 Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for the get lab building your superstar brand webcasts. I'm Stephanie Joining you from Michigan and I work on the recruiting team with me today will be Chloe Whitestone and JC Zorb to our amazing recruiters who are eager to share tools and tips for success. So we're going to give everyone a few moments to join. So while we're doing that, I'm going to be launching a poll. So please participate if you're able to I'm going to go ahead and launch that now. So while we're doing the poll, just a few housekeeping items, please feel free to ask questions via the Q&A function. We will also have a Q&A Time at the end of the webcast, but please, if you want to put some questions into queue, feel free to do that at any time. And if you have any technical difficulties, please use the chat function as well. Okay, I see individuals joining in. We will give everyone a few more moments. Hopefully everyone's having a great Thursday eager for the weekend. I'm sure The poll questions are going well. And if there's something that you want to elaborate on, we are going to also be sending a follow up email with the recording and A more extensive answers to these poll questions as well. So feel free if you have if you want to ping us afterwards to do so. Okay, we just got a question actually from Rebecca. That's, that's perfectly final. Most people don't know if they have an online profile. So we will walk you through that process during the webcast. Okay, so we are going to Get started. Hopefully everyone will continue to join. So I'm going to introduce Chloe Whitestone in JC Zorb. As I mentioned, there are two recruiters on our team and take it away, ladies. Awesome. So I'll just kind of run through what the agenda is for The presentation here today. So First we'll be covering what is an online brand. Really the importance of it, how you want to be identified, then we'll go over nailing your voice joining platforms, tailing your profile to the job you want Writing articles, starting a blog, things like that, being active. So using the platforms for professional growth, building your community, contributing to meetups, things like that. And then also kind of how to highlight your accomplishments. Excuse me. So, um, let's see, professional growth really lies within your ability to showcase your talent skill, experience and passion. And that's really what we're going to work on covering with you today. So first we're going to start off with an online brand. So really what is an online brand and why should that be important to you. So for an online brand, you have a personal online brand, whether you're really working on building it or not, people are going to see what you're posting, what's been posted about you, what you've been tagged in, Things like that. And so building that online brand is really taking control of what people can see and hear about you online. So we'll touch a bit more on that in a second. And a really awesome way to build an online brand is to really be authentic and to In what you write, post, update on your LinkedIn profile, your voice should really come through and what you have on there and what you're posting. And you also really don't want people to have an incorrect or incorrect information or an incorrect perception about you. So here are some ways where you can really prevent or fix that. So we'll start with what matters. And number one, no voice or number one, no doubt is Being aware of your online presence. So what is out there about you already. What have you posted. What have others post about you on LinkedIn. Have you given people recommendations or endorsements. Have they given recommendations or endorsements to you. Second is understanding what platforms provide the greatest ROI for you in particular in your particular role or field. Steph, could you go back to the last slide, the side before. Sorry. Thanks. And then what to include when you're building your online brand. So tackling tough questions and really one of those is addressing any employment gaps that you might have. So maybe you are fortunate enough to be able to take a year off to travel. So definitely include that in your profile. So recruiters or hiring managers aren't left guessing what you were doing during that time. If you aren't transparent with that. They're just we're just kind of going to guess what you were doing during that time. So if you let us know like you took time off to travel. That's totally fine. Just like provide us with that information. So we know what that looks like. And then For internships. This is especially important early in your career. We really want to know That you have experience and that you took the initiative to get a job or relevant experience during college while you were working on your degree so Much more relevant if you're in your first few years of your professional career and then community involvement. So maybe you volunteer at the local soup kitchen. That's awesome. Maybe you spend time as an advisor to give back to your Sorority or fraternity that you're in college. Perfect. Include that on your online profile on LinkedIn. A lot of those things have LinkedIn pages so you can just link them right to your profile. And then unrelated employment. It's totally awesome to have hobbies outside of work. Maybe you really like working at the local coffee shop on the weekends. Maybe your certified yoga instructor instructor and you teach classes in the evenings. All of that is totally awesome. You can include that on your profile. I would say if you're tailoring your resume to a role to maybe not include that but on your online profile. It's totally welcome and encouraged to have as much information as you want. So then we'll move over to protecting your privacy. So just kind of a note of advice is to keep your personal life private. I would definitely advise you to not post super political things especially on professional profiles such as LinkedIn on Facebook. There's a really awesome option to make it so you can approve people's tags for it to show up on your profile. Maybe you have a friend that tagged you in a really funny meme but you're like oh that was super funny but you probably should have messaged me that instead. You don't have to worry about that if you have this on and it's really nice to be the gatekeeper to your own profile if you have this on. And then yeah we'll go into like what employers really are looking at. So for LinkedIn they are no doubt going to be looking at your LinkedIn. So please make sure that it's up to date. Facebook and Twitter. I'm going to touch on them a little bit because they're pretty frequently used just for personal social media and there are employers that do go look at those forms of social media before they're moving forward with an offer that might be part of their reference check process. So I'm sure this is not the first time you've heard this but just a reminder that not everything needs to go on Facebook. Some employers like I said do check it as part of their process. My guideline is if your grandma wouldn't like to see it don't post it. Maybe you're different than me and you have a super cool and hit grandma. Then you need to think about if JC's grandma wouldn't like this should I post it because what you're posting there is totally contributing to your online brand. So next Chloe will be touching on how you can nail your online voice. Hi everyone. Your online profile is so crucial to creating your personal brand. It's the one place where you can advertise your personality your experience your interests and make sure you're representing yourself the right way and the way that you want to be perceived. So some different aspects of nailing your voice would be to write a great profile. So anything that you put out there should always tie back to your profile and be consistent. For example if you create a blog post make sure you're not contradicting anything you've said on your online profile in the past and then it continues to represent your expertise and your understanding in your fields. If you're trying to get into a new field try writing blog posts about some of the things you're interested within that field so you can still show that you're you're actively involved in that community. You always want to make sure you're being yourself being authentic so people can actually see who you are. Anybody can write a blog post but nobody else can be you. You can see here an example opening paragraph of a cover letter from an actual candidate at GitLab. She went into a lot of detail about how her experience will positively impact GitLab and she demonstrated her knowledge of the company which is a really great way to both show your expertise as well as be personal about what you're talking about. We didn't include the entire cover letter but she went on to more detail about her specific experience how she would make an impact at GitLab and all of those points pulled together really stood out in comparison to other applicants. And as it says at the bottom there cover letters are a great way to show how you're going to fit into a company's organization. We always love getting cover letters just to see your personality shine. It's always great to have a unique cover letter as opposed to just something copied and pasted. We've gotten GitHub references and cover letters in the past and that's not exactly the most exciting thing to read but it's always exciting when you can see that a candidate has done research. We can move to the next slide. So your personal brand should always showcase your skills and accomplishments. Any you list should always be backed up by real life examples. Your skills and experience are what set you apart in addition to your personality. So remember to think about the best way to organize them so that it makes sense to potential employers, colleagues, mentors, etc. Whenever you do list a skill or accomplishment make sure to link it back to any of these items or more such as articles, blogs, presentations, any examples that really show you putting your skills to action. Having those real life examples really shows that you know what you're talking about it can show exactly how far your skills are what you would be able to contribute to a new company. We can move to the next slide. No matter if you're actively looking for a job or not you should always tailor your brand to the job you want. Just like the saying dress for the job you want it's very similar online. So if you wanted to be Batman you want to add to your profile that you loved being out in the sun or something. You would talk about how you enjoyed caves and bats and gadgets and all those kinds of things. So it's really important to highlight any experience that you have that relates directly to the job that you want as well as your career goals. Something that's really important to a recruiter is being able to see if a candidate will fit in with the organization's long term goals. If you're interested in a particular company always be sure to do as much research on the company that you can and make sure that you're aligned to the company's values and goals. If you want more information about a company not every company has all the information online like it lab does. You could definitely reach out to somebody who works there. Maybe you've seen them on LinkedIn or something. Maybe they're on the team that you're interested in and see if they'd be willing to have a quick coffee chat either over virtual call or in person just to hear a little bit more about their experience. Finally always remember to be yourself. I know I've said that already. But I know I've personally taken jobs I wasn't passionate about and I wasn't happy. It didn't work out. That's why I really took my time in order to continue working on my brand and find a company that I really aligned with and that who appreciated who I was as a person. And I'm so happy that I am currently still a member of that company GitLab and it's really been a great experience for me. That's it for nailing your voice. I'm going to send it over to JC for being active. Awesome. Thanks Chloe. So for be active you can do that by either maximizing your online presence or getting involved. So we're going to start off by maximizing your online presence. And like we talked about already building that personal brand is really about taking control about what people can see or hear about you and you can maximize that to your advantage. So using online tools can really help promote you. And the best part is that most of them are absolutely free and or easy to use. So this next bit goes for any profile that you're using for professional purposes. It is way easier to keep your profile up to date as things are happening versus trying to remember to update everything that has happened or that you have accomplished since the last time you job searched. And I'm definitely not trying to sound scary here but layoffs are a very real thing and they do happen. And maybe you unfortunately have to start job searching and unexpectedly if you already have your profile updated consistently then you're already one step ahead and you're ready to start your job search right away. So I'm going to start by talking about LinkedIn and it'll be the one I talk about the most out of all of these that are on this list here. I would say it's probably the most important and widely used in the professional world. And the best part is that it's free unless you opt for a premium version, which you can definitely do. So please make sure you take time to make sure your profile is up to date, especially if you are actively looking for a role and you've included your profile link on an application or if it's on your resume or something like that. I will give you a partial break if a recruiter reaches out to you to start the conversation, but they will also be much more likely to reach out to you if you do have a complete profile. And you're also going to pull up in a lot more of those searches that they do if you have more on your profile if you have more experiences and accomplishments and things like that so just keep that in mind. And then making sure you have an up-to-date picture of yourself. Please try to refrain from including significant others, pets, families, cars, etc. in those pictures. Don't get me wrong. I totally love my dogs too, but my LinkedIn profile picture just has me in it. It should really be focused on you. And as a complete side note, my LinkedIn picture is not a professional headshot. It's truthfully a day I thought my hair looked nice and my friend wanted to try out her new camera. So don't feel like you need to spend money to go get a professional headshot or anything like that as long as it is a good representation of you, then that's what really matters. And then along the lines of pictures, it's really great if you can use the same picture across all of your profiles. Because there are people that might have the same name as you and maybe your two pictures look a little different and so it's hard to tell that it's the same person. So we really want to make sure we have the right person. So if you have the same picture on your LinkedIn, on your Slack profile, on your GitLab profile, on your Gmail, if you have a Gmail, then we know we have the same person when we're reaching out to you or seeing you on different platforms. And then now for your actual LinkedIn profile, this is really where you have the opportunity to tell your career story and to make it count. And Chloe will talk about what it looks like to add accomplishments and things like that, but also make sure that your dates are correct. You have a description of what you are doing day to day in your role. It's also so important to tell your story, especially if you're in a marketing role. I do quite a bit of marketing recruiting and your LinkedIn profile is really how you're branding and promoting yourself. So if you're doing that well, then recruiters and hiring managers can translate that into what you can do for our company. So just some other platforms that you can use to maximize your online presence are Twitter, which we hit on a little bit already. Glassdoor, it's a great place to leave reviews on your company, look up other companies if you are looking for new roles. So it's definitely an awesome resource, Power to Fly and Tech Ladies are really aimed towards people who identify as female. So if that's you, then go check out those sites, Hacker News, Angel List, Stack Overflow, Slack. You might be using Slack to stay connected for work, but also know there are some local or specialized groups that you can be part of in the Slack community to connect with. You can connect with other people in the same industry or organization as you, as in like marketing or things like that. And then if you're in technology, GitLab and GitHub profiles are really important. Same with LinkedIn, make sure that these profiles are updated, especially if you're job searching. And then there's also Dribble if you are like a UX designer or a website designer or something like that. Those are great tools to use. And there's definitely more than what's on this slide, so definitely take a look and see what you can find. Like Chloe hit on, blogs can also be a really great way to showcase your writing skills. So yeah, these can be a really awesome start to building your online presence. So now we're moving to get involved. And I hit on a little bit already like community involvement, but other ways to be involved are being a mentor. You can do that in your current organization. You can be a mentor to someone that you supervise, someone you don't supervise. For example, when I was in my MBA program, I had to have a professional mentor in the community, but it did not have to be someone at my work. So you can totally mentor other people outside of your current company. And you can also write recommendations for your peers that could be writing that for them on their LinkedIn profile. You could write recommendations for them for other jobs as well. So just being connected and involved there. You can join virtual or in-person meetups. Maybe you live somewhere where there's not a lot of people that do the same thing that you do. For example, I'm from a small town in Nebraska originally. There's not a lot of people that work in recruiting in my town. So I could join virtual networks and get connected that way. You can also write LinkedIn articles. You can blog about industry trends and your professional ideas. This is a great way to showcase your writing skills. Like Chloe said, especially if you're looking for a content role or something like that. You can also attend conferences and events. You can join social groups like all the ones mentioned on the slide before. Or you can actually join in-person groups and go and see people in real life. So those are just some of the ways you can get involved. I'm sure there are many more. But now Chloe is going to hit on highlighting accomplishments and how you can go about doing that. Thank you. I know I've spoken a lot already about showcasing your skills and experience. An extension of that is to make sure you celebrate your accomplishments. So in your online profile, you should always document different projects, assignments, solutions, etc. That you've been a part of, especially ones that relate directly to your career goals or interests. Some particularly interesting ones to a recruiter are ones when you've ever saved the company money, for example. That should absolutely be included and represented on your online profile. With that said, it's always impressive if you can say you're the top salesperson, for example, but not everyone has been. So if you've been in sales and you've exceeded the number of sales calls you were expected to make in a week, that's still an accomplishment and you should still be proud of it and you should still represent it because it's part of your day and you went above and beyond. LinkedIn is a great place to represent the different accomplishments you've done in a simple way. For example, in my profile, I've shared that I completed a data migration implementation of a new applicant tracking system, which was a really challenging and long project but had great long-term rewards. I've also linked to a blog post over in processes I've collaborated on and helped bring to fruition. I've also filled out some of the skills section on my LinkedIn, any skills that I feel like I'm pretty strong in, and then that my colleagues agree with and thumbs up. A lot of people, especially in design or development, have a portfolio or link to their GitHub or Stack Overflow or something representing the work that they've done in the past. Even though it might not be a quote-unquote accomplishment, it's still something that proves what they've done and shows a great example of what they can do. So any projects that you're really proud of should absolutely be included in that so that potential employers can always view that information. In addition to listing your accomplishments, it's also great to show what you're working on. Continuing to grow your knowledge and expertise is also an accomplishment. I've seen many people include any courses that they're taking on their LinkedIn profile to show that they are working on it. They're interested in their field. They're continually wanting to learn more and more, and that's so important for an employer. I'm always so excited when I can see that a candidate wants to continue to grow and learn in their career. So on that celebratory note, we'll be ending our presentation and moving on to Q&A, so I will send it back to Stephanie now. Thank you so much, ladies. So we will go in and allow individuals, if you're comfortable, feel free to chime in and start asking questions. If not, you can type them into the chat. Looks like right now we don't have any questions, but I will just throw some out there. So ladies, when you're reviewing candidates profiles, what is one thing that would be a definite deal breaker? I would say if you don't have very much information on there, just because, like, I don't know what you're doing every day. I don't know, like, what types of accomplishments you've had. I would say it's especially a deal breaker if you only include your LinkedIn profile that has no details, and then you don't include a resume as well that has additional information. So I would definitely encourage you to not only, like, have an updated resume when you're applying for roles, but also to make sure that your LinkedIn is updated to reflect that because your LinkedIn is kind of like an overall, all of your jobs and you can take your resume and kind of make it much more altered to the role. Perfect. So going along with that, I've seen some postings ask for just, or they give the candidate the ability to just link their LinkedIn profile. Being a recruiter, would you say that it's acceptable for them for a potential candidate to just link their LinkedIn profile without sending you a resume or would you, how do you perceive that? Would you still require a resume or do you feel as though the LinkedIn profile, if it is updated, is enough information? We don't require a resume now, but if the candidate doesn't supply a resume or a LinkedIn, we have no information. We can't really move forward with that candidate. It puts us in a difficult spot. But if you do provide your LinkedIn and not a resume, that's totally fine. As long as we have some background on your experience, what you're looking for, just to give us that assistance and trying to figure out if it's a good fit for both of us. Or on the flip side, if you want to provide a resume and not your LinkedIn, maybe it's not up to date, that's totally fine as well. Great. So given that, okay, so we do have a question. So from Ruby, how can an individual follow up on their application at GitLab? I would say to email jobs at GitLab.com is a great way to follow up or reach out to a recruiter if they've already reached out to you. But jobs goes to all of our recruiters and coordinators. So that's a great way, great email to reach out to so that someone can get back to as soon as possible. Okay, so we have another question. I'm looking for a programming position, but my bachelor's degree is in biology. Should I list every IT class I took in college on LinkedIn? I would say not every class, but the most relevant ones. So if you took a Ruby on Rails course or a course that was focused on that and you're looking for a Ruby on Rails developer, that would be a great example. If you then linked to some of the projects that you worked on during that class so you can showcase your skills, that would also be a great way to approach it. So just make sure, you know, in your LinkedIn summary you say how passionate you are about a developer role, what you're doing to make sure that you're in the right trajectory to get that position. Absolutely. And to kind of piggyback off that also, even there are so many individuals who have degrees in education or marketing or business, you know, and they pursue careers within software development, which is perfectly fine, you know, because it's such a growing industry. It's just important for you to list, as Chloe and JC mentioned, just all those skills that you have. Just be as elaborated as you possibly can so they know that, hey, you may have a degree in biology, but you do possess all of the necessary skills for that particular role. So we do have another question. Is there a preference for how long a cover letter should be? I always prefer one to two pages if possible. I understand some candidates have an extensive career history, so that's not possible, but being able to quickly gather where Canada has worked, what their previous roles has been, is really beneficial for us so that we can see where you would best fit in. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And it kind of depends where you are in your professional career as well, because if you've been working for three years, you probably don't need two pages of resume. But if you've been working for 15 or 20 years, you might need two, maybe three to get all the information on there. But again, you don't have to always include everything. You can tailor it specifically to the role that you're applying for. Great. So it doesn't look as though we have any other questions. Okay, actually we do. So how can one convey that they have done much more than their job title? Elaborate on what they've done. So list the accomplishments that they had while in that position. Maybe their title said they were a recruiter, but they actually did a lot more than that. They sourced, you know, all of the candidates that they recruited for. They implemented an ATS. They were working on different employee branding things. As long as you list those out, that's really important. Yeah, completely agree. Perfect. So we do have another question from Jeanine. She says she is a software engineer. What will the recruiters look, what do recruiters look for when they view her GitHub, GitLab profile? And how can she make them stand out? I would say just making sure it has like recent projects in it would be really important. If you had something in there like your last thing was five years ago, that's probably not really going to be super worth it to evaluate. So definitely making sure that it's recent and then that you're using just the different languages and things like that that we use here at GitLab, like GitLab's built on Ruby on Rails. So that's a big one as well. Anything to add, Chloe? I definitely agree having recent projects and showing the specific languages or tools or technologies that you're looking for and most comfortable in. Great. And we do have kind of a follow up to the previous question. So what if the accomplishments do not match the job title? That's okay. Yeah. I would list them anyway. If it's something that you're, it's an accomplishment and you want to continue in that kind of work, definitely list it. If it's something, maybe you just sit on the side. You can solicit it if you want, but it won't be, you want to make sure you're selling yourself for the right job that you want. Definitely. And I would say yeah, include it because that also shows that you're willing to like go outside of your maybe defined job description and help with other projects. Great. So another question, should I include my military experience, which is unrelated to the work I'm looking for and also outs me as being older, given the dates? This is a tricky question. Personally, I would say yes. It shows that first of all, you're a diverse candidate. I know that GitLab, we want to be more active in the military presence. We have a great company, I think, to foster those candidates. It also shows that you have, you know, great discipline. We love that you've been able to help our country in such a way. It's the fact that it does out you as being older. That is a little bit tricky because we don't really want to know anyone's age or any personal details about that. So I would recommend maybe not including the year if you're uncomfortable with that. I'm aligned with what Chloe said. And then another question. This isn't from the chat, but this is just kind of a follow up to that because I know some candidates worry about ageism and such. So would you be alarmed if a candidate provided a resume or if their LinkedIn profile didn't have specific dates for say when they graduated college or their previous employment? Would that be an issue? I don't think it's an issue as long as they say how long they've worked there. And then if we do eventually hire them and, you know, if they have to go through a background check, obviously we would need those dates at that time. But really what we're looking for is the length of employment. Great. So we are right ahead of schedule. So if anyone have any other questions that they'd like to throw out there? Nope, it doesn't look like we've got it. It looks like there's one more in the chat if there will be any GitLab events in the UK or Scotland. Did we answer that? We did. Well, I told I messaged Ruby, but I didn't. It didn't get to her by accident. I apologize. So right now we are actually building out our events and sponsorships. So Ruby, I will be sure to include the link to our page in the follow up email so you can stay on top of our various events and conferences and such that we're sponsoring and that we're going to be attending. Great. So if there are no further questions, we will wrap up and I will be sure to send everyone a copy of the recording. I know there may have been a few that missed the beginning. So we will be sure to send you a copy. And if you have any questions or if you'd like to reach out, feel free to email. And thank you all so much for attending. Yeah, thank you. Let us know if you have questions. We're happy to help. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.