 So in the last few years, my business partners and I have helped thousands of people get their dream jobs and LinkedIn is without a doubt the most powerful tool you can use to achieve this. Right? If you told me Shane, you can only use one tool. Yeah, pick one, your choice. In order to land somebody a job, it would definitely be LinkedIn. Now, I know that this is a bold claim. So here is a ton of proof that we have helped countless people get their dream jobs using LinkedIn. Now, here's one of my favorite examples because this person Mahogany actually didn't even get through setting up their profile correctly, but they use some of the methods that we teach and in less than two weeks, they were able to land their first job offer. And I have a ton of interviews on my channel with people that we've helped get jobs. So for instance, Abdul, he went from no college degree and no experience to a 70 to $75,000 a year job. Ben went from being a college dropout janitor to making $80,000 in his first year. Kevin was a laid off construction worker that immediately was able to get a $65,000 a year job within 29 days. And Della might be my favorite overall story here. She was able to actually get a job at her dream company making over $100,000 a year and a month and a half. And honestly, there's a ton of other interviews, testimonials, reviews, et cetera. Just look on my channel. They're all there. You can even look these people up on LinkedIn. You can ask them personally if you'd like to. But the coolest thing about Della's story is that she was actually contacted by her dream company, right? So she set up her LinkedIn profile in such a way that the company actually contacted her. They reached out to her through LinkedIn and they wanted to interview her and she was able to land her dream job. And much of that is due to how she set up her LinkedIn and how she used her LinkedIn profile strategically. And in this video, I'm going to reveal to you exactly how to do that. And I honestly believe my partner and I know more about how to effectively use LinkedIn than probably anybody else out there. And I'm also going to be taking you through what the profile of one of the students who was able to land a $70,000 a year job in just a few months looked like. And that story is going to be Ben, the one who went from a janitor to over $70,000 a year almost immediately. So if you appreciate this type of content and you want to see more of it in the future, let me know by body slamming the like button like the rock. And let's go ahead and jump right into it. All right. So my first tip on LinkedIn is that you need to start right now. You need to start almost immediately. You know, if you don't have a LinkedIn, seriously, start one up right now and start adding people. And the reason for this is because you want to get to 500 plus connections as fast as possible. So on LinkedIn, once you get to over 500 connections, it just shows 500 plus. It doesn't matter whether you have 20,000 connections or 501 connections, it's just going to show 500 plus. And this is basically like a weird way of showing that you have a lot of connections and you have like a lot of friends on LinkedIn. And it's one of those weird things that people judge you for. It's kind of like a blue check mark on Twitter or Instagram, except you know, maybe not as impressive. And then the second reason you want to get to 500 plus connections is because you actually can't view many people's profiles until you have a certain amount of connections. And then you also can't contact people until you have connections as well. A lot of people will set their profile up in a certain way to where you have to know somebody who knows somebody in order to be able to even view them or contact them. So depending on how they set their profile up, you may need to know them through second or third degree connections. And on top of it, it'll make it much easier for recruiters and hiring managers to find you as well. So I have three suggestions to really speed this up. The first thing is when you're starting your LinkedIn profile, you'll be prompted to import people over from, you know, Gmail or your other email lists, etc. So I definitely recommend that you do that because that's going to give you some initial connections right off the bat. My second suggestion is to use what is known as LinkedIn open networkers or Lions. These are basically people who have set up their profile specifically designed to network with people. So they typically have thousands and thousands of people who they are networked with sometimes they even have 10,000 plus connections. So adding one of these people is almost like adding, you know, 10 or 100 normal connections. So I would try to add around 100 Lions if you can. And there's various ways to find these lists. Sometimes you can even find them related to specific industries. So just look up on Google Lions LinkedIn open networking lists. That's the easiest way to do it. Then you can just upload the file to LinkedIn. That's what I did when I was originally starting my LinkedIn. But if you can't find any of these lists, you can always just type into the, you know, bar up on top Lions or LinkedIn open networkers. And there'll be a ton of people who have set their profile to that. And you can just add them. Now keep in mind, you can only add 100 connections per week. So it's going to take you five weeks to get to that 500 plus. So you really want to start with this right now. So very, very important. But my third tip is probably the most important of all. And that is to add people who are related to your industry. Now, of course, is going to be different depending on the career that you are in. But with that being said, adding recruiters, adding hiring managers, adding VPs, executives, directors, et cetera. Those are the types of people who tend to have a lot of connections. And not only do they have a lot of connections, but they are connected to people within your industry. So this is going to make it much more likely that you're going to be able to connect with them and get through to them if you want to try to find a job. And then of course, if there's a specific city you're trying to get a job in, make sure to connect with people who are in that area. Now, my second tip here is determining demand. So this is actually one of the best features of LinkedIn is not only can you determine the demand for a specific career, but on top of that, you can actually determine the demand at the entry level, right? So there's a ton of careers out there that have a lot of demand, right? So if you look them up on BLS, for instance, you'll see, Oh, there's so much demand. But then you actually get into the career and you realize at the entry level, it's actually really difficult to get a job. But using LinkedIn, you can determine if it's one of those careers where it's easy to break into, right? Because there's a lot of careers out there that once you've broken in, once you've gotten the skills and the experience, it's easy to get a job. But getting that first entry level job can be incredibly difficult. And you want to know if your career, the one that you picked is going to be one of those. So LinkedIn is actually my favorite tool to determine demand now. So for instance, one of my favorite careers is tech sales. I've talked about that quite a bit on the channel. A lot of the examples that I showed you before people getting, you know, ridiculous numbers like $100,000 in a month and a half have come from tech sales. And another name for tech sales is business development representatives. So if you search business development on LinkedIn, you're going to see 881,000 results. And if you sort by experience level, and then you pick entry level, internship and associate, you're going to see that there's over 400,000 results. And this is all in the United States of America, of course. But if you look up sociologist and you sort by entry level, you're going to see 120 results, right? So this is just an example, guys, you know, I have no problem with sociology. I think it's very interesting. It's great. But if you're going to go into that career, you need to realize that you are going to be swimming against the stream. There's not very much demand for sociologists, especially at the entry level. So you can use LinkedIn to do a lot of research so you can make your life easier and your career more successful. All right. So number three on the list is going to be networking. LinkedIn is the most insanely powerful tool when it comes to networking. So let me give you an example of this. You go to LinkedIn and you click on people, then you go to all filters, then you go to current company and you select Google, right? Because you want to work at Google, then you scroll down to the school and you pick the university that you went to. So in my case, I went to the University of Kansas, then you click show results and you see 171 people who also went to the University of Kansas who now work at Google. Now, if you know anything about people who went to the University of Kansas, they're very passionate about their school. They have one of the best basketball programs of all time. In fact, I'll just say it, the best basketball program of all time. So if I reach out to these people, I'd probably have a 10 times better success rate at actually networking with them because we have something in common. Now you can do this with more than just college. You could do it with the high school that you went to. You could do it with some club that you joined, some organization that you're a part of, etc. And people are much more likely to help you if you have something in common with them. And if you're able to have like an inside connection, somebody who just got a job at Google, they can probably tell you exactly what you need to do in order to get a job at Google as well. They may even be able to put in the good word for you and help you get a job directly. So honestly, this is just one example. But if you just get a little creative with it, you can see how unbelievably powerful LinkedIn is when it comes to networking. I use it for business networking now, right? Like I'm not trying to get jobs anymore. You know, I own my own business now, but I use it for business networking quite a bit and it is unbelievably powerful. A friend of mine owns a website and he uses it to get back links to his website. If so, if you're familiar with SEO, you know how powerful backlinks are. So there's literally unlimited uses when it comes to the networking that you can do with LinkedIn. It is so, so unbelievably powerful. And networking, by the way, it's one of those things where you don't need it. You don't have to network. But if you do network, it's basically like a cheat code, right? So I highly, highly recommend networking as fast and as soon as possible, even if you're introverted, I'm introverted. I get it. You know, it's hard to network, but I highly recommend doing this as fast as possible. The fourth thing that I want to point out about LinkedIn is that your LinkedIn is actually an asset to many companies out there. So what do I mean by this exactly? Well, LinkedIn limits the amount of profiles that you can create. So, you know, you are a single person, you have a single identity, and you can only create one profile. On Facebook, you could create 10, 20, 30, 40 different profiles if you wanted to. But on LinkedIn, you can only create one profile and they're probably going to have you, you know, send in your ID for verification. So because of this, and because of the fact that they limit the amount of messages that you can send, your LinkedIn profile is truly an asset to every company out there. And it's even more of an asset to certain types of companies, because a lot of companies out there, especially B2B or business to business type companies, use LinkedIn for prospecting. So these companies are halfway paying you for your skills and halfway paying you to utilize your LinkedIn profile. So you really want to put your best foot forward and spend some time on your LinkedIn profile to make it look as good as possible. And in many cases, your LinkedIn profile is actually going to be more important than your resume. A lot of the time when hiring managers get your resume, they spend about two seconds looking at it, just to look up your name, basically, and then you'll look you up on LinkedIn, and then they'll spend several minutes looking at your LinkedIn profile. And if you have a great profile, you're really going to stand out. All right. So number five, let's talk about the LinkedIn profile picture. The first thing people are going to see when they look you up is going to be your profile picture. So it's incredibly important to have a good one. And it literally costs like $20 to $50 to have a professional headshot done. There's probably a studio in your town that will specifically do a professional headshot for you. You know, you go in, it takes like 10, 20 minutes, you leave and you're good to go. They send you the headshot the next day. So I highly, highly, highly recommend just getting a professional headshot done, right? So here's a picture of Mark Cuban, an example of a professional headshot. A lot of the time they use the gray background paper, kind of like, you know, what I do here, I always use gray backgrounds because it just looks, I don't know, it just has this professional look to it. So if you get a professional headshot done, you know, you can skip the next little part, but the next part is for those people who are stubborn and they don't want to actually pay for it. So if you really want to just use a photo that you've already taken, or if you want to kind of like try to take a photo with a gray background like this, you can just hang up a gray sheet if you want, just make sure you have good lighting, take it with a good cell phone. And then you can use different websites like removebg.com that basically removes the background on the photo. And then you can kind of add in a more professional looking background if it doesn't look that good. Canva is a great online free tool you can use to edit these photos. You know, don't be stiff, don't be sloppy, have a nice shirt on, have, you know, be business professional. Don't take a picture of you at a bar or, you know, you playing sports or anything like that. It's usually going to be best for you to smile in your photo. You know, don't be too close to the camera. Don't choose a photo that's messy. Stand either straight to the camera like this, or maybe slightly to the side. Don't show a photo of your back or anything like that. So I really do recommend just getting a headshot done. But if you want to take it yourself, here's a good example of a really nice photo where they took it with the background of a forest. So this has been, I kind of showed his example before, but this is what his profile looked like when he was able to get hired. So you can kind of see here Ben smiling. He's got, you know, a nice suit on. He doesn't even have to put a tie on. You know, I personally don't like wearing ties at all, but you know, if you want to look extra good, you can put a tie on. But you can see here, he's wearing a really nice shirt, a suit. He's smiling. His hair is really well-kempt. Looks like he kind of touched up and shaved a little bit. And yeah, overall pretty nice photo. It gets the job done. The next thing after the photo, number six, we're going to talk about is the title and headline. And to be honest with you, there's a lot to talk about here and it really depends on the career path you're going down, the industry you're going into, et cetera. But with that being said, you really want to tell a story with your title or headline. You basically want to tell them exactly what you're looking for. So for instance, if you are trying to get a job as a business development representative, sales development representative, like I talked about before in tech sales, you would do something like this, sales development, in turn seeking opportunities just like Ben did. Now you want to be careful here to not come across as too needy. So needy. And this is where it kind of depends on the career path you're going down, the industry you're in, et cetera. When it comes to sales development representative, there's such an insane amount of demand for SDRs, BDRs, and just tech sales, specialists in general, that it's okay to come across as a little bit needy, because there's just so much demand for them that it doesn't matter, right? So when you do something like, hey, sales development, in turn seeking opportunities, it's actually okay. There are so many companies out there that are looking for this skill set that it doesn't actually matter. However, if you're trying to get into an industry where there's a lot more competition, it might be better to say something like sales development, in turn, open to opportunities or just insert whatever industry you're trying to get into open to opportunities. So that comes across as a lot less needy. Now, one thing you also want to notice about this headline is it says sales development in turn. So that shows that he actually has some experience in sales development. So that's a little bit of a value add right there. So basically what he's communicating here is he has some experience in sales development and he's looking for a full time position. So depending on what your goal is, you're going to tailor this to the industry or the business you're trying to get into, keep this simple, communicate what you want, but at the same time, don't be too needy. Next number seven, we're going to be talking about the about section. So use the about section to describe who you are, what you're looking for and why. So a big mistake that people make, and I guess I should have said this with a headline, but a big mistake that people make is they basically say like, Oh, I'm open to anything. I'm good at all these different things. No, you want to tailor your profile specifically for a very specific position that you're trying to get into, right? So if you're trying to get into tech sales, become a sales development representative, you need to tailor your profile to that specific position. And so what you want to do is become familiar with the lingo that that industry uses. So here's Ben's profile again, and we're going to talk about some of this stuff. So B2B sales, right? He doesn't say business sales there. He just says B2B, because everybody in that industry knows exactly what B2B is. If you look a little bit further down, you see he uses terminology like spin and band. And if you are familiar with the sales industry, you're going to know what those two things mean. You see he also uses the acronym of SDR, which is sales development representative. And again, if you're familiar with that industry, you're going to know what that means. And then see that he also talks about some books that people have probably read if they're in the sales industry, how to win friends and influence people. One of the greatest books ever written, I've read it, it's great spin selling. I've also read that book. And then fanatical prospecting, I haven't read that one, but I'm sure people who are in the sales industry and they've done it for a while have read fanatical prospecting. So you really want to try to tailor your background and explain your background in such a way where it's going to show them how it's going to be good for the position you're trying to get into. And then you want to use industry specific lingo and also just demonstrate that you're really excited to get into that position. You're someone who's really passionate about it. You're excited about it. That sort of thing is contagious. If you're really excited about something, other people are going to be excited about it as well. Number eight, let's talk about experience and education. So obviously with your education, you know, put that stuff here, that's great. If you have it, you have it. If you don't have it, don't worry about it. The world is changing and, you know, getting a college degree is no longer necessary for many positions out there. And you can sort of spin this in a way that makes it seem a lot better than it actually is. Let's say you worked at McDonald's, for instance, you know, did you work at McDonald's? Or did you improve the financial transactions at a Fortune 500 company by 7.1% while maintaining a 4.9 out of five star satisfaction rating, right? So that's kind of an excessive example, but I think you get my idea here. You can make positions sound a lot better than they are. And you also want to try to be as specific as possible at exactly what you accomplish. So you want this to tell a story, right? Notice there that I said exactly what you're doing, but I also talked about a metric and people that are hiring managers and just managers in general are going to be really honestly impressed by you if you're somebody who actually tracks metrics, because typically the only people who track metrics are the managers themselves. So if you're somebody who took the initiative to track metrics on your own and pay attention to that stuff, that is a really good sign. Now here's an example of somebody who worked as a waiter and you can see in the accomplishments section, they put consistently achieved the highest tips week over week out of seven servers, consistently achieved the highest total average bill out of seven servers, right? So that shows that they're really good at upselling people and they also have really good customer service skills, right? So they didn't necessarily show a metric there would be a little bit weird to track metrics as a waiter. But with that being said, they did show that they accomplished something. And with Ben, the example here, you know, he was a janitor, but he called it a facilities supervisor. You know, it sounds a little bit better than a janitor, even though it's technically the same exact thing. And you can see he really fleshed it out every single thing that he did there. And you know, so even with something like a janitor, which society probably isn't super impressed with overall, just, you know, let's be honest, you know, I have nothing against janitors, but let's just be real here, you can still make it look pretty good. Number nine tip on this list is going to be leveraging certificates and certifications. This is a massive, massive pro tip that just about nobody out there talks about. This is basically a cheat code right now. The first thing you want to do is identify certificates and certifications in your industry in the career that you're trying to get into that hiring managers and recruiters actually care about, right? So you're not trying to identify the certificate or the certifications. That's the best one, right? That's not what we're trying to do. We are trying to identify the one that the hiring managers and the recruiters actually respect and care about. Those two things are not necessarily the same, unfortunately. Then you want to add in that certificate or certification on your LinkedIn profile. And you can add it in the education section. Oftentimes you can also add it in the experience section. And then the third thing you can do is you can also make a post about it as well. And what this is going to do is it's going to allow you to be discovered by companies who are searching people through that certification, right? So a lot of the time recruiters and hiring managers will actually search for people by the cert that they're taking or the cert that they've already taken. And the coolest thing is even if you aren't done with the certificate or certification, you can still put it in these sections, right? So you just have to put that you're in the process of taking it. You can see that Ben here put course careers and sales development specialization in the education section. And this is actually one of the ways that Della was able to be discovered. So she also put that she was going through course careers in the education section. And this company that was her dream company was actually partnered with course careers. And they really like the people that come out of course careers because course careers does a really great job training them. And this was her dream company. They reached out to her wanted to interview her and then she got a job offer for over $100,000. So she went from no experience in tech sales to over $100,000 in a month and a half. And you can check out that interview with her if you want, I'll put it here. And also if you're interested in tech sales and using course careers, they do have a free training, which I'll put down in the description as well as the pin comment below. Definitely check that out if you want to get into tech sales. And if you're interested in actually getting trained by them and then using their service where they actually get you guaranteed interviews with their partners, then you can also use my code down in the description, which is Shane 50 and that'll give you $50 off. So the total price is $450, I believe. So the number 10 tip is a very basic one. And that is don't be controversial. This is a pretty obvious one, but you know, don't put anything inflammatory or controversial on your profile. I think there's an acronym out there for things you're not supposed to talk about with people that you don't know very well. I think it's like politics, religion, how much money you make, these sorts of things. Don't talk about these things on social media. I'm sorry, but this is just a really obvious tip that for some reason some people don't do. Your job is not a place to spread your political beliefs. That's not the purpose of your job. The purpose of your job is to do work and provide value to society. So do not be that person who is soliciting other people to talk about these things when you barely even know these people. Number 11 on the list is kind of a general one, but just go ahead and nail the basics. So these are just some really basic things I'll go ahead and mention. First and foremost, check your grammar. You know, there's free tools out there like Grammarly, for instance, to make sure you're not making any spelling or grammatical errors. Make sure you put any achievements, you know, an education or experience that you have on there. Use keywords that are specific to your industry. So for instance, if you're trying to get an SDR or a BDR job, Sales Development Representative, make sure that that keyword is somewhere in your profile. Upload your resume to your profile as well. And a pro tip here that's especially good for certain positions is actually it's a great idea to make a portfolio, right? So if you're trying to get into an artistic type position, for instance, it's a great idea to make a portfolio. One thing you can do is actually make a personal website. Another thing you can do if you're trying to get into a coding position, for instance, is to make a personal website that links to all of your accomplishments. Some people use Notion for this as well. Notion can be really good to basically link to a bunch of your different projects and accomplishments that you've done. But yeah, some sort of project portfolio or a personal website is great for demonstrating your skills. And to get specific here, first, you want to identify what skills hiring managers and recruiters are looking for. Then you want to make sure that you have those skills. And then you want to demonstrate those skills in an easy way, right? So you don't want to demonstrate them in like a 50 minute video or anything like that. You want to demonstrate them in such a way where they can tell that you have those skills in like 30 seconds. Some bonus stuff you can do is to have a customized URL. It does look a little more professional. You can make or post content about your field. And you can also interact with other people's content that are posting about your field as well. And that's especially good if you're trying to get into a specific company. So you add people in that company and then you interact with their content going to be a great way for you to network with them and basically just leave genuine thoughtful responses on their content. So yeah, this is some of the stuff that my business partner Troy and I teach at course careers. You can check out the interview I did with Della right here. It's a really awesome interview. You can see exactly how she was able to get that $100,000 a year job in a month and a half. Gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera. And I will see you next time.