What’s the #futureofwork and how will it shape your career in 2019?
That was the subject of a Facebook Live for USC alumni I moderated this week. Fellow alums Dr. Terri Horton, a workforce futurist, and Jennifer Zweig-Dwomoh, an executive recruiter, shared their expertise and insights.
We began with a look at how AI – or artificial intelligence – is being used in the recruiting space. We talked about what candidates should know about ATS, or applicant tracking software.
Using keywords in your application is a must. Take a look at the job description and make sure the keywords in it are reflected (appropriately, of course) in your application materials. The goal is to pass through the ATS screening and start interacting with a person.
Even better is to skip the online application process entirely and tap into your network. Who do you know who works at the companies of interest to you? A warm introduction from them to a hiring manager or recruiter can accelerate your candidacy.
Top jobs and skills for the future
We talked about the top jobs and skills that employers are looking for today and in the future. The World Economic Forum has a few valuable lists in the jobs landscape for 2022, starting with data scientist and AI and machine learning specialists.
As someone who writes, consults and speaks about what successful people do in social media to boost their careers, I’m personally happy to see sales and marketing professionals on the list. But that doesn’t let me off the hook to continue to learn and grow.
Portions of some jobs may be automated via AI, which means many jobs may evolve and be reimagined. And while some job types may go away entirely, new jobs will also appear. It’s wise to keep an eye on the landscape, evaluate the changes, and adjust your career focus and learn new skills on an ongoing basis.
While many of the future-focused jobs are tech-related, there’s also a rise in emphasis on soft skills. Creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, empathy, innovation and resilience, to name a few, are increasingly important. These are the skills that machines can’t currently perform.
How social media can accelerate your career
We looked at how social media can help you with your job search. A consistent focus on building your LinkedIn network with everyone you know – and everyone you want to get to know – is critical.
Then work on your LinkedIn profile. Focus on your headline, your summary, and your work experience. Make sure they’re saturated with the keywords that reflect both your experience and where you want to go next. This makes you more discoverable to recruiters, hiring managers, and others who might have interesting opportunities for you.
Your profile picture is also important. Be sure to upload a clear picture of your face, ideally smiling, closely cropped, and in the attire appropriate for your industry.
Don’t use the default background image in blue with lines and dots. Take advantage of a personalized background photo. A photo of you in action on the job or a picture of your geographical location are a few starter ideas.
Companies are looking for you in a strong economy
We also talked about the state of the economy. With unemployment at a nearly 50-year low, companies want to hire you. That creates a vast array of opportunities for you. This is an ideal time to consider your next move, whether it’s in your current company or at a new one.
Just be sure to be the professional that you are, treating everyone with respect and not burning bridges. You never know where or when your paths will cross again or what shape the economy will be in.
We also talked about newer graduates and how they can start building their careers. With freshly minted degrees, their skills are in high demand, so that can be leveraged. It’s also never too early (or too late) to begin building a “platform” – a few social media channels of choice where you both create and curate content.
Reimagining work and reasons for optimism
In our 2019 world, while change as fast as it is happening can be scary, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic. The 2018 Future of Jobs report by the World Economic Forum predicts that AI and robotics will create almost 60 million MORE jobs than they destroy by 2022.
How can you take advantage of that? The main takeaways from our conversation were to keep learning every day, stay flexible and agile, and embrace the reimagining of work.
Ah, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It’s the last one of the year. A time to spend with family and friends. A time to reflect on the past and its lessons. A time to plan for the future.
And a time to take a few actions to close out your social media strategy for the year and get it ready for the coming year. Here are six strategies for what could become an annual ritual. You don’t have to do them all. Just pick and choose what speaks to you the most.
Reflect on your accomplishments and update your social media. A former colleague Angelica Kelly is the inspiration for this one. Every year she says she “takes stock of the personal and professional, considering what I’m grateful for and what I want to improve.”
She uses LinkedIn “like a notepad” to do an annual update after her reflection process. She puts everything professionally relevant in her LinkedIn profile. This includes accomplishments, interests, volunteering, and big projects that highlight her transferrable skills and new knowledge she’s gained.
If you did a year-end performance assessment as part of your job, you can easily flow those updates into your LinkedIn profile. You could also look at your Twitter, Instagram and other profiles to see if anything should be refreshed.
Assess your social media activity against your goals. Did you want to ramp up your engagement with any particular social platform? Share more content relevant to your professional interests? Build your network and connect with a diverse group of people?
See how you did against any social goals you set at the beginning of the year. One of my big goals was to conduct social media research to understand in a data-focused way how professionals are using social media to build their careers. It was a big learning experience and something I plan to do annually.
Another goal was to start consulting with people on how to boost their careers in social media. I worked with a few people pro bono in the first half of the year to develop and refine my approach. You know who you are, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity.
This was invaluable when I my business The Carrelle Company was born on Labor Day. One of the most pleasant surprises was that my blogging and LinkedIn article writing generated a group of people interested in working with me.
Show your network some professional love. Take time to scroll through people’s content. By commenting on great content, you can easily connect with members of your network. That keeps you top of mind with people you care about, whether it’s for them to seek professional advice from you or consider you as a job candidate.
Think about who’s not in your social networks who should be. Sure, look at the algorithms to see who pops up. But also think about the projects you’ve worked on and the organizations you’ve been active in. There may be some people you should connect with. Or maybe there are some aspirational connections you’d like to make with people you want to get to know better.
Share your #bestnine2018 from Instagram if they are professional in nature. These could be your actual best performing posts of the year, or you could choose your favorite nine. Post them anytime up through New Year’s Eve, and share them in other networks like Twitter and LinkedIn.
Here are some tips from Dawn Geske writing for the International Business Times on how to do it. Also, scroll through the posts of others for ideas on content and captioning. Leave comments on ones that speak to you the most strongly. It’s a great opportunity to touch members of your network and share year-end greetings.
Listen, watch and read up on 2019 social media trends. Check out what experts are saying about what the new year will hold for social media, so you can up your own game for your career.
My main takeaway? Always focus on your audience and what’s in it for them.
In an upcoming post, I’ll do a roundup of the top trends for the coming year.
Consider a theme for the new year to guide your social efforts. Every year since 2011 I’ve had a theme word for my life, and that includes how I choose to show up in social media. Because I launched a new business in 2018, my theme word will have a lot to do with that.
Watch for more to come in an upcoming post about theme words. It will cover why they’re so powerful and how you could think about choosing a word that unifies and focuses all you do in the new year.
How else do you take stock of your year in social and get ready to shine brighter in a new one?
When you’re trying to write a blog post that people will love, sometimes you can’t fit everything into the ideal length of 600 to 800 words. What can you do? Break it into a series of shorter posts.
Part 1 of this topic covered themes, points of view, headlines, opening words, and the ideal length. Here’s part 2 covering creating visual interest, engaging others, weaving in data and research, ending strong, editing your post, and reading other blogs for ideas and inspiration.
Make it visually interesting
Include photos, videos and/or infographics to make your post eye catching. You can also spice up your text by using subheads, bullets, numbered lists and white space. My rule is to keep paragraphs at four lines or less to make them reader friendly.
Use formatting options in platforms like LinkedIn to draw attention to call-out quotes by way of bold italics. You can also sprinkle images and/or videos throughout your post for visual interest.
Engage others
Consider how you can weave others into your post. If you can quote someone or highlight a best practice that they do, this rounds out your post with a variety of perspectives. This provides supporting points for your overall message.
It also potentially increases interest in and engagement with your post. The people you’ve included may be inclined to comment on and share your post. You can also mention them as you promote your post in various social networks, so they’re sure to know you’ve included them.
Bring in the data
Cite interesting facts and research in your post, and link to them. This anchors your post in data and supports your key points.
Influencer Neil Patel, for example, cited research that “marketers who blog consistently will acquire 126% more leads than those who do not.” If that data point doesn’t convince you of the value of blogging, I don’t know what will.
Be sure you’ve read the full link and are comfortable with its contents before linking to it. Why? Because every bit of content you create, like, or link to reflects on you and your professional image.
End strong
Your ending is almost as important as your lead. Here you want to spur your reader into action. What will they do differently as a result of reading your post? How have they accomplished what you talk about in your post? What questions do they have and will they leave a comment?
Set your draft aside and come back to it later, whether it’s the next day or the next hour. Read it with fresh eyes. Ask yourself if the piece flows appropriately from one idea to the next.
Look for areas that might need more explanation for your readers. Edit out repeated words (always a challenge for me) and unnecessary phrases. Make sure all the links work properly.
Read blogs
Study what types of blog posts and articles appeal to you. Ask yourself what specifically engages you. I love reading posts from many of my former colleagues in the corporate world – Anne Chow, Mo Katibeh, L. Michelle Smith, John Stancliffe and Jason Dunn, to name a few.
I almost didn’t write my post about 7 Things Not to Do in LinkedIn. At the time, I didn’t think I’d be adding anything new to the existing body of knowledge. But I wrote it because someone left a comment asking for it. And it became one of my most-read pieces.
That’s my moment of surprise. Sometimes the topic that doesn’t seem exciting to you will be of great interest to your network. If you look at the analytics of all your posts, you may find your own surprises to inform your upcoming posts.
What other ways do you write posts that people will love?
Blogging is a powerful way to share your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader. My blog, as an example, has led to speaking invitations, consulting projects, publication opportunities and more.
What does it take to write a great blog post?
Here are tips to write a post that people will love. Sometimes the hardest part is getting over the fear. But what makes your post stand out comes in the editing process. During the writing process, the most important thing is to simply get the words down.
You may need to silence your inner critic until you do that. Just suspend that self-critical voice until you have a first draft completed. Write continuously for a set period of time, such as 60 minutes.
Set your draft aside and come back to it, ideally a day later and at least an hour later. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised that your first draft is much better than you expected.
This is all worth it in light of the benefits of blogging. Bestselling author Dorie Clark cites content creation as one of the three pillars of “standing out in a noisy world.”
It enables you to share your hard-won expertise, establishing you as a person with a valuable point of view. As a result, interesting career opportunities may come your way.
Here’s how to get started.
Have a theme
This is about having a strategy for what you blog about. By focusing in one area, you will be better able to build up a devoted readership over time. Be clear on why you’re writing and who you want to reach. Once you have your topic identified, you can relate almost anything to that subject.
It’s okay for your focus to evolve as your career does. My blog began as an exploration of the future of corporate communications. When my job changed after a corporate acquisition, I wrote about marketing analytics for a short time. Ultimately that wasn’t something I wanted to spend hours of my weekend and evening time on, so then I explored how people learn.
After that I had a serendipitous moment at a leadership conference. Reese Witherspoon, the entrepreneur, producer and actor, talked about the white space in social media to work with people on building their reputations.
It was my “a-ha” moment. I knew what I wanted to focus on – writing, consulting and speaking about what successful people do in social media to boost their careers.
Share your point of view
People read blogs to learn, to be entertained and to be surprised by a new twist. Think about the point of view you can bring to your topic. You don’t have to be an expert to start blogging about it. If you’re fascinated by it and dedicated to learning in the process, you can bring value to your audience.
Your point of view is why people will read your posts. No one else except for you has had your unique experience in the work world. What you’ve learned and experienced along the way can be helpful to others.
Come up with a compelling headline
You could write the best blog post in the world, but if no one reads it, your light and your ideas haven’t truly reached the world. As I learned by experimenting, it’s important to devote almost as much time to creating a compelling headline as you do to writing the overall post.
There are headline analyzers such as CoSchedule that can help you improve your headlines to attract more readers. It’s almost a gamified approach, if you keep entering headlines to increase your score. Try to write 25 headlines for every blog post. Then pick the best one.
Of course, your headline has to be true to your subject. No clickbait for you. Deliver to your readers what your headline promises.
Focus on the first few words
The first first words and sentences have to pique your readers’ interest from the start. There’s no time to warm up and get to the point. Spend as much time on your lead as you do on your headline. What are the opening words and sentences that will grab a reader’s interest?
Those first few lines show up now for LinkedIn articles in your profile. Carefully consider what you want your first 30 words to say.
Get the length right
About 600 to 800 words is ideal. This is approximately the length of a newspaper op-ed article. It’s okay, though, to go shorter or longer if your topic warrants it. For something really long, you can break it into a series, as I did for my bio posts and my research on social media.
Since this post has hit that limit, watch for the remaining tips in a part 2 post coming soon.
Do you give speeches, talks and presentations as part of your work?
Have you wondered where to share them on your LinkedIn profile?
It’s a bit of a conundrum since there isn’t a specific section for speeches and talks at this time. But that gives you options, depending on how much you want to emphasize the speaking you do.
There are a few starting places. You could showcase them in your summary, as part of a specific job, or as a separate job listing as a speaker.
Another option is to use one of the Accomplishments sections. In this area, you can provide content for:
Honors & Awards
Publications
Certifications
Projects
Patents
Test Scores
Organizations
Courses
Languages
At this point in my career, I hope no one would be interested in my GRE or GMAT scores, even if I could remember what they were. I’m still struggling to learn Spanish. And I’m not anticipating a patent any time soon. So test scores, languages and patents are off the table.
My LinkedIn profile was missing this important aspect of my work. In updating it, I discovered some tips that may be helpful to you in determining the best ways to share your own speeches.
A bit of research led me to a decision point between Publications and Projects.
I already had one project, Social Media for Innovation with Michael Ambrozewicz, Thyda Nhek Vanhook and Gerry Ledford. It was a series of case studies and innovation experiments on engaging employees and customers through social media. It was clearly not a speech. So there would be some cognitive dissonance to overcome in including speeches alongside this project.
That’s where the dictionary came in handy.
A publication according to Dictionary.com is “(1) the act of publishing a book, periodical, map, piece of music, engraving or the like; (2) the act of bringing before the public; announcement.”
And publish means to “(1) issue for sale or distribution to the public; (2) issue publicly the work of; (3) submit online, as to a message board or blog; (4) announce formally or officially; (5) make publicly or generally known.”
The sense of bringing something before the public felt analogous to giving a speech and sharing information publicly.
How about a project? It’s “(1) something that is contemplated, devised or planned; (2) a large or major undertaking, especially one involving considerable money, personnel or equipment; (3) a specific task of investigation, especially in scholarship.”
In a stretch, a speech could be considered a project. But to me it feels more like a publication.
And the information fields for both areas in LinkedIn are very similar. One minor difference is a Publication lists an author or authors, and a Project lists a creator or creators. Also, the Project entry lets you identify which specific job or educational degree the work is associated with.
Ultimately it’s up to you which area to choose. The good news is you have options. And perhaps a future LinkedIn update will add a “Presentations” or “Speeches” section to Accomplishments, making this a moot point.
What’s a good way of choosing which speaking engagements to include in your profile? In my case, there were three criteria.
Could it be shared publicly, i.e., was it not confidential or sensitive?
How relevant was it to my current and future work?
And I’m excited about a few more talks in the queue.
On Monday, October 29, I’ll moderate a USC Annenberg Facebook live with alumni session on starting your own communications firm. These are learning sessions that Annenberg’s Leticia Lozoya creates a few times each year. In this one, business owners Maggie Habib, Tom Henkenius and Rebecca Meza will share an inside view of how to launch and grow your own company.
I’ve also been approached about giving a TEDx talk in spring 2019, speaking to professional associations, and talking about personal branding for women. The invitations often result from my presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media.
If you want to speak more to develop your career and your reputation as a thought leader in your field, consider adding your speeches to your LinkedIn profile and sharing your expertise through articles and posts.
You may be pleasantly surprised that you’ll be invited to talk about those subjects to audiences you care about.
Where do you share your speeches and talks in your LinkedIn profile?
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