Stop Competing With 1,000+ Resumes. Just post on LinkedIn

Transcription

It's harder to get a job now more than ever, especially for college students. And I think LinkedIn is one of the best opportunities for college students to help them land a job and help them stand out because the reality is... Hello, it's Daniel from the editing booth. I realized we didn't have a proper intro to say welcome to Connection Accepted for this episode, so here it is, and I'm just going to resume right where you left off. Thanks for watching, guys. We appreciate your support. Reality is the way you apply to a job now is they're just flooded with applications. I mean, I knew this when I was at the firm I was working at over the summer. They posted a job on LinkedIn and got, it was like thousands of applicants or something for like two slots. It's impossible to parse through. And when I look at the way my friends and some family hire, most of it is through relationships. And the easiest way to get a lot of those relationships, to get you, get your foot in the door to land these jobs is to have a personal brand and to post on LinkedIn. And because what this does is it networks at scale and it gets you those relationships at scale when you don't even have them. Posting on LinkedIn has opened up so many doors that Matt and I could talk forever and it even built our relationship. And I just want to have this episode break down why people should do it and get into a little bit of how later, but we have a lot of content on how you can post on LinkedIn. So Matt, why should college students be posting so much on LinkedIn right now too? What do you think? Yeah. First of all, I think that we should flesh out the reasons why, because a lot of students, the first thing they're going to wonder is, should I even be posting on LinkedIn? Do I have anything valuable or interesting to even be posting about? And I think that the answer is yes. I'm obviously biased as a creator, but first of all, there's always something that you can provide a unique perspective on. And as a college student, if your goal, your ultimate goal is to land a job somewhere, then networking with people in the industry that you are targeting is something that you are going to have to do whether or not you have an online presence or not. Now, most people are going to approach networking in a similar way, which is they're going to probably find a bunch of emails or stalk a bunch of people on LinkedIn and then try to find their emails or try to DM them directly. And then you're going to try to email these people. And maybe if you're really scrappy like I was in college, you'll try to get like a hundred emails into a spreadsheet and then you'll try to like mass send out a mail merge or something. These days, I think if you're cracked, there's probably college students that are using automation tools like Clay or any of these other crazy like outreach products that tech companies have come out with. But ultimately, you're going to be approaching it in a similar way as most people, which is you're just going to be sort of like spray and pray, sending out emails to as many professionals as possible and praying that like they'll get back to you. Now, how do you stand out though in that kind of a situation where a BCG consultant or an investment banker at Goldman Sachs is getting 10 emails a day? How do you stand out? Well, this is where content comes into play. And this is something that most people don't understand until they've started posting content is the amount of opportunities that come inbound to you once you start posting because people see you. And like Daniel said, it's networking at scale because ideally the content that you're putting out is an honest, accurate reflection of who you are as a person. And when people see that content, there's going to be two reactions. One is they're either going to not like what they see or they're not going to necessarily really resonate with it. And then they're going to keep scrolling and then forget about it in like five seconds. Or two, they're going to stop and they're going to see the content and they're going to think to themselves, wow, this is really thoughtful. Or maybe even this is really funny. Or this reminds me of what I was like when I was a student and they're going to resonate with it. And the beautiful thing about that is every time you put out a piece of content that somebody resonates with, they're going to kind of remember you just that much more. And so imagine that they see a piece of content show up on their feed with your name on it. They really like it. And then the next day you'd message them on LinkedIn. How much more likely do you think it is that they're going to respond to you? Or how much more likely is it that they're going to respond to the email that you send them the next day, right? It's exponentially higher. And so that's why at the core, I think that students can also benefit a lot from posting on LinkedIn. But Daniel, curious if you have any thoughts there as well. I couldn't agree more with everything you said. When you're posting on LinkedIn networking at scale, it's not only your network that can help you land this job, but it's your network's network. If you have an audience and you post on LinkedIn, it's not just the people who you post to that are going to help you land the next job. It's those people might know someone else that introduces you to someone else. And then you're one step closer to landing that job. And I think what really stood out to me the most, Matt, is helping you stand out. Because when you were networking, what used to help you stand out was sending a bunch of emails or making sure you follow up or checking their LinkedIn to find some personal detail. But everyone's doing that now. The new way to stand out is to post content. And that's one of the reasons I think it's so valuable for college students now looking to get a job to try to post content. 100%. And I know that the next question people are going to have is like, what do I post? What kind of content should I, as a college student, be posting online? Because I don't want to look stupid in front of these potential future employers or people in my network. Do you have any thoughts on that? I have a lot of thoughts. I'm trying to think about how I want to structure this. I think the reality is it's tough to start posting content. Whether it's on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter, your first posts are not going to be great. And it's good to know that because they're not going to go viral. Not a lot of people are going to see it. And it's going to be cringe for a little bit. But that's just a thing that you should be known. But then what are we actually going to post? I think it's different for every person. For me, I could talk about, you know, some of my high school entrepreneurship experience. If you don't have that entrepreneurship experience, you can talk about a club you're in, what you're learning at school that day. Maybe advice to your freshman yourself, what it's like going to your college. It doesn't... there isn't a specific formula to gaining an audience on LinkedIn. You know, the use cases are far expanding. There are people that can just post about rating their dining hall on LinkedIn. And that can go viral and resonate with other people that maybe went to that college. I don't think there's a specific blueprint, which makes it so hard because content is this thing that's so ambiguous. But I think we should give some sort of direction, maybe. What do you think, Matt? Do you have any directions to push the audience in of where to start? Yeah. First of all, before I get into the framework, I think that it's really important to post content about something that you're actually interested and passionate by. It's just going to be so much easier for you to consistently push out that content. And so, for example, if you're really passionate about finance, financial markets, the stock market, maybe what this means is like every week you're doing a little bit of diligence on a different company, a different publicly traded company. You're giving your sort of high level take on, hey, this is where I think this company is headed. This is where I think the stock is probably going to be trending. You know, maybe I could be right. Maybe I'm wrong. But like, follow along to see if things do pan out. And just like publishing your own work that you've done. But again, it has to be something that you're passionate about. Now, if you want an actual framework, I'm going to put you on the gap framework. I didn't come up with this, but it's a pretty commonly used one. You know, you've got three types of content. You've got growth content, you've got authority building content, and then you've got personal content. And so each of these three buckets achieves a different result. Growth content is essentially very top of funnel, meaning that it is supposed to appeal to the broadest number of people possible. So this is going to be content where you're commentary. You're giving commentary on something that's trending in the industry. You're giving your own personal spin, your personal take on it. Let's say that OpenAI just released a new model, a new video model, and it's insane and people are making tons of videos about it and it's trending on Twitter. Maybe it's a good idea for you to write a post talking about, Hey, OpenAI just released this new video generation model. Here's what it means for college students. Or here's what it means for people in the finance industry. Like, why should they care? And then you give your own take. And the goal here is not to be right because nobody can predict the future, but to just show that you're thinking about this and that you're interested in it and to put yourself and your voice out there with you and have an emotional connection almost, and the value of that is hard to quantify, but I believe is extremely, extremely powerful. This framework almost reminds me of something in corporate America, which is called managing up. And what that means is you're taking control of your career development path. You're talking about what you learned in class and applying that to the real world and educating your audience on it. And now learning through that framework, there are a lot more ideas that I have that a student can do, whether they're in a finance club. They just did an investment pitch. My brother does these all the time. You can post that on LinkedIn and say, here's why I think you should buy or sell whatever the stock is. Whether you're in a consulting club, you're doing a lot of decks, and posting these on LinkedIn will also, your audience will get better. They'll learn, they'll watch you get better at these decks with you. They'll give you feedback. And these will all be great learning opportunities and also show your development as well. Even if you're in a ballet club or dance or pizza making, showing your progression and what you're learning is valuable. People care more about that than you think. If you're interested in a pizza club at Brown University or whatever school you go to, there is obviously interest for other people to learn more about that pizza club. Just because it's pizza or it's ballet doesn't mean other people don't like it. There's a bigger audience for what you want to post about than you think. And I think the best place to start, because a lot of people are like, oh, where am I going to start, is to just post. We're making a lot of content to try to help you get over that barrier and give you some tips and tricks on the way, but nothing is going to help you more than just hitting that post button. Absolutely. And the last thing I'll say here before we wrap this is, look, if you feel like you don't have anything to post about, first of all, think again through those buckets that we talked about. But second of all, the way to never run out of content is to simply go out there into the world and do interesting things. Like put yourself out there, go to events, talk to different people, get out of your bubble of normal people that you talk to, your friends, your family. These people are all great, but sometimes the best inspiration comes from breaking out of the traditional routine, going out there, experiencing something new, traveling, talking to people, meeting people that are doing interesting things, reading a new book, like just breaking the routine and really going out there, living life, and then reflecting on it. That is the best way to create genuine and authentic content in my opinion, because if you're just sitting at home and not really learning or talking to people or trying things and failing, then your content, it's going to feel a little bit forced. Whereas if you are actively pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and learning from the world around you, and whether that's succeeding or failing at starting a business or joining a club and talking to all the people in the club or networking with people who are doing the thing that you want to do, those things are going to give you far better content inspo than just sitting in your room on campus and trying to think about, okay, what do I post about today? Like, yes, there's a time and place to brainstorm content ideas, but the number one thing I would say to you if you think, well, I don't know what to post about, is go out there and do stuff. And then the ideas will just come. I totally agree. And just like anything else, content is a muscle. It's something you practice and you'll get better with it over time. But there will be, and just like anything else, content is a muscle. It's something you practice and you'll get better with it over time. But there will be times, as Kevin Baker said, where you get a billion ideas one day and no ideas the next. So it's always good, quoting Kevin Baker here, to have a banger for a rainy day. Thank you all for tuning into this episode. Thanks for joining us.