LinkedIn Best Features for Executives
Episode 80 - New features are coming to a LinkedIn near you!
7 New Features in LinkedIn
In this podcast episode, I go through some of LinkedIn's new features that can help you better introduce yourself professionally and get that new job or promotion you want.
There may be even more new features by the time you listen to this episode, so please remember to always keep an eye on what LinkedIn is releasing as new tools and resources that can help you better present your skills and experience.
Resources mentioned in this episode
LinkedIn Adds 'Stay-at-Home Mom' and Other Job Title Options to Help Address Career Gaps
The option to have a video instead of a photo on your LinkedIn profile
How to use LinkedIn Stories (you will notice that one of their examples is one of my stories!)
Get Instant AI Feedback to Improve Your Interview Answers (only available in English)
Timestamps to guide your listening
06:11 - New job titles
08:07 - Video cover story profile
11:53 - LinkedIn stories
13:55 - Name recording
15:08 - Save items
16:33 - Merge accounts
18:56 - Interview questions
Transcript of this episode
Renata: Hello, again, to episode number 80 of The Job Hunting Podcast. If you follow me, you know that I am on a road trip. I am currently now in new South Wales in a town called Merimbula. And I want to talk to you about Merimbula because it's quite a story they have to tell. Today, we're going to be talking about LinkedIn and some of the new resources and tools that LinkedIn has recently launched. Some of them may be already available to you. Others may be available to you very soon. LinkedIn has a staggered way of releasing its new features. So it's very hard for me to know in which countries these features already available. And I'd ask for you to have a look on The Job Hunting Podcast blog and check the episode show notes as well, so that I can provide you with the links to these features, with more details about them, and then you can check them out and see if they're available already to you.
Renata: If you enjoy the content that The Job Hunting Podcast provides, I'm hoping that you already subscribed. If you're not, use this opportunity now to subscribe to the podcast, wherever you found this, you could have found us on iTunes, Spotify, a whole range of other apps, Audible. You can even tell your smart speaker to play The Job Hunting Podcast, and they will play The Job Hunting Podcast. But it's better to subscribe and make sure that you always have the latest episodes. I also have a newsletter that I send out every week to the subscribers, and it includes the new episode and also a list of curated links and things that I find online that I think are very important for corporate professionals. There could be articles that could be videos or books, and I source out the very best resources for you and send them out on a weekly podcast, sorry, a weekly newsletter.
Renata: So I'm very consistent, even when I'm on vacation. I don't want to miss out on the opportunity of releasing the newsletter and the podcast to you. And this is why I'm recording this podcast on the road, and it's going to be a short one, but I think it's a great one because you know, if you're not paying attention, you may have not noticed that these resources are available on LinkedIn and it could be very valuable to you. Now, as I said, I am on the road, I'm in Merimbula, and you may remember that more than a year ago, around December, January, December 2019, January 2020, just before COVID hit us, we had some massive fires here in Australia. Some of the most affected areas were the areas where I am now traveling. And Merimbula was in the news a lot because it became this emergency center where people had to evacuate to.
Renata: And from here, they could then be taken to safe grounds. It was just such a horrible, horrible fire. And, you may have seen, if you are overseas, the scenes of people on the beach and, you know, during the day it was completely dark and black, and you couldn't even see properly. And they were waiting to be rescued on the beach because of the fires. And it's amazing to see how much this region has recovered. We are driving up and down the coast, and it's beautiful. The trees are recovering well, they're blackened, but they have, you know, completely recovered, which is amazing. And you know, I'm from Brazil. And if you burn a forest in Brazil, it does not grow back, but in Australia, they do. And it's really beautiful to see how resilient the nature here is. So it's beautiful also to visit this area if you are in Australia. If you're planning to come to Australia, come down to the South coast of New South Wales, it's just the most beautiful place. And if you want to see more, follow me on Facebook and Instagram. I am posting regularly there and sharing some beautiful pictures of dolphins and wildlife. So I hope that you enjoy seeing some of that.
Renata: All right. So let's talk about LinkedIn. The newest thing that I have noticed LinkedIn has now is new job titles. These are definitely inspired by lockdown, and I think that they are much overdue. And for a long time, it was very challenging for people that have taken parental leave or sabbatical or leave to care for family members. There wasn't a way to describe this on LinkedIn or even on your resume. But LinkedIn now has these new job titles and things like stay at home mom or caretaker title, sabbatical titles, that you can search and use to give that career break a proper title. And I think that that's really interesting and it's the reality of our lives.
Renata: It's long overdue. As I said, it happens to absolutely everyone that I know. And you should be very comfortable, not only talking about it if you need to but adding that to your LinkedIn as well. So, um, yep. Search for it, and hopefully, it will be already available to you. If not, there were times when things were not available here in Australia or to some of my clients overseas. I specifically remember a client in Hong Kong where a feature wasn't available to her, and you can request to be on the better release for your country. And both times, with my clients in Australia and with this client in Hong Kong, LinkedIn allowed it and released the feature, even though it wasn't available more broadly. So you need to have a LinkedIn account, and then contact the help center and ask for it.
Renata: The second thing I want to share with you is that very soon, and it may already be available to you. It's not available to me here in Australia. There is an ability now to have a video cover story profile. So instead of having that still photo of you in the little circle, that will be a video. And, it's not for everyone, and it has to be done really well, I believe. Like I struggle even when I see a lot of profiles with terrible photos. There are so many bad photos out there. And if I could wish for something out of a genie bottle, it would be for everybody to have a better profile photo on their LinkedIn. I think it's so important. And I think people overthink it. They think that they need to have it professionally done, and that's not what I mean at all. It just needs to have good lighting. It has to have you smiling looking forward.
Renata: It needs to have your full face and neck and a bit of your torso. And yeah, and sometimes professional photos don't have that. And I get really cranky when people spend money with professional photographers and the professional photographer doesn't guide the client to have a LinkedIn-appropriate photo. And, you know, I don't think it's anyone's fault. It's just that the corporate sector requires a different style of photography for LinkedIn, which is not what some photographers are used to. But there are some great photographers out there doing great LinkedIn photos. You don't need to do it professionally. All you need to do is look straight to the camera, have a big smile, and be wearing something work-appropriate for your profession. And then, the next level up is for you to consider adopting this new video resource that LinkedIn is launching. And depending on your age, depending on your profession, and your sector, and if you're comfortable with straight-to-video delivery of content, then I would recommend that you consider it. Be careful with what you say, practice, and record a couple of versions until you feel you've done yourself a great service and that it represents you well and, you know, trial it.
Renata: And I'd love to work with a client on this. Maybe we can book a one-on-one consultation for you to make sure that you're doing a great job with your video profile. But remember that it will be great for some professions and some sectors and industry, and even some countries and not others. So it's not like everyone should have it, at least not now. And I would be discussing that with my individual clients one by one and letting them know who I think, you know, this is for and who I think this is not the best idea. Some, you know, some sectors are very much more conservative, I think. So I'm playing a very conservative game for my clients because I want them to win jobs and not to have, you know, a showy profile. That's not the game that we play.
Renata: The third thing that I'm going to recommend it's been available now for a while. I was part of the release of it here in Australia. And it's the LinkedIn stories. It's not as flexible and as interesting as the Instagram stories or even the Twitter stories, but it's there. And I think it's great because sometimes you do want to post something on LinkedIn, but it doesn't need to be permanent. It can be a story that will be there for 24 hours, and then it will disappear. And I think a lot of times that's where some of your content belongs. It doesn't belong in your activity forever. It may be something that happens. And it's a point in time, a moment that you want to share, and the best place to do it is in the story’s format. If you're familiar with Instagram and sometimes even Twitter, Twitter has it as well. I'm not sure how many people are using it on Twitter, but it goes away after 24 hours.
Renata: And the reason why I say LinkedIn stories is not as flexible and interesting as Instagram is because it's very short. I believe it only has 10 seconds. So for me, you know, when I'm developing content for stories, I've given up on LinkedIn. I develop them for Instagram because then I can use the 15 seconds or even longer. I think it goes for a minute and bit. And we do some audio or videos of clips of the podcast, for example, or I just go straight to camera and say something that, you know, my audience will want to hear about. But with LinkedIn, it's more photos and maybe a quote or a very, very short video. But I do recommend that you consider adding some of your content, not in your permanent activity on LinkedIn, but something just that stays there for a little while.
Renata: The other thing that is already available here in Australia for quite some time, but you may not have noticed, or maybe it's new, where you are in the world. This podcast is listened all over the world in over 50 countries. So, check it out and see if it's available to you. It's the recording of your name. And, I think that that's great. Not many people know how to pronounce my name and my surname here in Australia. So I've made use of it. And I think you have 10 seconds, and I've made the most out of it. So not only I tell people how to pronounce my name, I also give them a little bit of an insight on what I do. You can only access that audio name app on your phone. So you need to go to the LinkedIn app on your phone and record it there. There is no way to record it on a desktop or laptop. Just keep that in mind. So if you can't find it, maybe that's the reason why - you have to do it on your phone.
Renata: LinkedIn has also made it much easier for you to save things. And there is a button on the right-hand side of posts that you see on LinkedIn that allows you to save that post to your items. So it's a save with my items. And you can save articles. You can save jobs, posts, et cetera. And I really love that personally because I'm always looking for content for my research, people that I want to connect with, or articles or posts that are important to me that I may want to share with a client. And I used to keep emailing myself everything, and now I just save them to my items, and it has made my life really simple. I have a blocked-out time in my calendar for LinkedIn work. I do this so that I don't spend too much time on LinkedIn, but I need to use LinkedIn professionally. I'm a career coach. So, of course, I need to always be in the loop about what's going on. And during that time that's allocated for LinkedIn and my calendar, I will check what I've saved, and I will make sure that I then allocate it appropriately.
Renata: LinkedIn has also made it easier to merge accounts. I don't know if you have had this problem before. It's quite common that when somebody books a LinkedIn audit with me, it's one of my services. It's a very popular service. I've spoken about it quite a lot of times already on this podcast, but you can book a LinkedIn audit. I'm going to record myself, reviewing your LinkedIn top to bottom, your profile, and your activity, and send that recording to you. And my clients that have done it love it. I really enjoy doing it. It's such a fun service for me to do as well. But a lot of times, when I look for the LinkedIn profile of that new client, I find that there are two, sometimes even three profiles, and they need to be merged. Because when you search for your own profile, you may be finding the one that you always find the newest one or the one that you've been using. But other people may find an older profile, and that is a real risk.
Renata: So I had a client, and every time I typed her name on LinkedIn, the first profile that showed up was not the profile that she wanted everyone to find. It was an older profile, and she didn't have access to that one anymore. She had used a company email account. And for that reason, it was very hard for her to merge. It took her a couple of goes and some help from the help desk on LinkedIn to enable that to happen. Apparently, LinkedIn is saying that they have made it easier to merge. I haven't tested it recently, but if you have a couple of accounts there that are floating around, I strongly strongly recommend that you merge them as soon as possible. That means you are going to merge connections, and there will be a lot of things that you might need to tidy up once it's merged because, of course, these things are never perfect, but the most important thing is that whoever is searching for you on LinkedIn will find only one profile and it will be the one that you were working on.
Renata: Finally, I've mentioned this before, in fact, I've dedicated a podcast. Oh, is it a podcast? Or was it a live coaching session, which I haven't done in a while? But I'm going to start doing it again after I'm back in Melbourne for the next two to three months. I'll definitely be doing more life coaching sessions. One more reason for you to sign up for my newsletter, so you know when they are happening. I think it was a live coaching session that I dedicated to this resource on LinkedIn. It's one of my favorite resources, and it's the interview questions. So you can go to jobs, and there are resources there. One of the resources under the jobs tab on LinkedIn is interviewing questions. And you can record yourself answering the questions, and there's an AI tool that will analyze your answers and give you some feedback.
Renata: Look, it's not perfect. But the important thing is that you will be practicing recording yourself in video and practicing those questions. There are a lot of questions there, and there are some general questions and then the questions that are identified by LinkedIn per profession. So quite a lot of questions there for you to practice with. And practicing for interviews is one of the biggest, most important things that you can do to maximize your success and your ability to get that job. So I strongly recommend that you find that interview tool and practice as much as you can.
Renata: I hope that you have enjoyed learning about these LinkedIn features. I'm sure that there are many more out there that you may have not even noticed if you haven't been on LinkedIn for a while. Or sometimes it just got, you know, complacent, and we don't really review LinkedIn.
Renata: I know I need to review my LinkedIn profile as soon as I get home. There's quite a lot of stuff that I want to update and change and review on my own LinkedIn profile. So maybe that's a task that we give ourselves to do in the next week or so, and I will be doing changes also, and you will be able to follow my changes as they happen. I will make sure that as I do them, I inform everyone because I want people to know when I make changes. You may not want that to happen. You have to set your privacy settings in such a way that when you make changes, people don't know that changes are being made. But I am a coach, and I like to educate people as I do things. So it'll be great for me to have that content on LinkedIn as I change my profile.
Renata: Enjoy your week. I hope you have a wonderful day today. Make sure you subscribe to The Job Hunting Podcast, and I will see you next time. Bye.
About the Host
Hello, I’m Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I’m also an executive coach, job hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach professionals (corporate, non-profit, and public) the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
If you are an ambitious professional who is keen to develop a robust career plan, if you are looking to find your next job or promotion, or if you want to keep a finger on the pulse of the job market so that when you are ready, and an opportunity arises, you can hit the ground running, then this podcast is for you.
In addition to The Job Hunting Podcast, on my website, I have developed a range of courses and services for professionals in career or job transition. And, of course, I also coach private clients.
Contact Renata Bernarde
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