A theme which often features during my mentoring/coaching sessions is confidence. One of the tools I suggest when mentoring people with confidence issues is to take more of an active role on LinkedIn. A lot of people I have worked with talk about how they don’t have many relationships with recruiters, or people in their industry and when I ask if they have a LinkedIn profile the answer is no. The impact and scale of this platform has increased exponentially over the last decade. If you are a professional, the minimum requirement is that you have a LinkedIn presence. It is how recruiters look for prospective candidates, it is a forum where knowledge is shared, and it assists in building your confidence as you build your profile. In my experience, coaching people on their LinkedIn has had a direct impact on their relationship with themselves and their profession as it encourages them to take pride in how they present themselves professionally, the increase in visibility and connection shows they are an asset to recruiters/companies and posting their professional achievements and milestones aids in the drafting of self-reviews during performance cycles as there is a repository of success to reflect on.
One of the first exercises I do with a coachee/mentee is to review their LinkedIn profile, often starting with their by-line where their title is referenced. People often underplay themselves when even describing their job title. Here is a before and after of a job title of a coachee/mentee I worked with:
L&D Co-Ordinator —> Global Learning & Development Program Manager
1) If you are working with a region or at a global level, specify it. There is no need to embellish but if your scope is known to you then call it out.
2) Be aware of acronyms that are internal to your company. Never assume knowledge and spell out the department or business you are working in.
Don’t let the lack of a paper qualification deter you from giving yourself a title in which you have years of experience. As well as these tips for your job title, be sure to keep your job and education experience up to date.
Once you have looked at your profile through this new lens, don’t stop there. Get posting! To ease yourself into the habit, set some time in your calendar weekly where you will look through posts and see if anything jumps out at you. Make sure that you give your professional real estate the same attention and dedication you give to your other social media channels. This does not always have to be posts you have drafted yourself. Perhaps an easier way to begin the habit of professional posting is to start interacting with content more on LinkedIn. For example, reposting an article you found insightful with some thoughts or commentary as to why it resonated with you. Liking or commenting under a colleague’s post also helps with your habit of engagement. Lastly, use your profile to celebrate success, whatever that looks like for you, a work anniversary, the launch of a project, the completion of training, a work trip or returning from maternity leave. If one person or 100 people interact with it, this doesn’t matter and is not the crux of why you are posting. If you take the time to reflect on your achievements, big and small, you will see the difference within yourself. Make the commitment to get posting professionally and watch your confidence grow.
