From the course: Marci Alboher on Pursuing an Encore Career Instead of Retirement

Leveraging LinkedIn to tell your story

From the course: Marci Alboher on Pursuing an Encore Career Instead of Retirement

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Leveraging LinkedIn to tell your story

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- So if you're like many people, you threw up a profile on LinkedIn some number of years ago. Maybe you look at it from time to time. Maybe you check in, connect with people now and then. But it's something we all tend to avoid, so I want to spend a little time on some of the ways that LinkedIn has some features that are extremely useful to people at the encore stage of life and that are really useful for people who want to work in social impact roles. So there are many tools out there, including on LinkedIn, to learn everything about how to use LinkedIn better and understand all the features, and we're not going to go into that now. We're just going to focus on a few highlights. But before you do anything, your first stop before you work on your profile should always be the privacy settings. So head over to the privacy settings and make sure that you are not notifying your network whenever you're working on your profile. That is a surefire signal that you don't really understand how LinkedIn works, so none of us want to make that mistake. Second, if you're wondering whether you have to have a photo, you have to have a photo. And it should be a professional photo. And the only time you should have a photo with your dog is if you're a vet. So find a photo that is appropriate to who you are and where you want to go next. And then a few features that I just love that really speak to people who want to have a social impact are at the interests section at the bottom of your profile. So it says are you open to, and you can tick off a number of opportunities that you want people to know. Make sure you tick out whichever are appropriate for these, pro bono, that you're open to pro bono work, that you're open to volunteering, that you're seeking board roles. One of those may be more interesting to you than the others, but all of those signal that you're interested in this kind of work. There's also a new feature that says you're willing to give career advice to someone who's interested in what you do. So that's a really useful thing to tick too if you're willing to play that role as a mentor to somebody else. On the question of the summary and how far back you should go, I think a safe bet is 20 years. So keep that in mind as you're listing positions. And when you go to the summary, keep it brief. And if you're going to talk about something earlier in your career, try to find a way to weave it and just make it part of your concise story, not a recounting of everything you've ever done. A good way to think about the summary and a good tip is to find someone you admire who's also had a lot of experience and see how various people are describing their summaries. You really might get some ideas for how to do that in a concise way. So finally, it's really hard to work on your LinkedIn profile on your own and see if you're getting it right. I can assure you there is someone in your midst who is willing to be a buddy if you would help them look at their LinkedIn profile. So I think this is a really good time to go to that support network you were talking about and see if you could find someone who wants to do that with you. And make a little coffee date on it, work on each other's profiles, give feedback, look at some that inspire, and take these tips and use them together.

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