1829 - Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Global Business Success with Daniel Alfon
this is an all ears english podcast episode 1829 optimize your linkedin profile for global business success with daniel alphon welcome to the all ears english podcast downloaded more than 200 million times we believe in connection not perfection with your american host lindsay mcmahon and today's featured guest coming to you from denver colorado usa to get real-time transcripts right on your phone and create your personalized vocabulary list try the all ears english app for ios and android start your seven day free trial at allyearsenglish.com forward slash app are you looking to get ahead in international business it all starts with your linkedin profile today we have executive coach daniel alphon on the show to give you three actions that you can take right now to create a winning profile in english welcome to all ears english daniel i'm excited to have you on the show today thank you very much lindsay it's great to be here good this is great to have you guys today i have a very exciting guest for you i have a linkedin author expert and consultant daniel alphon he has helped thousands of professionals and high level executives to improve their linkedin profile so that they have had more career and networking success so daniel i think our listeners are going to be really excited that we have a linkedin expert today because linkedin is kind of like the universal resume isn't it yes ma'am it is the universal resume and for anyone who wants to succeed in in the states in english-speaking countries it's one of the best ways to do it oh my gosh yeah this is going to be fantastic because a lot of our listeners you know you guys are global professionals and you're always looking to improve your career linkedin is a key way to do it so why is linkedin so much more important today in 2022 than it was in 2010 for example daniel sure so what i would do what would say is uh linkedin is uh over 800 million users and since we started this conversation hundreds of new linkedin members signed up wow every second lindsay two people sign up every second two people sign up so in other words everyone is just there and you have to be there right yes anyone important is in business is there yes i love it i love it well i'm on there and that leads me into my next question i thought it would be really fun uh if you could take a look at my linkedin profile daniel and for our listeners point out something some mistake that i'm making this is a little you know putting me on the spot just a little bit here and i think this would be fun what do you what do you see in my profile sure so i'll start by um praising very good elements you've added to your profile but if you maybe i'll try to add some some critique in ways you can even improve your profile okay so the first element i would point out is that you feature lindsey on your profile a number of very good links yes and that means that if our audience here can think of links images websites interviews projects videos that they would like anyone in business to discover then adding them to their featured section is something they can do within 30 seconds yeah and the greatest benefits is that when i see those elements i'm likely to spend more time on your profile and maybe decide i want to reach out to you i love it i love it so yeah so guys we're talking about the featured section of your profile i've put in some of the places where i've been featured right so podcast magazine we've written an article for language magazine we were in forbes so if you have those appearances absolutely 100 percent put that in your featured section right daniel yes ma'am exactly good okay what else do you see any mistakes that i'm making because in a little bit in a few minutes we're going to get to some recommendations for our audience guys on how you can make your profile succeed for for business in the english speaking world right but do you see anything i'm doing wrong that i should fix right away that maybe our listeners are doing wrong too uh wrong is is a bit harsh but you can always you can check your contact info and make sure that it's aligned with what you'd like because in some cases you've simply added that information you know years ago and in some cases it's simply not aligned with the image you'd like to convey professionally in 2022 and beyond so have a look at that that should take you less than a minute yes and if a link is dead or less than stellar then simply remove it and update it with a new one you know it's funny i think sometimes when we get into higher levels of business we can we can spend too much time in the high level stuff and forget the basics and i bet i better listeners know what they mean for example what we mean for example if you in your contact information you might have your old work email address right maybe you made the mistake of adding your work email do you recommend that daniel actually that's a good question do you recommend in the contact info section of our linkedin profile should we have our current work email or should it be a personal email okay so the first thing to remember links is that only your connection by default all your connections see your email on your contact info okay so it's so it's not that important unless you have a very large network and then it's up to you if you want if you're 100 the professional face of your company then my suggestion would be to use the audience english email because because that would be aligned with your uh the your professional image if you like okay but for our listeners you know if you guys are changing jobs and if you happen to have your other email which you no longer have if you've moved to a new company be careful of that right so go in make sure things are updated and up to date right so perfect so daniel i would love to get some recommendations because i know you've worked with a lot of professionals to really up their game to improve their profile to make sure we stand out in english because we're writing this profile most of the time in english if we're trying to do business globally is that right absolutely and okay if you're happy with if you're based outside of the u.s and your market is only your local market then you can live with that but if you're interested in being successful globally in the us north america the uk australia then you have the you need to have a profile in english okay so let's get started so what would be your first tip then for our listeners on how they could make their profile really stand out in english what can they do today to make a change cool so i would ask them to answer the following question if you could pick one sort of reader for your linkedin profile and say who would that person be what sort of person a word so or avatar are you interested who's your ideal reader on linkedin okay okay so if our listeners are working for a company it might be and they're looking to change their job or just get to know people in their industry it might be other company managers is that right something along those lines absolutely your neck if you're an employee then the hiring manager you'd like to report to next is your ideal reader okay so the first step then is to identify that reader exactly who it is and what goes into actually identifying this person is it kind of like creating a customer persona it could but very quickly if i'm a chief marketing officer and and i want to start working for an american company then i would try to have to understand what sort of ceo am i likely to report is this indeed colorado uh metro area is it in san francisco is it boise idaho what sort of industry what sort of vertical what's what its size uh is uh the company uh the person uh heads and then the second thing to do is to look at your profile and ask yourself what action would you like that ideal reader to perform after they visit your profile um i love it so in a way this kind of reminds me of vision boarding because we talk on the show a little bit about vision boarding about you know creating in our minds the life we want and in this case it's the job we want or the manager we want we're thinking about what's the industry or do we want to work in silicon valley right in california in that case what size company do we want to work for facebook or do we want to work for an up-and-coming startup like a series a round startup so we're going into that level of detail daniel when we do this yeah that because that will help you come up for example with a list of keywords that the hiring manager or human resources manager is likely to put when they're looking for someone with your skill set oh i love it okay so we want to come up with who we want to be attracted to this profile think about the action we want them to take when we see and what would be an example of an action that they might take do we mean reach out to us or or what yes reaching out to us is usually the best answer there are many ways for you to if you're an employee then simply realizing that it's complicated for other users to message you on linkedin they and they need actually to pay and most people will not do that so one way to enable anyone to uh reach out to you would be to uh go to your privacy settings and make sure that your email is visible to non-connections okay i'm gonna do that right now good right everyone get off the call good one non-connections that's great and so we're looking for that potential future manager to go ahead and send us a message is that right yes because conversion is likely to happen to happen outside of linkedin so we focused on on on employees and the uh ideal reader is the next hiring manager if you are a freelancer or if you are a business owner then the ideal reader would be your next client okay same the same logic applies sure our podcast today is sponsored by grammarly we recommend grammarly because this tool can immediately fix your english writing to make it 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you'll get twenty percent off on premium for being a listener of all airs english that's twenty percent off at g r a m m a r l y dot com slash a e e and let me ask you where would there be a place for uh envisioning that ideal reader as a recruiter at what point like if i if i live in europe and i know i want to work in california for a tech startup you know by 2024 that's my goal uh you know what percentage at what point should i be looking for that recruiter to reach out rather than the the manager now is there a time frame as i get closer to my date or how do you look at recruiters um i think that i would try to focus on the hiring manager and not on the gatekeeper or the middleman no offense because the best thing that recruiters can do for you is simply pass on your cv or your application to the hiring manager okay and most in most cases they won't ah okay okay so we want to kind of bypass the recruiter and it's better to be able to be of course it's better to be in direct contact with the hi the internal hiring manager right the person who works for that company itself absolutely the internal hiring manager in silicon valley and one of the simplest hacks we can perform is visiting publicly the hiring manager's profile on linkedin and if they're heavy users they will look back at your own profile and from there you can start a conversation and land an interview now at that point would you recommend that we work inside the mutual i guess we're not connected at that point so we can't really work inside mutual connections because i spend a lot of time sometimes you know understanding who my connections connections are and sometimes i'll ask for an intro right if i know someone is connected to someone else i'll actually explicitly say could you introduce me but in this case we can't do that right in some cases when you look that you're hiring me let's go get back to the example you've given there there could be two potential hiring managers in uh in sandhill roads in in uh in silicon valley and one of them is someone you would share a mutual connection with and someone will be farther away from your network so the option only uh takes place for the first manager if you have a mutual connection then what you suggested is the best way to be introduced to the next hiring manager because if the person you ask does feel comfortable making the introduction that means that you will get a meaningful conversation you're likely to have a meaningful conversation with the hiring manager and that's something that if you only apply in 99 of the cases that won't happen yes right so that would really let you stand out so relationships definitely matter right even though we're talking about you know their structure of your profile the relationships matter so lean on those is that what i'm hearing here yes if you connect with people you know well then you're able to leverage your network and to gain a meaningful introduction to the hiring manager or the client you'd like to work for and that's the best way to to grow in in the us and elsewhere okay i love it so let me just recap what we've said and then i want to ask you a little bit about keywords to finish up here to make sure we we cover that point so number one we want to envision we kind of vision board or envision who our ideal reader or the person we want to see our profile is what company do they work for how big is it where is it we're getting very specific here guys and then we're talking about what kind of action do we want that reader to take and then you mentioned something about keywords can we talk about this real quick sure so if you if you're a job seeker then what i would recommend is visiting the job section on linkedin and find two three ideal positions you uh you find okay so you would look for startups or companies in southern california and you would extract 20 to 25 keywords from each job detailed job description and that would mean you would have a bank of at least 50 keywords that is step number one okay okay yep that's step one perfect and now what do we do with these keywords cool now you head back to your own profile and you check which of those terms are present somewhere in your profile and my guess is you would find many terms but probably not all of them all right so you shorten the list and now out of the short list maybe you had five or ten turns that are not there you prioritize them and you say okay what's the top uh term i must add to my profile today oh i love it i love it so we're to work in we're and we're going to try to work these keywords in and of course we have to write for the reader right daniel as well as the algorithm yes we you nailed it and and we need to focus on both because if i only focus on the link linkedin algorithm i'm missing out when someone visits your profile and if they think they feel it's not genuine then they're taking it back and they're moving elsewhere so you need to to write for the human reader and consider the algorithms say i wanted to include the term california and software and startups somewhere in my profile so one thing you could do creatively is to compose a sentence that would sound natural and include all three terms like when working with a california startup pure software california startup what i enjoyed most was a b and c right you could almost imagine us sitting in a in a meetup and that's a sentence i would be able to say but it does include the important terms you what you said is very important you have to write for the reader as well as the algorithm i love it what strikes me about your advice here is that it's very it's very practical it's very technical right at the same time it's very human and that's what linkedin is it's a search engine right it is a search engine with an algorithm but it's also it's humans there there are actual people behind these profiles and we have to make sure that we keep that in mind that is so good any final advice on working with keywords on our profile daniel um if you have like two more minutes what i would advise you to do is to run yourself a search with say seven or term or a term so you would go to linkedin you would enter a series of terms okay and when then you look someone up and what you're looking for lindsay at this stage is terms you haven't thought of um okay so you read that person's profile and sometimes you will you'll stare at a sentence and you say wow that's such important so important why haven't i thought of this so you thank the gentleman or the lady you go head back to your profile and you find a way to naturally weave that term somewhere on your profile yes and do you recommend that once we've done this keyword you know weaving in that we have a friend or a family member just maybe read through to make sure we still sound human right there because there is a danger when we're working with keywords um that we could start to sound like a computer right absolutely asking someone else to review your profile is a great way to to spot some mistakes and and even in some cases because we've written that we no longer see the mistakes so we don't we no longer see it's it's something that doesn't represent us very well and within five minutes anyone who would look you up would say you know what when i see this that strikes me as odd because it's not idiomatic and you would say different and you look and you say you're right thank you very much let me get back to drawing board and improve that i love it i love it this is so good so guys i mean be intentional with your profile now if you're looking to work in the english-speaking global business world we need to take those extra steps to make sure we're thinking about that reader right what action do they take and what are the key words that that we need to make sure we come up in the search so good daniel can you let us know we have to wrap up our interview for today but can you let our listeners know where they can find you online and what you're working on the pleasure the best uh place to go is daniel alfond.com and that would show them all sorts of content and i think the last piece of advice you've uh suggested is the one i would like to leave our audience with review your own profile because having uh mastering english is what can make or break your career and it's worth certainly the time and often the money to invest in order for you to get to the maximum potential you have yes i love it you're right we have to we should over invest in that time right to make sure the english is correct guys this is you get one shot right impressing people when they hit your linkedin profile so let's make sure that it's correct right i love that idea well daniel can you spell out your website again just so that people know where exactly to go if they want to check out your what you're doing one more time sure that would be daniel d-a-n-i-e-l and then alpha a-l-f-o-n danny alfond.com dot com all right good guys go and check out daniel's website and have a look at what he does over with linkedin thanks so much for coming on the show today daniel it's been a pleasure and such an important topic for our listeners my pleasure is lindsay it's been a pleasure to be part of the all year's english thank you all right take care bye-bye thanks thanks for listening to all ears english would you like to know your english level take our two-minute quiz go to allersenglish.com forward slash fluency score and if you believe in connection not perfection then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything see you next time you
2022-08-20 13:58
