LinkedIn Tips That Will Change Your Job Search Completely

LinkedIn Tips That Will Change Your Job Search Completely

Guest: Lorie Camacho

Shelley Hunter: You're listening to the Faithful Career Moves podcast. I'm your host, Shelley Hunter. This is the place where we talk to people who recognize the Lord's hand in their lives, and specifically in their careers.

Thank you for joining on episode seven of the Faithful Career Moves podcast. Last week, we talked to Jeffery Thompson, author of The Zookeeper's Secret: Finding Your Calling in Life, where he shared many great insights about how to find that thing you were always meant to do. This week though, we're getting more nuts and bolts with some serious tips on how to use LinkedIn to get a job. I'm talking to Lorie Camacho. She's a LinkedIn coach who leverages a unique style to engage and motivate professionals to find more happiness in their current job, build an online presence, and organize strategies for success in their career networking.

I promise you this, if you're out of work or needing a job change, this episode is going to change your job search completely. Spoiler alert, even if you aren't currently looking for work, you should still be building your LinkedIn presence. One thing, everything Lorie and I talk about is in the show notes, and you can find the transcript on the website. So for now you can sit back and learn knowing you can go over to the website, grab the transcript, and pick out the exact recommendations that apply to you. 

All right, to start with, I asked Lorie how she became a LinkedIn expert, and why LinkedIn is the place to be if you're open to hire.

Lorie Camacho: I had a career coming out of college but about the time that I got married, I decided to go back and get my master's degree and that's a story in and of itself. For the purpose of how I ended up doing LinkedIn, I went and got a master's in instructional technology. A lot of people have never heard of it, but it's using technology to teach and so from there, I went into corporate training. I worked at a large chemical company and I did that for a few years. Then when I had my first child, I quit and I'd made a bunch of contacts with external consultants while I was there doing corporate training.

One of those external consultants invited me to start working for a not-for-profit organization, which was a public career coaching-type platform. They had a need for a LinkedIn coach so I started teaching there using my master's degree and then I started working with candidates. I found that there really is a big gap with LinkedIn because so many people are used to the old way of job-seeking using a resume, using a job word and really now LinkedIn has become the number one place to begin your networking, to maintain your network and to find jobs. A lot of people just weren't teaching that, career coaches in particular. As I saw this big gap I began talking with people and just trying to fill that need and so it became bigger and bigger and bigger until I became pretty highly specialized in it.

Shelley: Give me a little bit of background why LinkedIn is so different from other job boards and things like that?

Lorie: LinkedIn is different because you have to think all the way back to the beginning of even really the Internet and the algorithms that go into what we use as far as all the different social platforms. LinkedIn from the beginning always made their value to be connecting people. When you google search something through Google or Yahoo or whatever search engine you use, you're going to get hits back that are relevant to what you're searching, your keywords, but also you're going to get hits back relative to your geographical location, and what's near you. For me in Houston, for your listeners in your state or whatever or city wherever you are, you're not going to get, for instance, Italian restaurants in Italy. You'll get things here in the US even if your GPS is off.

LinkedIn at the very beginning made their GPS connections and so it really has built its backbone on tracking how can we encourage people to more easily find other connections. Although a lot of the other social media platforms are targeted on that because they want you to stay in their platform, LinkedIn is based on that and so it makes it really in the forefront of everything that they're trying to do.

Shelley: If I'm looking for work, either I'm out of work or I just want a job change, I just want to see what's out there, what should I do to my LinkedIn profile to be ready for that?

Lorie: The first thing to do with your LinkedIn profile is to get it to All-Star which is just a completion grade or marking. You'll know that you're All-Star because when you go to your profile and you scroll down to this gray section, it's right below the top box where your picture is, and only you can see it and it's called your dashboard, it actually says dashboard on it, and in the right corner, there'll be a little star that will say All-Star next to it. If you're not All-Star, it will give you a step-by-step, like a little widget on top of that with a line bar telling you the things you need to complete in order to get to All-Star. There'll be a drop-down arrow, and it will actually tell you in this list, here are the things you're missing.

Shelley: Okay, that's good. I've done that before, and it'll walk you through it step-by-step. Okay, so get your profile put together. What's next?

Lorie: It's really important to think about two things. Number one, who do you want to find you and what do you think that they will be searching? Trying to speak to that person. Then on the second element there, is you want to be thinking about your future and using terminology that speaks towards your future. The biggest pitfall I see with that second one is people oftentimes write their resume which is a very backward-facing exercise. You sit down to write your resume and you think, "What are all the things I have done in my past? How can I prove that those things are worth something?"

Then they take the resume and they dump it into LinkedIn, which is okay, that typically will help them get to completion and it'll help them get that process on faster but the problem is your resume is written towards your history and not towards your future and LinkedIn is all about networking, creating opportunities for your future. You want to make sure that you're including a very clear message as to where it is you're going and what type of people you want to attract.

Shelley: That's huge. I've always used the resume to help people reflect upon their history, like looking for patterns in the work they've done, to build their confidence and recognizing that their career is more than just a list of past jobs. What I hear you saying is that while it's important to document the past on LinkedIn, you should be writing it in a way that helps you get where you'd like to go next. That's huge. Okay, so what is next?

Lorie: The fourth one is the social piece of LinkedIn. That one's really important. It's kind of an add-on but the social piece on LinkedIn is by far the biggest. Right now LinkedIn is the number one platform for social selling. What that means is, if you go to Facebook and you try to market yourself, you're going to have a lot harder time getting out of your immediate network to anybody, whereas on LinkedIn, it's really designed and built to spread the word. Using that social piece is one that a lot of people shy away from because they're really embarrassed of their own voice. They're embarrassed of their own online brand but it makes the most difference in the engagement that you'll get.

Also, I think using the homepage is going to get you the most profile views. It's going to get you the most opportunities, it's really going to do the most for you as far as a return on your time investment.

Shelley: I love that. I want to go back to the profile really quickly. Let's assume you're out of work for a minute. Should you say that you're looking for something in particular and what it is you're looking for?

Lorie: You can. There's really two schools of thought on that. Well, to be honest with you, both schools of thought come down to marketing. How you want to market yourself because when you're in job search, you are in a very real sense marketing yourself as the product. You're trying to get somebody to see your business value and to invest in you as an employee. I think it's really hard some people will say, "Oh, if you don't put in your headline that I'm looking for a job," that you're cutting yourself short because that's your biggest piece of marketing and your highest value real estate is right there. The headline is the piece underneath your name at the very very top, but the thing is, is it conveys two things when you put it in your headline.

One is, yes, I'm looking but two, it takes away from the space that you could use to describe really what makes you valuable and why they should hire you. They're not going to hire you because you're looking. They're going to hire you because of what you bring to the table. I think it's fine to use that kind of language. I just always encourage people to focus first on your business value and allow that to be supplemental to that and then not listen to what other people tell you to do, but make a choice of what you feel is right for your own message that you're giving.

Shelley: How do employers, people that are hiring, how do they use LinkedIn?

Lorie: There are so many different ways that an employer will use the tool and that they'll hire. It's really hard to pinpoint one exact way. There's not one magic bullet to job search but the two things that do transfer across all different methods and all different strategies and why the two things and I really emphasize the most are number one, definitely understanding what the keywords are that your potential employer will be searching. For instance, if the trend right now in HR is to call it talent management, and that's really more where your skills lie, and you're not using talent management in the search for individuals that are skilled in talent management, you won't even show up in their search results. It doesn't even matter really, if they're looking for someone if you're not seeking, they're not going to even find you. The first thing I think that's really, really important is to definitely, be aware of the words you're picking, and where you're placing them. The second thing is always showing your business value, what you make, or what you save for the company.

Regardless of what their philosophy is on hiring, that's always going to be at the end of the day what makes a candidate shine, is when they understand that, not only for themselves but they understand that for the business. Then when I hire you, I know right away when you start, you understand what's important, and you can prioritize your own time.

Shelley: Okay, that's good. If you don't know what the terminology is, its current and trending, go look at job descriptions. If you go on any of the job boards, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, any of those, and look for jobs you think you would qualify for, or that you'd be interested in, and look for the words they're using. Then that's how you can back it into your LinkedIn or your resume to be current. Let's say I've updated my profile, I've gotten to All-star. I've looked at getting the words correctly, now, what do I do?

Lorie: I often equate LinkedIn to being like a big dark networking party, where everybody there has agreed to talk with people at this party, in order to enhance their own careers. The problem becomes when you enter this party, nobody can see you, it's all dark. As you connect with people, it actually works in an exponential way that is like a flashlight. As you connect with people, you illuminate pockets within the algorithm and you become more visible as well. The next thing is really to begin connecting, and not just with my mailman, my mom, my daughter, my grandpa, any person, my ex-employer, my old coworkers, things like that.

To begin connecting with people in your industry, or in your niche, in your future, and just go and find them. Then just ask them if they'll connect with you based off of the fact that you share common skills, common passion, common career paths, different things like that. As you do that, you'll begin to see different options for yourself. You'll begin to understand better how to describe yourself, and you'll perfect your message in doing that, but you'll also increase exponentially your visibility to that population. That's going to really enhance your opportunity to have discussions, to find people, and to connect with them as well.

Shelley: LinkedIn gives you the choice to just send an invitation without any words, what are your thoughts on that?

Lorie: I always recommend that you add a note. A couple of things for beginners to note here, is that if you go to a profile, and that person is not a first connection, and they're not a second connection, meaning that I know Shelley, and Shelley knows me, so we're first. Then, if Shelley knows one of the listeners, but they don't know me yet, if you come to my profile, I'll be a second. Then let's say someone's listening, and they were recommended to you from somebody else. They don't know you, but they know this other person, and they don't know me, that becomes a third. If you come to my profile, it won't have a connect button.

There's always a more button in that place, and if you click the more, the connect button will be hiding. That's really important, a lot of people think I can't connect with everyone. You can, it's just this more button is like the Mary Poppins' bag where everything's hiding inside of it. When you're on the mobile, sometimes that connect button doesn't allow you to attach a note. It's always easier on the desktop. I do recommend that you use it as a hub if you have to to get to that note. The note is very, very important because once you send that note, it will remain in your history, and also if that person accepts, it will go into your messaging thread.

Anytime you want to go back and see where your very first met, you can do that.

Shelley: Check me on this. I think that if you're going to ask for something like I did when I reached out to you. If you're going to ask for something, I would rather you just say it right from the get-go. Other times when people will connect with me first, and I think, "Oh, okay, we've made a connection," and then five minutes later, I get a pitch. I prefer you tell me upfront what your interests are, so I can really decide.

Lorie: I completely agree. The formula that I recommend is that you tell them who you are, and you say it in terms that they will understand. Each person has a whole grab bag of skills, and you don't tell them all of them, but you tell them whatever it is that you're trying to connect with them over. You start that and you customize your who, then you tell them why you're connecting. The why, is mostly for you because as I remember, it stays in your history. For instance, when you reached out to me, you could say, "Hi Lorie, I'm also in this career transition space, and I'm reaching out with you because I see that you specialize in LinkedIn."

Then when I finally accept, you don't have to go back to my profile to re-jog your memory as to what it is, or next steps should be. It's there in the thread, you can just jump right into it. The why, is for you, but then the final thing is you want to say, and this can be one sentence long, in one sentence, what it is that you want. That's going back exactly to what you're saying, a really good relationship will be founded on clear boundaries, which is letting that person know what it is that you want. Sometimes you do need to dampen that what. You don't want to jump in and say, "I want a 15-minute interview from you right now. 

It'd be overwhelming to somebody, but you might say, "I want to network with you so that I can learn more about your career." Then follow up with a message that says, "Would you mind connecting for 15 minutes to talk about it?"

Shelley: What am I asking for if it's really purely because I'm looking for work?

Lorie: If you come to me and you say, "I'm looking for a job, can you help me?" I'm going to see that and then say, "Oh, I'm so sorry for you, or I'll see if something comes up, right?"

Shelley: Yes, it's needy.

Lorie: If you come to me, and you say, "I'd like to meet with you for 15 minutes because I have just a couple of questions I want to ask you." You look at my network and you see a couple of people that could be good leads for you. Then when we meet, you can ask me about it, and I'll be more in a position to connect you or be excited to help you. I always recommend that you can say that if that's what you're looking for, not masking it too much. Always having more of a clear goal that, that person can also step up to the plate, and respond to is more effective.

Shelley: Let's talk about gaps on your resume. LinkedIn is still very chronologically ordered, like a chronological resume versus a functional resume. If I have a gap on my resume, whether it's six months or six years, what is your advice on that?

Lorie: People really get hung up on the fact that I can only put in a work experience if it's tied to an actual position and actual company. That's really so far from the truth on LinkedIn, because you have to remember you're telling a story. Even though you can't arrange the story pieces of how you want to, you can insert whatever you want into that narrative. You can if you have a big gap, you can insert a placeholder, and give it keywords that are relevant to where you're going, and a description relevant to where you're going. It might not be the exact place you're going, but they can be skills related to your future.

For instance, like a stay at home mom, I wouldn't candy coat it too much, but you could if you were volunteering, and you were doing bookkeeping. You want to be a bookkeeper, then you can use that language in that gap. The purpose behind it should always be, "I want to use this placeholder to help this person understand what they can't see, and not I want to use this placeholder to cover up something that I don't want them to see."

Shelley: Oh, that's good. Let me repeat that, you say, "Add a placeholder to your LinkedIn profile to help a potential employer see who you really are, and what you have to offer, versus simply covering up something you don't want them to notice."

Lorie: Yes.

Shelley: I love that. Your recommendation on what you might say in that gap.

Lorie: You want to, again, speak to who it is that's searching you, and so you want to use terms that would resonate with them, that identify with it. When you're building a narrative like that or a story, if you want it to be impactful, I always recommend that you test it with people.

Shelley: That's a good idea.

Lorie: You write it and then you ask a few people to just look at it and give you some feedback. You have to be careful because what they tell you, you have to take with a grain of salt because you're writing your own narrative. At the same point, it can help you to think through some things that you might have missed.

Shelley: Once that's all ready, we talked about tailoring your resume to a job that, but do you tailor your LinkedIn profile to a specific job?

Lorie: I would focus more on getting your application in, and then going and finding the people through LinkedIn, who work at the company, who work in a group, and introduce yourself.

Shelley: I think that's the nugget, right there. I find a job, I find people that work at the company, and I'm going to use the who, why, and what, you described earlier to reach out to potential people. In this case, can you just give me one little example.

Lorie: Because of COVID so many people are seeking and you can really lean on that, so you can say, "I'm currently looking for my next opportunity. In my search I came across your company, it looks really great. I'm interested in what you're doing and I see that you have some openings for people who have skills like I have." Then I'd say something like, "How do you like working for this company or I'd like to just introduce myself to people who work at this company so that way I can learn more about the position," some things like that.

Shelley: Lorie, it seems so easy to do, why do you think more people don't network via Linkedin like this?

Lorie: I think a lot of people are just afraid, they're afraid of what the worst-case scenario would be and honestly the worst-case scenario, is they don't get on Linkedin and they don't see your message or they are annoyed that you reach out and that's really the worst-case scenario. To avoid that you don't spam the whole team at the company, you pick a few select people and you use your network, you try to see which ones are closely connected to you and choose those ones first.

Shelley: That's a plug for building your network ahead of when you actually need to use it, so if I want to find people who work for companies, where would I start?

Lorie: It's really helpful as if you go to the actual company page on Linkedin and on the left-hand side there's a link called People. When you click there it gives you bar graphs like line graphs and it will show you percentages of how many people work in different departments, came from different schools. If you scroll all the way to the right you can actually see within the company or whichever part of the company you look at how many seconds and thirds you have in relation to the whole company as a whole.

Shelley: With so many people out of work right now, I say this not to scare anybody but to say you need to dig in and do a little bit more than just shoot your resume into job boards and Linkedin and do nothing else to do your own follow-up. I think that's critical right now.

Lorie: The cold reality is if you are just using job boards you are wasting your time. I hate to say it so bluntly because I'm not a blunt person like that. Having worked with job seekers and highly qualified job seekers who apply for hundreds of job postings and don't get a single call back or a single interview, it does not work that way anymore, and now in a market where there are so many job seekers like you're saying your competition goes way up. Just using job boards is not going to work, you really have to network.

Shelley: This very much reminds me of that quote, "Pray like everything depends on God and work like everything depends on you." You're going to have to do the work to be noticed anytime but especially now. This is a perfect segue, Lorie, I'd like to know a little bit more about your background, can you tell me about a leap of faith you had to take in your career journey?

Lorie: When I first started out, I prayed and prayed and prayed about what I should do and it was really hard for me to pick a path. I landed on the that I should go to occupational therapy school, so I catered my whole undergrad to get into OT school. Long story short, I prepared for years and years of calling the campuses I wanted to go to, touring them, catering every class that I took so that I could get into an OT program. There was a gap that I had between my graduation and when I actually was going to start but I had everything planned out.

I was prepared for it, I talked to the career counselors, everything. I applied, I got accepted to schools I wanted to go to which were like the top three in OT. I turned down two of them. I narrowed it down to one school and then the month before this program started I was told that one of my anthropology credits was not going to count because I had taken something wrong with it.

Which is so random because anthropology has nothing to do with health of any kind, I mean it is the study of people but very different. I furiously tried in the last month to sign up for an online course to retake some other anthropology class that would count. Couldn't do it and couldn't start my program. At that point, you have to wait another year because they only take them in the fall and I had already taken a gap so by the time I applied again some of my test scores would be out of date and all. It was a real big nightmare. At the time the person I was dating-- well I was devastated.

It was really heartbreaking but he was going to get his MBA, he recommended, "Why don't you go to the same school and get this instructional technology degree." It's incredible my whole life I said I wanted to be a teacher from when I was in third grade. I put it on all my boards everywhere and when I got to school I didn't want to do it in school. My sister did secondary ed, I didn't want to do it. Here I was going back for a graduate degree with a bunch of teachers because it's a degree that a lot of teachers take to become a principal, it's a postgraduate degree. I took it and I loved it, I loved all the people I work with and I came out and I began teaching and I love it.

I feel like what I do is a path that I would never have chosen for myself. Obviously, I would have been helping people in the other path as well, but I teach classes every week in the public setting to individuals and I see the difference that this makes in their lives. Job seeking is hard, it's really hard and it is something that is so easy to get lost in because there are so many voices out there telling you, "Do this, go there."

There are so much uncertainty and those two things, uncertainty and competing voices really are two of the worst things that you can have when you're already feeling down. I felt really blessed to be in this space because I've been able to have these really deep conversations with people. I don't talk a lot of my faith in what I do, I don't bring it up. I try to meet my clients from where they are because I feel like that's the only way to really help is to come to you. I do believe very strongly that my faith makes my coaching better.

It makes me better, it makes me stronger. The way that I can say that is because I've had clients before where I've felt so in over my head, I don't know what to fo, I don't know what to say. Before I go in to meet with them I'll visually see like a map of what I need to talk with them about when I go into that next appointment. I definitely believe that there is a lot of faith behind what you do.

Does it mean that you're going to land right away, does it mean that you're going to get anthropology credit handed to you so that you can live your dream? The answer is no, it's going to take you in really difficult places where you're going to struggle, but it does tell you that there is a plan and it keeps you on that plan.

Shelley: I love that and I know from experience how vulnerable you feel when you're looking for work and the toll that it takes on the person, their self-confidence and their families, they're all going through it together, so I think the work that you're doing is really important.

Lorie: Two things there, number one I think it's really important to track what you do, for two reasons. Number one, you don't see the progress that you're making and it's really easy to get discouraged if you don't track what you do. If you track what you do you learn a lot more from the process and you see a lot more of your progress. Also when you track things, it prepares you to improve, so you're not putting so much just in God's hands, you're preparing yourself.

The other thing I wanted to say is that I focus a lot in my coaching that job search is not just a way of marketing yourself, it is a way of improving your life, and then all the things that I teach in my classes everywhere, I try to make them long-term. Help you understand, this is a way of life that you're changing for yourself. I had one participant, she wasn't a client but she came to a lot of my public workshops. We had a long conversation where, again, not the same faiths, totally different. She was a finance professional mid-level to senior-level management and she said that she started job seeking and she didn't think it'd be that hard to find another job but we were talking after a year of her job seeking.

A year and a half and also at the end of her financial rope actually going and now she's working at Amazon in the warehouse with like back-breaking work just because she has to pay her bills. It was really inspiring the things she told me because she said, "In this journey, I have learned so much about myself and I am way happier now and I feel more qualified to sell myself than I did at the beginning. Because I have learned so much about these bad qualities that I had and these insecurities and this emotional baggage that I just kept pushing aside and never wanted to deal with it. I just wanted to keep moving."

She said during this trial, she was able to gain these skills that she said were more valuable than anything else she'd ever learned in all of her schooling. Sometimes that is the hardest answer to get but there is always an answer that comes if you just keep persevering.

Shelley: Such a hard lesson but so valuable and something she would have missed if she got a job right away. Lorie I'm going to ask you my last question now, which is how have you seen the hand of God in your career?

Lorie: When I am focused on my faith, the clarity that comes to me. Not always the clarity about what is going to unfold for me, in fact, oftentimes not that clarity. I own my own business and so it's very hard because it's constantly trying to figure out how to manage my time. I have three young kids, it's very overwhelming, but I've seen the hand of God or of the Lord in my life just in those little things. In particular, confirmations that I'm in the right place. I think those confirmations are what keep me going even when it's really, really hard.

I think that's what I seek for the most is just that approval of you're doing it okay even though it's different than everybody else or even though it's hard, I'm going to keep helping you through and you just have to keep going one step at a time.

Shelley: Lorie, thank you so much for giving us of your time and your expertise on this show. I really appreciate it.

Lorie: Yes, definitely. Thank you again for having me. This has been really fun.

Shelley: If you want to talk to Lorie directly and get coached on LinkedIn you can find her at Loriecamacho.com. That's L-O-R-I-E-C-A-M-A-C-H-O.com or she said you can reach out to her on LinkedIn as well. Now, here are my takeaways. I noticed that at least three times Lorie says you'll ultimately have to decide a few things for yourself. One, whether or not to write open to hire on your profile. Two, whether or not to tell someone you're looking for work immediately and three, she said how to write the narrative of your career for the future you on LinkedIn. Why no answers? Well, in part because this isn't an exact science. We're people. People read things differently, interpret words through their own lens and maybe simply misread or not even read what you've written. To me, that's where the faith part comes in.

I've gotten jobs based on things I've said in interviews, I've also lost jobs for the same reason. I've been noticed when I probably shouldn't have and I've been passed over when I had every qualification needed. Why? Well, my explanation is that the Lord has a plan for me which involves my career. As Jeffrey Thompson said in Episode 6 on Finding Your Calling, we spend far too much time at work to not utilize that aspect of our lives in some divinely appointed way.

You bet I pray when writing my resume and my LinkedIn profile and if I'm helping someone else I do the same for them. I do it both because I want the Lord's direction in the process and also because I need peace of mind that I'm doing what I need to do. I don't want to worry or stress about every little move because that doesn't work anyway. Now, if you're a stay-at-home mom who wants more help with the gap on your resume check out the guide on my website for a 10-part course to walk you through the process.

I promise you'll feel better about what you have to offer the world and if you found yourself trying to jot down a bunch of notes to get your LinkedIn profile up to snuff, well, go to the website as well at faithfulcareermoves.com where you'll find this episode, the show notes, and the transcript so you can search through it for the tips you need.

I know after talking to Lorie that I've got some LinkedIn updating to do as well. Thank you for joining me on the Faithful Career Moves podcast. It's my hope that listening to this episode will inspire you to think more broadly about how your career and your spiritual journey intersect. If you like that idea and want others to have a similar epiphany, then please share this podcast on social media, leave a review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts or leave a comment on the website. 

Doing so will help others find this content as well.