommendations section. So, in your Recommendations section, these are people who can vouch for you, so think about a letter of recommendation. People can write you a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile and you can write other people a recommendation. And when a recommendation is written for you, it really highlights, this person can actually vouch for you and you can also see that in Kobe’s headline and in Brian’s headline, they’ve written their headlines a couple of different ways, but like I said, it follows you everywhere. So, you can see Kobe is in leadership and research in women’s health, whereas Brian is a social entrepreneur, and he helps other aspiring entrepreneurs. So, different people write in different ways, but when people go to my profile, they can see exactly who is vouching for you, and what they do and who they serve, how they help people.
0:34:09.4 JW: Okay. So, definitely try to get a couple of recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. You can also have accomplishment, so your honours and awards, your publications, any organisations, any projects you’ve worked on, you can showcase those on your LinkedIn profile. And then any interests… So these are basically pages that you follow, so any pages that you follow will show up on your feed, and these pages are a really good place to look for a job because you can see what the companies are posting on their LinkedIn page, you can see who works, those people who work at the companies and what their LinkedIn pages look like, or what their LinkedIn profile say. So, those pages are a really good resource to get an idea of what companies are putting on LinkedIn and what their company culture is like, a sneak peek of what their company culture may be like. So, here are the things that you can do to get your profile ready, here are some actionable steps that you can do.
0:35:11.0 JW: Number one, you can get a professional profile picture up. If you have a good picture, use it, if you don’t have a good picture, get some good lighting, get out in the sun, get next to a tree or a nice… A nice plant or a nice wall, a nice brick wall, and get a professional profile picture. We all have these smartphones, get a good phone with a good camera, get you a good profile picture up so that it can be professional. Also, get your background picture up, so that when people see it, they will understand or know what you’re about when they see your background picture. Okay, make sure that you complete your headline, okay, and remember that headline is gonna be like your name tag, it’s going to follow you everywhere you go. Then make sure you complete your About section, so tell people who you are, tell them what you do, and then make sure that you complete those Experience sections, so the resume portion.
0:36:18.2 JW: So, when you complete those Experience sections, what you wanna do is make sure that you’re using bullet points because that helps make it a little bit more easily readable. And then you wanna make sure that you have a good amount of white space, because like we talked about it before, we don’t have a very long attention span, so we just wanna make sure that it’s easily readable. Here are some more helpful hints and tips about LinkedIn. You might see, if you’ve been on LinkedIn before, you might see where it says First, Second and Third connection. And I know a lot of people are like, “What does that mean?” Okay, so I’m gonna show you, I’m gonna come back to this slide, but I’m gonna show you real quick what the first, second and third connection mean. So, you have you as your profile. Okay. Your first connection, I’m gonna speak in Facebook speak because more people might be familiar with Facebook, but your first connection is someone who’s like your friend.
0:37:16.7 JW: That’s someone you know, that’s someone you have connected with. Okay. Your second connection is gonna be kind of like your mutual friend, if we were in Facebook world. Okay. Your mutual friend is a friend of your first connection. So, someone you may know, you may possibly know because it’s a mutual friend. Okay. And the third connection is pretty much a stranger, that’s someone you don’t know, you don’t have any connection with on LinkedIn. You don’t have any mutual friends. So, LinkedIn kinda makes it easier to find people that you may know, and people who you may possibly be able to network with. Okay. The other thing I wanna talk a little bit about is LinkedIn Premium. You all probably heard about LinkedIn Premium. Now, most of what you can do on LinkedIn is free, you can build your profile for free, you can put your profile picture and background picture and do all the things you need to do on your LinkedIn profile for free. You can direct message people for free with the free plan, and then also you can job search.
0:38:23.8 JW: You can use the job board with the free account. But with the LinkedIn Premium account, one of the things that it does is it allows you to see who has looked at your profile. So, with the free account, you don’t know who’s looked at your profile, it’ll tell you how many people have looked at it, but it won’t tell you who. But with the LinkedIn Premium account, you can… If you’re interested, you can see who has seen your profile, so that might be worth the value for you. The other thing that you can get with LinkedIn Premium is something called LinkedIn Learning, which is helpful, but it’s really courses that you can take through LinkedIn to build your skills, they have tons of courses. Tons of videos that you can watch.
0:39:07.1 JW: So, those are some values of LinkedIn Premium, but it is not necessary to network and do what you need to do on LinkedIn. Some other things you can do on LinkedIn is look at the profiles of other people in your field to see what those profiles look like, what are they doing, what are they saying, how are they engaging with people. Another helpful hint is whenever you decide to connect with someone on LinkedIn, always, always, always, and I don’t think people do this enough on LinkedIn, but always send a personal note on your invite that just says, “Hi, how are you?” I’m connecting with you because… ” And explain why you’re connecting with them, because that’s going to start the communication process, that’s going to start the networking process, and they’re more likely to take a look at your profile if you’ve sent a personal note to them.
0:40:00.9 JW: And then when it comes to your job search. We talked about this a little bit, but look at those company pages, see what they’re posting, also use the job alerts feature. On LinkedIn, you can set job alerts for different jobs that might show up, and then also on those company pages, make sure to look at employee profile, see who works there, see what they’re posting on LinkedIn, because that can help you kind of determine, “Is this some place that I really want to work at or not?” Pick three to five companies and look at their LinkedIn pages, research their LinkedIn pages, see how it lines up with what’s on their website, see how it lines up with what their employees do or say about their company on LinkedIn.
0:40:42.4 JW: And that’s gonna give you some more information about, “Is this a company that I really want to work for?” before you even apply for that job. Although we’ve covered quite a bit of information, we talked about what’s LinkedIn, we talked about what’s networking, we talked about your profile, but this isn’t it, this isn’t all. It’s good information, but when you get your profile set up, you need to really know how to use LinkedIn effectively, and it’s more than just setting up your profile, it’s more than just connecting with people, or hitting the connect button.
0:41:18.1 JW: What you wanna do is you wanna make sure, we talked a little bit about aligning your profile with your purpose, right? You also wanna make sure that you’re building the right network and the right connections, and you have to have a little bit of strategy with that for LinkedIn. You also need to be fueling your feed through engagement, your social media feed through engagement, and then you also need to know some more about the key features of LinkedIn. But we don’t have time to go into all of that today, but I have an opportunity for you.
0:41:48.8 JW: You have an opportunity to learn more where we go into detail and dig deeper about all those things, and I’m going to offer a live training, a 90-minute live interactive training through Zoom for you all, and you will have access to the recording for 30 days and you also get a supplemental work group. Now, I have two dates currently, which is Thursday, February 4th, and Thursday, February 11th from 6:00 PM Central, and 7:00 PM Eastern. So, the regular price is $30, but because y’all are so awesome and let me come speak to you all today, allowing me to come speak to you all, I’m going to give you all a $10 off discount for the training. You can use the code ‘MPC2021’ when you register for the session to get the $10 off discount.
0:42:45.1 JW: Now, the other thing that I want to show you is how to register, and if you can’t, if you’re busy on those days, no worries, you can still register and you’ll get access to the recording. The way you can register and I’ll make sure to send the link so that that can be distributed to you all as well. But when you go to my website, and I’ll give you all my website at the end, but when you go to my website and you will see what says ‘Work With Me,’ and on the ‘Work With Me’ tab, you will go down to Trainings and Courses, and when you click on Trainings and Courses, you’re going to see all my trainings and courses, and one of them is called Building Professional Trust and Relationships using LinkedIn, where we actually go into LinkedIn and I teach you how to specifically network with the people to make a better quality connections.
0:43:33.2 JW: You can click that Register Now button, and you can register for either one of those dates, you only have to do one, it’s not a two-part series where you have to do both dates. You just choose one date, and then when you register, you just put in that code “MPC2021” and it will give you the $10 off discount. So here’s my contact information, my website, my email address, also my LinkedIn, so if you go into LinkedIn, you can just type in Joyee Washington and my profile picture should show up. I am also on Instagram, so my Instagram handle is @joyeewashington, and then I also have a Facebook page. So, my Facebook page is Joyee Washington Consulting. So, I can be reached through any of these platforms. That’s it. I have completed my presentation. I am going to stop screen share now. Okay, I did it. I’m not the best at technology.
0:44:35.8 PW: You’re great.
0:44:36.9 JW: I got through it. I got through it.
0:44:38.4 PW: You got through it. I know how that feels. We’re getting through the tech, guys, we are not tech people, but that was a lot of information, Joyee, so that was really exciting. I learned a few things. I was actually messaging some of my team, “Are you guys paying attention because I think we need to change a few things?” So, there was a few things that I didn’t know as well. So, thank you for all of that information.
0:45:03.4 JW: Yes, absolutely.
0:45:05.6 PW: Alright, so we’re gonna let Joyee go and we appreciate you so much for coming, and I’m gonna do a little wrap up here. Okay?
0:45:13.0 JW: Alright.
0:45:15.1 PW: Alright guys, so I hope that you enjoyed that presentation, like I said, I absolutely learned a few things because I don’t think that I’ve used LinkedIn to my fullest advantage either, so I’m definitely going to be making some changes, but wait, there’s more. So, we wanna thank Joyee, and we really appreciate her giving us that opportunity for you guys at a very reasonable price for you guys, so we’ll put that information up for you just in case you missed it, so don’t worry, you’ll have access to it.
0:45:45.9 PW: The other thing that… I wanna give you a few takeaways, that I definitely [0:45:49.7] ____ that were there. So, first and foremost, we can’t go anywhere, as she mentioned this, we are in a pandemic, right? So, how we are connecting is we are truly connecting online. Now is the time to take advantage of that situation. We are going to use it to our advantage. Everyone, instead of maybe looking on LinkedIn or instead of maybe looking online for things, this is the first place that we are going. I want you guys to take advantage of this pandemic situation and we are gonna get this LinkedIn profile all the way set up. So that was first, that was a big takeaway for me.
0:46:32.7 PW: Secondly, like she said, This is building your Rolodex, so the Rolodex definitely made me feel a little bit older, I don’t know about some of y’all out there, but building that digital Rolodex, you want to make these connections before you need these people. And so we’re gonna give you some tips and tricks on just how that conversation should go. If you want more specifics, absolutely contact Joyee and she can help you out there.
0:47:02.2 PW: But just to kind of… ’cause networking is a skill, as she said. And it is important that you understand, “Well, how do I reach out to someone? What do I say?” Because it’s weird. It’s weird just kind of reaching out to people I don’t know. So, we’re gonna give you some tips and tricks to do that as well. Also, reach out for support. So, the thing is, you’ve gotta reach out for support, and when she was talking about making those connections, you guys were like, “Well, Professor Walden, who am I gonna reach out to?”
0:47:36.9 PW: You have preceptors that are likely on LinkedIn, connect with them. You likely have colleagues, managers, former bosses that you still talk to, it’s time to use those connections and speak with them. You guys know that using my connections, one of my preceptors was my neighbour, my neighbour, I have no idea before this who she was or how that it all worked out, but it was literally… She saw me walking my children, we… “Hey, how are you? What do you do?” And that’s how the conversation started. Okay? It can be as simple as that. So, we’ve got to reach out and we can’t be scared to do it. It’s weird at first, but once…
0:48:23.9 PW: It takes a little bit of practice, so we’re gonna help you with that, but you know these people already, so there are people that we’re already going to connect to. You guys, she gave y’all some actionable tips, so do not worry. You’re gonna have homework. We are going to put that up for you so you can grab that and so that you can start taking those tips because again, the whole purpose of this is not to just listen, but to make sure that you have actionable things that you can do to help you get this position or transition out of this position that you are in. You met a… Kayaking, that’s amazing.
0:49:09.6 PW: Alright, so I love that you guys love this information, so we will be in the next few days, don’t worry, you’re gonna start seeing the information drop as well as other information that we have for you because we’re kind of starting to kind of roll along schedule now, and I appreciate that you guys are bearing with us as we get the kinks and things worked out. Don’t worry if you miss the beginning of this, no worries. When it downloads to the server, we will make sure that we post so that you have the replay, so that you are able to listen and take notes if you need to. That will always be a thing, so you don’t ever have to worry, okay? We’re not gonna leave you guys out, we want to make sure that you are getting all of this information.
0:49:48.7 PW: Alright? So again, super excited about Joyee allowing us and teaching us about LinkedIn, ’cause I learned a few things too. Hopeful you got some good information, and as always, I’m protective of your time. So, it’s me, it’s Professor Walden, and I’ll see y’all later. Alright? Bye guys.