So I'm excited to deliver this talk about linkedin. I'm very passionate about linkedin as you will hear and see and I hope we can connect with each other um on linkedin.Um I'm gonna try to follow the, the chat, but uh as I have only 20 minutes to share a lot with you guys, um I'm not gonna be able to jump in the chat, but uh I'm gonna read through the chat after the presentation. So, welcome to everyone who is joining. I hope you're having a great conference so far. I'm excited to watch the replays because uh obviously I was not able to, to had to prepare and so I was not able to see all the presentations, but yeah, so three more minutes before I can start, I'm so excited to share with you this presentation about how to upgrade your professional image on linkedin to get ahead in your career.

I'm gonna get some water um because yeah, I will have to, I will talk a lot um in this short time. Welcome everyone. Do you want to say hello in the chat and let us know where you are joining from? I'm based in Switzerland. We just had a huge uh rain. Uh like for five minutes. It, it rained like crazy. I'm happy it's over because I was wondering about the noise it would make on this window. Um Hi Sirisha joining from Dallas. Great. I, I just, I love online conferences because you get to meet people from all over the place. So feel don't be shy. Let us know in the chat where you're from? Louisville. Hi, Olivia. I'm gonna put my linkedin profile in the chat. So feel free to connect on linkedin here. Hi, Maria, going from Montreal. I've been to Montreal only three days. I need to go for a longer period of time. I loved it. Welcome everyone. Let us know in the chat where you're watching from. I'm waiting for two more minutes to uh get started. Feel free also to paste your linkedin profile, URL in the chat so everyone can connect with you. I just did it very appropriate since it's to talk about linkedin and I'm joining from Switzerland. It's three pm, 330 pm at my place. So one more minute and I'll get started. Welcome everyone. Let us know in the chat where you're watching from. Ok. I'll get started because there is a lot to cover only 20 minutes.

So again, officially, welcome to this presentation about how to upgrade your professional image on linkedin to get ahead in your career. My name is Virginie Conta. I'm a linkedin coach and career mentor. And what this means is that I help professional women use linkedin to their advantage so that they advance their career and use linkedin as a visibility tool for their career. I'm also a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the book you see on the image 60 days to Ling in mastery. I'm based in Zurich Switzerland and I'm married and I'm expecting my second child. Flashback to 2017, I got my dream job after months, even years um looking for it, you know, one year of intense networking, applying to jobs. And I felt like finally I have a job with the title and salary I deserve. I was Chief marketing Officer of a tech start up. But then slight hiccup in 2018, a few months after I had started, I got laid off from one day to the other. Unexpectedly, I come to the office and my boss, the CEO tells me that they had a meeting with the investor the night prior and that because we were not achieving all our targets, they had to rediscuss and that I was the first who had to go.

I was crushed as you maybe can imagine if this happened to you. But later that year, something else happened. I got a job offer via linkedin within a week. And for me, it was a huge contrast because I had been looking for more than a year for my last role at the start up. So I was like, I think I just unlocked something and I need to investigate. So because this job offer was not, I like my dream company. I kept looking. And in 2019, a few months later, I got the best negotiated offer I ever had. It was crazy. I asked the more for the more thing I asked, the more they wanted me. I was like, this is just too good to be true. So in 2020 I decided to share what I had done the steps I took with other professional women to help them advance their career. And I created my online course linkedin break in. So today on the agenda, I'm gonna share with you the three biggest mistakes people do on linkedin. I'm gonna share my three step system to use linkedin to get ahead in your career and stay tuned in the end because I have a few giveaways and a special surprise. My goal is to show you the easiest way to take advantage of linkedin because linkedin is a huge platform. It's become such a powerful machine. You can spend your entire day your entire week on the platform. I know you're busy.

So I want to show you how can you make it work for you even on top of a full time job. So you may, you may be wondering why linkedin. The thing is the first impression often happens on linkedin because whenever you have a meeting professionally and maybe even personally, you will look up, people, look people up and you open Google, you tap their name and most, you know, most often than not, the first result is the linkin profile.

So linking is so important, whatever your situation is. In fact, if you're currently looking for a job, you should know that only in Europe, there are more than 20,000 recruiters and as we grow our career and get more and more experience, it's becoming not about what we know, but who we know you may be wondering, Virginie, is it possible to stand out on Linkedin without looking desperate pushy sy?

I believe it is. And the truth is Linkedin is game changing even if maybe your current job is not at all what you were told and you feel like completely off track and wonder how and if you'll be able to make it back towards in the right direction, linking is game changing even if you got laid off after a reorganization and you think this is it, this is the end, even if Linkedin is game changing or the situation, you've been unemployed for months, maybe due to relocation.

And you think that it's gonna be impossible for you in this new market to get back on track to keep your car going the same pace as had it had been linkedin is game changing even if you're already successful, maybe you're already successful and already have ac level. Um But you're looking, let's say, for a board seat, speaking engagement, leadership roles for that, even though you're already successful, link is gonna amplify your success and linkedin is game changing. Even if you've been on maternity leave for years, I have clients that have been four years on maternity leave. They come back to the market, they use linkedin strategically and they get that dream job. Can you relate? Let us know in the comments. Let, let me know in a message on linkedin, I'd love to, to know like if this is one of the situations you're in and if not tell me what's your situation. However, disclaimer linkedin cannot close the deal for you. What linkedin does and can do for you is make your visibility exponential and the more visibility you get for your career, for your professional journey, the more opportunities you'll get because as for everything we get better with experience with training. So the more opportunities you get, the more visibility you get, the more contacts you get on linkedin, the more recruitment process you get in and the better you get at negotiating and and putting yourself out there and showing your value.

So in the next 15 minutes, you'll learn how little you need to post on linkedin to be successful, the minimal network size threshold, you should definitely reach at all costs, how important keywords are on linkedin and how to use them and how to use personal branding to advance your career.

Personal branding is not only for influencers, it's for everyone. So here we go. The three major mistakes people do on linking mistake number one trying to post regularly. In fact, you don't need to post at all for linkedin to be a true asset for your career and for your visibility professionally on the market. But people think that that's what's holding them back, that they should post more. Because when you log in on linkedin, what you see in your feed is people and their post, you see people who posted something. And you think if I want to be seen, I need to post the problem with that is that it adds stress and pressure because it's another task on your overcrowded to do list. And because it's so hard to get engagement on linkedin, it hits a bit of self-confidence. So you start to resent linkedin. You think linkedin uh the algorithm is against you and you neglect it. The true cost is that you're missing out then on the most effective tool to generate career opportunities. Mistake number two, underestimating the power of the algorithm. So here we have two screenshots and you recognize on the left, the most famous uh news search engine, Google and on the right, linkedin and I chose those to screenshot because I wanted you to see that they are very similar and that linkedin is, in fact, a search engine to search engine of professionals.

Whereas Google is a search engine of websites. And as for all search engines, they are ruled by an algorithm which can look very scary, which is what you see here on the left. But if we simplify it and try to draw it to make sense of it, an algorithm is nothing else than a set of rules for a lot. And maybe all possible scenarios and the question you should ask yourself is how can you set up your linking profile so that it shows up higher and more often in the search results for jobs, for networking, for business partnerships, speaking opportunities or even press inquiries because it's one thing to get found for your name.

If you have a common name, maybe there will be, you know, 10 people with the same name, 50. But it's gonna be quite easy to find you. But it's another thing to get found for what you can do for people who don't know you yet. So they cannot look you up with your name, but they're looking for a specialist for a skill maybe. And this is much, much, much more difficult. So if you underestimate the power of the algorithm and of how many opportunities you would get by getting funds for what you can do for people who don't know you yet, then your profile doesn't appear on the first page. So you get less people looking at your profile, you'll get less messages, less contact request and thus less career opportunities. Mistake number three, relying on lending premium to gain visibility. People pay for premium because we have this idea that if we pay for something, we get something back in return. So when you pay for linking, you must maybe think you get more legitimacy, more visibility and more opportunities. And also you feel you feel good about yourself because you feel like you took action to achieve your goal. But the thing is when you pay for linking carrier premium plan, what you get is access to a lot of great online courses, you get more analytics.

Like for example, you can see who viewed your profile and you also get five email credits to all which allow you to reach out to people outside your network. That's all linking premium is not about visibility nor quality. So don't let yourself get fooled by the marketing around it around this premium plan, Linkin premium won't help you be top of the result. Similarly than when people do Google ads and they know they will be on the top of the page. This is not what you pay for with a linkedin premium account. So to recap, recap quickly, this first part of the presentation, the three mistakes you should avoid are don't waste your time trying to post regularly on linkedin. Don't underestimate the power of the algorithm and don't rely on linking premium to gain visibility. Now, are you ready for my three step system to upgrade your image on linkedin? I hope you are. I'll get a lot of yeses in the chat. Awesome step one is optimize, use keywords to optimize your profile for the algorithm to gain visibility automatically. You need it because as, as a reminder, recruiters and hiring managers use linkedin to find professionals and it's mathematical, the more profile views you get, the more opportunities land on your lab.

So if you don't optimize for the algorithm, you're not maximizing the your your effort to give visibility to your hard work every day. You put, you know, behind your laptop, what's holding you back? Most likely, you don't know what a keyword word is. You don't know how to create a keyword list and you don't know where those keywords belong in your linking profile. So one way to get back on track is to add the main keywords you want for which you want to get found for in your headline. So let's have a look. This is not how it should look, but this is probably how your headline look. So basically, it's your current title at your current company. This is the default option that linkedin will give you, it will automatically populate this on your headline when you have a new job because it's the default option doesn't mean it's the best option for you here. It's a much better way to use this feature which is so important because when you think about it, your linkedin headline follows you everywhere you go on the platform in the feed, when you comment, when you post something in the in the inbox area of linkedin, when you message people um in those red boxes, people you may know or people who visited this profile also also visited and so on.

So this is a super strong feature, one of the most important feature details on your profile. So you want to add keywords which can be skills industry for which you want to get found for. You can edit your headline here on your uh profile. On the top, you have the pen and you can edit the headline. You see mine goes over four lines, you have 220 characters. So make sure to use them. Step two is personalized. You want to apply personal personal branding principles to your linkedin profile because you want to position yourself for your next car step, you need it because whether we like it or not, we all have a personal brand and personal branding is nothing else than how people see this.

So your linkedin profile is in fact the most effective way to manage how people see you professionally. And at the end of the day, people hire people, they know like and trust and your personal brand cover all these three factors. What's holding you back is maybe that you're afraid to look unprofessional. Desperate salesy, you are afraid to be different and to stand out and here, I hate to break it to you. But if you want to use linkedin as a tool as an asset, if you want to stand out, you have to be different. But being different is not something bad. All it means is that you want to have a, an authentic linkedin profile one way to get back on track in your headline again, phrase your keywords into a sentence to show us how you add value at work. What's your working style? What's your magic power? So again, how it should not look because here we have those four women with the same title, almost the same headline. And I'm sure those women do very different job. I'm sure the focus area is super different and I'm sure that their working style is completely opposite and different. But based on the linkedin headline, we have no way to know.

So if we have the those four women in the search result, how can, how can we decide which, which profile we visit? So a better way to use a link prof your Linkin headline is to, as I said, try to phrase your keywords, bring them together to show us a bit more of your working style. So the first example of a risk, professional risk is either a threat or an opportunity, eye shape processes to support growth. This is telling us what's her view on her job. And then we have AAA suite of keywords. Second example, building quantum computing strategies for end users, I lead high performing teams to enable companies to become data driven. This is so different than having a headline like this. So we saw step one is optimized, use keywords to optimize your profile for the algorithm.

So this means you increase how many times your profile shows up in the search results? And step two is personalized and what you do in this step is helping people click on your profile. When you profile appears in the list. Step three is network, grow your network strategically and methodically, it's a numbers game, the bigger your network, the more rich your profile will get. Because this is one of the matrix um that the algorithm used to also assess the quality of your profile. And so the more visibility you get, the more opportunities land on your lap again as we get more experienced, it's not about what we know, but about who we know. And the truth is the more connections you have on linkedin, the more successful, important and trustworthy, trustworthy.

You look what's holding you back is maybe that you're afraid to bother people. Um You think it's not the right time or you're playing hard to get here. I need to stress something on linkedin. There is absolutely no advantage on keeping your network small because for the optimization part of it, it's not serving you. And for the personal branding part of it, showing you as an important and successful leader, it's not serving you either. So one way to get, to get back on track is to get a minimum of 500 connections at all costs, you should aim 4000. Here we have an example of two risk professionals and one has 100 73 connections. And when you hit the magic 500 connections, then we don't show, we don't see exactly how many you have on the first at first glance. So here I might stop and wonder but wait, why does she, she has only 100 73 like is she how to connect with? Is she shy? Um She has maybe no clue who are the leaders in the, in, in the industry and who she should connect with. So kind of a lot of subconscious questions arises and here you see the more connection you have in your network, the le the more probable, the higher the probability that you will have mutual connections with someone who visits your profile.

And this gives me a lot of trust when I see we have that many connections in common. I'm like, huh? Yeah, I think I want to reach out to her instead of reaching out to her. So the three steps to amplify each other, that's the beauty of my three step system is that they all work together when you optimize you get more visibility to your profile. When you personalize, you help people see that you're the right person to, they should connect with. You, make yourself relatable and you make it easier to connect virtually when you never met. And when you network, you're amplifying the reach of your, of the optimization and of the personal everything you did in the personalization step. So key takeaways linkedin is the most effective tool to generate career opportunities. You don't have to post on linkedin to be visible and you can turn your linkedin profile into an asset that brings visibility to your car and gets you noticed by the right people giveaways.

Um I'm giving away free five signed copy of my linkedin book 60 days to linkin mastery. If you want a chance to win one head over to my website, Virgin nico.com/women Tech. I have another special giveaway on my website. So make sure to check it out. Virgin nita.com/women Tech. Finally, if you're, if you're not connected on linkedin yet, let's do this. Um I would love to connect with you and thank you so much for listening. I hope this was helpful and enjoy the rest of the conference. I'm checking, taking some time to check the chat until um the room get closed. So I see it's been a great interaction. That's amazing. Um I, I'm gonna try to connect with everyone who put the link here and um if you have questions about linkedin, feel free to, to con contact me um ah such a great chat thread here. OK. I really hope we get to, to connect further. Uh I'm gonna paste my, my profile link so it's easier for you to find me or some. And yeah, don't forget to head over to Virgin nan.com to claim, you know, get the chance to get one of the free free copy of my book, which you can see here. And also there is another special prize which is a free spot in my online course.

So if you want a chance to win that head over, um I can put the link as well. There, women pick. So it's easier for everyone to find. OK, giveaways. Great, great session. I've never done this session, this presentation in 20 minutes. So I'm sorry if I was speaking very fast. Um Again, kind of sweaty because I, I spoke so fast. But um yeah, I'm so happy I was in on time and still have a little bit of time to connect. So uh Awesome. What's the name of the book? It's 60 days to linkedin Mastery. Um You can see it here but maybe it's backwards. I don't know if you can see it here, but yes, 60 days to linkedin Mastery, you can find it on Amazon. Um Almost all shops of Amazon. So, hi from London. Awesome. Awesome. So I'm excited to open all those uh connection requests on linkedin. Amazing and go get your, you know, get the chance to sign to, to win a free book and a spot in my online course at virginie.com/women Tech. Um Yeah. So now I get also to dive in a, in a few of the sessions. I'm so excited. Um I don't know if you guys checked the networking tab. I, I tested it earlier today. It's really fun. You get to meet someone for three minutes. Awesome. So I wish you all addressed a great end of the, of the conference use linkedin. It's a great tool for your career and um I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye. All right. We still have so many people in the room. Um That's amazing. Hello from Luxembourg Sylvana.

Thanks for sharing my, my links. It's great. Great of you. Indeed. I offer uh several services if you feel like you need my help. Um I would, um I would love to help. I've worked with already 80 women uh to help them take advantage of, of linkedin for their career. So I'd love for you to be the next one. I'm going on maternity leave later this year. So don't wait if you um if you're interested. Um Also because it's, you know, now is the best time to start harnessing the power of flying so early now is better than later. Thanks. Uh Such a great vibe here. My, you're trying to copy all the Linkin links. Yes. So I'm gonna show you the book closer. So this is the book. Uh this is gonna be probably the, you're here, sorry, your best investment to learn how to implement linking, for you to make it work for you. Um It's 60 days to link in mastery. So it's 60 short chapters where you have implementation at the end, we are uh seven co-author, so you really get the best of, of seven experts. Um So yeah, I highly recommend it. It's, it's been published last year. So it's very current. Um the main author, Josh Stanley is, is great. Um So it was a lot of fun to work on this project. I hope you get it. I hope you win it. If you go to Virginia continent.com/women Tech, you get the chance to win it.

So make sure to, to do that and I can't wait to connect with all of you on linkedin. Yeah. So with that in mind, um I'm gonna close the session. Thank you so much for attending and I'll see you soon on linkedin or in my emails. Bye bye.