Building and curating your online profile and personal brand when job hunting with Alice Fewings – Episode 6

Are you looking for work in the procurement or supply-chain industry? In the midst of the coronavirus crisis the future is uncertain and job markets unstable. Martin Smith, founder of Talent Drive created this latest episode of the Talent Talks podcast to provide support and guidance to those wanting to stay ahead of the employment market.

Martin welcomes Alice Fewings, LinkedIn Trainer and Social Media Strategist to provide advice and guidance on building an online profile to improve your personal brand to appeal to recruiters and potential employers. Alice runs through the importance and value of Linked In, how to attract and engage your target audience, how to pull people through to your personal profile and how to get discovered on the platform. 

This is the first online webinar recording from the #ProjectProcurement programme which has been converted into a podcast. #ProjectProcurement has been created by procurement professionals, Martin Smith, Richard Struthers and Ricky Wallis, to provide support for those looking to get back into work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us at our next webinar by registering on our eventbrite page; https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/talent-drive-30144105948

This episode of Talent Talks covers:

• Why LinkedIn is a really valuable tool for us to use right now
• How to create a professional profile image and banner image
• Four different ways to create an engaging headline
• Ways to ensure you’re contactable for employers or recruiters
• Keeping your profile up to date and descriptive of your skills

Links & References

• Talent Drive: https://talentdrive.co.uk/
• Martin Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
• Alice Fewings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-fewings/
• Red Door Communications: https://www.reddoorcomms.co.uk/
• Join us at our next webinar by registering on our eventbrite page; https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/talent-drive-30144105948
• Get in touch: info@talentdrive.co.uk

Read the full episode transcript

Martin Smith  0:04  

So, good afternoon and welcome to the sixth episode of the Talent Talks podcast series. Now a lot has changed in the world since episode five, obviously the Coronavirus pandemic has meant we are doing it slightly different today – we’re using the power of technology, and I’m actually excited to say it’s our first ever webinar, in which we’re having a variety of procurement professionals as well as our guest speaker today. So I’m delighted to say I’m joined by Alice Fewings. Hi, Alice…

Alice Fewings  0:37  

Hi, Martin. 

Martin Smith  0:39  

Now Alice is a fantastic individual that I met a few months ago at a business event. Alice is an experienced and qualified LinkedIn Trainer and Social Media Strategist…have I got that described okay?

Alice Fewings  0:52  

That sounds great. 

Martin Smith  0:53  

Yeah, that sounds good?! 

Alice Fewings  0:54  

That sounds really good ha!

Martin Smith  0:56  

So Alice is going to be talking to our procurement community both obviously via this podcast and on the webinar, which I appreciate those that listening to this podcast can’t see today. But she’s going to be talking through and basically giving tips and advice for all of the procurement and supply chain community on essentially how to raise their LinkedIn presence and to get more exposure into the market and more access to a wider network. So I’m looking forward to having you on. I guess it’d be good just to get a bit of background on you to start with and then a bit about how the last couple of months in the pandemic has impacted you in your business and maybe some advice on how you’ve managed to flex things?

Alice Fewings  1:39  

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, my name is Alice Fewings. My business is called Red Door Communications. And I started my business in 2018, after about 10 years of working in the media and communications industry. I’ve worked on everything from the London 2012 Olympic Games, to working for an emergency service and then of course, through the business working with lots of different size of businesses. So I’ve really got that good experience of working with lots of different professional people, and looking at how they can really raise their profile on LinkedIn and using, obviously social media as well. So I think since COVID-19, has happened, and we’re all in lockdown, I’ve seen a lot of people go through that change curve, but then really seeing this as an opportunity to maybe flex their businesses slightly differently. But people really taking to social media to make sure that they’re still known, seen and heard. And I think that’s really important at this moment in time when we can’t see people face to face, that we are still being present. And we’re still reminding people that we’re here and we’re still showing our learning as we go along. So from my perspective, it has been really positive. Obviously, there is a lot of worry, anxiety, fear, financial fear as well, so I think everyone is feeling affected in some way, shape or form. But certainly with social media, I think this is a really good opportunity to level up.

Martin Smith  3:09  

Well, absolutely. I’ve read some statistics from various different people, I think they said numbers fluctuate slightly, but around 85% increase in social media and online presence for people at the moment, because clearly I guess, for all of us, you’re getting more of a captive audience and people are able to invest more in these wonderful webinars and various different events and forums that we put on.

Alice Fewings  3:30  

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Martin Smith  3:33  

Welcome everybody to the first ever project procurement webinar. Some of you know me, some of you don’t, so just in terms of introduction for myself, I’m Martin Smith, Director and Founder of Talent Drive. We are a specialist procurement and supply chain recruitment business based down here in sunny Poole, not so sunny Poole today, and I’ve been specialising in procurement supply chain, both in agency and an in house for over 11 years now. So I guess just to set the scene before I introduce Alice to everybody and kind of the premise of today’s webinar, I just want to talk a little bit more about actually what project procurement is. So I think a fair few of you will know Richard Struthers or Ricky Wallis or myself who may have introduced you today. So I was talking to Richard Struthers, who I’ve known for probably about eight years now I think, through various different companies that he’s worked for. And essentially with the COVID-19 pandemic, which is clearly impacting the employment world and clearly the procurement profession which I recruit in, we wanted to look at ways that we could support people and help people trying to get back into work. So really the target group for project procurement is great people like yourselves that are experienced procurement and supply chain professionals that have been impacted by COVID-19. So we want to try and help you guys essentially. So project procurement is really to raise the awareness and raise the participation and almost essentially create a little bit of a community. So we got talking to Ricky Wallis, for those don’t know Ricky, he is a highly experienced procurement professional like Richard. Richard Struthers comes from more of a kind of a Corporate Services, indirects background, Ricky more from the IT and tech field. So the three of us together have collaborated to create this project procurement initiative. But without further ado, so today, we’re delighted to be joined by Alice Fewings. Alice and I met a few months ago at a business event locally here in Dorset and Hampshire. And Alice is essentially an experienced LinkedIn trainer and Social Media Strategist. She runs her own business, Red Door communications. And she’s going to talk to all of you today, essentially, about how to raise your LinkedIn profile and your social media status. So over to Alice.

Alice Fewings  5:56  

Brilliant. Well, thank you very much, Martin, and lovely to meet you all virtually. Really nice to see you all here. So I’m just gonna share my screen so that you can hopefully all see a nice presentation as we go through this morning. So, at the moment, we are in a very challenging time, as I’m sure you’re experiencing in some shape or form. And LinkedIn is a really good opportunity for us to help ourselves to get discovered, just to keep those professional relationships going. So that we could hopefully have something fruitful and doors open at the moment, or certainly in the future. So it’s a really good opportunity to make the most of LinkedIn at the moment. So I thought I’d use this morning and this opportunity to give you a few practical top tips on how you can raise your profile and get noticed on LinkedIn. So as Martin introduced, my name is Alice Fewings and my business is Red Door Communications. I launched it in 2018 and I’ve been working with business professionals to help them really use social media and particularly LinkedIn, to help them to increase their brand awareness, help them to get discovered and to nurture really good professional relationships. So I have been in media and communications for about 10 years, I’ve worked on the Olympic Games in London in 2012, and at an emergency service before I launched my own business. So I’ve used a lot of different tactics and tools around LinkedIn and social media. So I thought this morning, we would cover why LinkedIn is a really valuable tool for us to use right now. Then how we can attract, engage and call to action, our target audience, whether that might be other suppliers, whether that might be new employers, we can look at how we can attract these people through our personal profiles on LinkedIn. And of course, how then to get discovered. 

Alice Fewings  7:53  

So then why LinkedIn? Why does LinkedIn matter? I think first and foremost LinkedIn is no longer a place, that’s just to put your CV online. Your personal profile is really a window into your personal and professional story. So it’s a resource, it’s a portfolio, it’s not really a CV anymore. And if there was one word that really summed up what LinkedIn was about, it would be connection. So they have radically changed the platform over the last, you know, 15 years or so, to really help people to build professional connections with people. And when Microsoft took over the platform in 2016, they really understood that “people buy from people” in whatever shape or form that is. And they understood that they needed to introduce ways onto the platform where people could show their character, show their personality, not just through posting content, but also in the way that they might interact with each other. Which is why you might start to see some of the same features that you see on other social media platforms like Facebook. So for example, you can now do emojis when you’re commenting and engaging on other people’s content. But the platform really has grown. So it’s one of the oldest social media platforms still alive. It launched in 2003, and it now has 675 million active users around the world. So whoever it is that you’re trying to appeal to, and get noticed by, they are very likely to be on LinkedIn. And so when we want to show ourselves in a professional setting, rather than sometimes other social media platforms allow us to show much more of our personal life, for LinkedIn it is very much a social for business tool, and that’s how we need to be using it in this time.

Alice Fewings  9:45  

So your personal profile then, really is the centre of your professional universe. If anyone wants to know more about you, and want to find out more about you, or get in touch with you, they are going to head to your personal profile. So I wanted to give you some really practical top tips this morning that you could take away to go and implement into your profile. So the first thing then is, when someone visits your personal profile, the first thing we want to do is make a good first impression. It’s what we’d want to do offline. So whether we were going for an interview or a meeting or networking, we would want to make a good first impression. So we’re likely to dress to impress, we might prepare, we would be ready to meet new people. So on LinkedIn, then there’s a few ways we can make that good first impression. And the first thing people see is going to be much more around the visual aspects of your profile. So first off your profile picture. Of course we need to have a profile picture in there that shows us to be professional and approachable and friendly. So my advice is to have a head and shoulders shot, good lighting and nice smile so that you give that warm friendly feeling to your to your profile picture. What we don’t want is pictures from your holiday, you standing with a nice drink in your hand or a full length shot, because it doesn’t give the right professional look that we want it to. So my tips for if you’re going to shoot a photo at home is just to stand with a wall behind you, that’s a plain wall, and then good lighting. So if you can do it in front of a window or have some good lighting on you, that really helps, and then of course, a nice smile. 

Alice Fewings  11:24  

Your banner image, then it’s probably the biggest visual aspect on your profile and it forms the full width of your profile, it’s right at the top. And the default setting that LinkedIn gives you as a banner image is a big blue block at the top of your profile. So if you’re seeing this big blue block, then what you can do is upload an image into this space and think of it as like free advertising for your personal brand. So if you’ve got photos of you, whether it’s of you at work or what you’ve been doing, so what you do as a job, then you can put that in as an image, you might have a website address, you might have text words that you want to add in there to show your achievements or your experience. But you can really make that image whatever you want it to be. And I’d recommend using a online website called Canva. It’s free to use and you can just use the custom dimensions in there to get the right size for your LinkedIn profile, upload photos in there, drop text in, colours, whatever you want to do, and create a really nice professional banner image to go in your profile. 

Alice Fewings  12:34  

The other area that really shows the visual aspects to your profile is a featured section. So the featured section is a brand new part to your profile and you have to add it in. So at the top of your profile, there’ll be a drop down list and you can add different elements to your profile in there and the featured section is one of those. And the featured section, think of it like a portfolio. So if you’ve got testimonials, recommendations or reviews from previous work that you could create, again, maybe in Canva as a text based image, you can upload it in here. You can also put in website links, PDF documents, there’s a lot of different things that you can add in there to show a portfolio of who you are, and it’s a really nice visual aspect to your profile as well.

Alice Fewings  13:23  

But probably the most important part of your profile is your headline, because your headline instantly communicates when someone views your profile, it instantly tells them what it is that you do and who it is that you help. It also is the key part of your profile that helps you to get discovered elsewhere on LinkedIn. And your profile sits below your name on your profile right at the top. And it defaults to being your current job title. But you can edit this and you can then write a sentence of whatever you want it to be. That helps to show your skills, shows your experience, shows your achievements and communicates the value that you bring to other people. Your headline also helps you to show up in search results. So if someone like a recruiter or an employer is trying to find somebody in your field, they might be searching through the search bar that you’ll see on the home screen of LinkedIn, it’s right up in the top left corner. People can search in that to find people and look at their profiles. So if you’ve got keywords in your headline, and in your profile that represent the industry that you’re in, that might be one way that you can get discovered. 

Alice Fewings  14:37  

The other way is through as you interact and comment on other people’s content on LinkedIn. I call it a digital handshake, a digital introduction. So as you leave a comment on someone else’s content, you are leaving behind your profile picture, your name, your headline and your comment. So if your comment was something that potentially sparked a bit of interest or curiosity, people might then look above and look at your headline and look at your name. If your headline is set up to really attract people, because you’re talking about an industry or a field that they’re interested in, they’re much more likely to then click on your name and go through to your profile. And then of course, it’s up to your profile to then win them. So I’ve put together a few examples of how you could rewrite your headline. And I’d recommend having a go at the end of this, maybe writing an example for you for each of these options. And then you can see which one fits best in your profile, leave it there for a couple of weeks and see if you’re getting an increase in profile views. If you’re not, then change it out, if you are, then you know, you can leave it there. And it’s working for you without you having to do anything. 

Alice Fewings  15:50  

So a few examples then. So this first one, you can rewrite your headline so that you’re talking about your role, and then the specific achievement you might have had in that role. So as an example here I’ve put “Marketing Manager, 10 years experience managing a six figure advertising budget”. Now this is demonstrating to someone if they’re looking for someone in that field, that you’re someone that’s highly experienced, that you are a manager level and you might be then somebody that they’re really interested in knowing more about. Second example, then this one is where you could write your role, the industry that you work within, and then the unique value that you bring. So again, I’ve put an example here of “building materials supplier, construction, quality materials, fast delivery.” So you can play around with this and write it so that it can suit you the best. Third example then, your role, and then who you help and how you help them. So again, an example here, “IT Support Manager helping large teams to stay connected whilst working remotely.” And then my last example, you can write your role and then specialising in. Of course, you can change the role title to be what it is that you want it to be. But ideally, in the experience, the industry that you’ve been working within works best, but it doesn’t have to be what your previous job title was. It can be the job title that you want, or a job title that you think summarises what you did better. So this one a role specialising in and I’ve put “recruitment manager specialising in finding the perfect fit for candidates and employers.” So hopefully there you can see a few different examples of how you can use your headline to better communicate what it is that you do, what role you’d like or you want to work within, and how you help people, just to spark the attention of your target audience. 

Alice Fewings  17:53  

The next thing of course with your profile is that you want to be contactable. There is no point doing all of this work to your profile, and then not having a way for people to contact you. You want employers, recruiters, and the right people to be able to find you at the moment and then contact you. So one thing you can do first off, is personalise your URL. So every LinkedIn personal profile has a public URL. So a link that takes you directly to your profile. You can find this, if you go to edit your contact information, it should show what your current URL is, you can click on that and go and edit it. So the default option, again, is your name with lots of numbers and letters after it. So in an ideal world, you just want to delete all of those numbers and letters to be LinkedIn forward slash and your name. But if not, you could play around with your name and maybe UK at the end or your name and the industry that you work within at the end or your business name, but just make sure that it’s personalised and then once you’ve got that, you can use that on CVs, you can use that on your email signature, business cards, you can use it in lots of different places, so that when someone wants to find out more about you, they can go direct to your profile, instead of trying to search and find you through the platform.The next thing is to update your location. So lots of people when they’re searching for potentially people in your industry, they might not know about you, but they’re looking for people that have those keywords on your profile, and a specific location. So if your location is up to date, you’re much more likely to appear in the right search results when someone’s trying to find people on LinkedIn. And of course, lastly, make sure you’ve got some contact details and like a phone number or an email address so that people can easily contact you.

Alice Fewings  19:43  

And of course, update your experience. Now this is an area that probably feels like a CV, but it doesn’t have to feel too much like a CV. So I would really recommend adding in some key achievements responsibilities for your previous employment. As much as your previous employment can describe and talk about what you currently do, the better doesn’t have to go all the way back to when you had a paper round or a Saturday job. Keep it as the jobs that you’re really proud of that you’ve done over the years, and use those in there. You can add media assets into each of those employments. So that could be photos, proof of your work, could be recommendations, reviews, testimonials that you’ve got, again, you can create those as a text based image in Canva, and then upload it as a JPEG image. But probably the key thing that you can do is just review your job titles. No one from previous employment is going to police your profile, and look to make sure that your job title reflected what you actually had on your contract beforehand. You can change that job title so that it much better reflects the work that you did or do but also so that it’s understandable to your ideal audience. So that when they read this, they can really get an idea of who you are and what you’ve done. So rewording your job title is absolutely fine. Just be comfortable with it and whatever you’re happy with in that industry that you were you were working within.

Alice Fewings  21:15  

So getting discovered on LinkedIn then. So first and foremost, I’ve talked about your headline, it’s the easiest way of you being discovered. When you comment on other people’s content, that person’s connections, will see your comment, because it’s gone out to their connections, you’ve commented on it, they will then see it. So you’re introducing yourself to a much wider audience than just your own connections. So it’s really key. If you’re then increasing your activity on other people’s content, you’re doing this in lots of different ways and opening the doors up to lots of people’s connections, which is the best way that you can raise your personal brand at the moment on LinkedIn. And of course, if you’re adding really positive comments, meaningful thoughts and comments on other people’s content, that person’s content, they will get a notification and they will start to get that kind of warm, fuzzy feeling about you. So it’s a really good way to build relationships and to get known and seen. I would always recommend in your comments, leaving comments that are more than four words, it just helps the algorithm to boost that piece of content. And of course, make sure none of us, of course, would ever be nasty with our comments, but anything that you left on anyone else’s content is tracked and logged on your personal profile. So if you were to go around and write nasty comments on lots of people’s content, it’s tracked on your profile, and it would do you much more harm than it would the other person. So particularly if you want recruiters and employers to be looking at your profile, we want to make sure that we’re adding positivity on the platform. 

Alice Fewings  22:48  

And lastly, then with the content that you’re creating, feel free to tell your story. We talk about USP’s in business quite a lot, unique sell points, and really the thing that makes you unique and what draws recruiters and people and relationships to you is you. So be proud of the stories and the experience that you’ve got, and the industry knowledge that you’ve got that you can then share to other people. My kind of top tip, if you’re going through a learning point is once you’ve learnt something, that’s a good time to then do a reflection piece of content, say what the struggle was that you were going through, and how you’ve come out of it the other side and what you’ve learnt from it. That’s a really good way of showing a bit of vulnerability but also that you’re proactive that you’re learning that you’re taking action. Whereas if we were to create a piece of content right in the midst of something, it doesn’t necessarily give us the right look. So when you’ve come out of the other side reflection pieces are really powerful and really good. 

Alice Fewings  23:51  

So to take action, then a few things you can go away and do so the first is review and refresh your profile in those few areas that we talked about, your headline being the most important part. So have a go at writing an example for you and where you are in your job in your experience with some of those examples we looked at earlier with the headline, and then pick the one that you think really represents you the best and also, that your ideal audience at the moment it would resonate with them the most. Then increase your activity on other people’s content, it’s going to help to get you seen and known and heard. And then do create some of your own content. And the more regularly you can post, the better and the more fruitful relationships you can build through the platform. And if you are getting stuck on other elements of your profile, I’ve got a PDF checklist completely free. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn and request this checklist I’d be more than happy to send it through to you as you go through and review your profile if that really helps.

Martin Smith  24:53  

Alice thank you so much for all of your help. Alice is obviously on LinkedIn, so please feel free to connect with her as she said at the start, and yeah, thanks again, Alice.

Alice Fewings  25:03  

You’re very welcome and it was lovely to meet you virtually