Transcript
Episode 32: Special Episode with Oliver Schinkten: "Using LinkedIn to Upgrade Your Profile and Your Skills
Carol Fishman Cohen: Welcome to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we talk about success stories, advice, and strategies for returning to work after taking a career break. Today is a special podcast to introduce Oliver Schinkten, who will be speaking at the iRelaunch Return to Work Conference coming up on May 1st at Stanford University. It's our twenty-second conference, it's the iRelaunch Return to Work Conference with the Stanford Alumni Association. We're really excited about the day. We have some incredible corporate sponsors and a day fully packed with information and strategies about how to relaunch careers. We expect to sell out once again, we'll have over 400 people there and it's going to be an incredible day.
One of the highlights is that Oliver is going to be presenting at the iRelaunch Conference. Oliver Schinkten is a national speaker, consultant, writer and staff instructor for LinkedIn. He's an expert in education and career and professional development. As a learning facilitator, passionate about revolutionizing education and empowering others, Oliver believes in helping people discover the tools, skills, and opportunities they need to be successful. He is the author of over 35 courses, including Learning LinkedIn, Learning LinkedIn Recruiter, and Learning LinkedIn for Students. We are thrilled to have him as a speaker at our upcoming conference, and welcome, Oliver.
Oliver Schinkten: Thank you, Carol. Thank you. I'm honored and excited to be here today and to be part of this event. I think it's absolutely great.
Carol Fishman Cohen: Great. So today we want to give people a bit of a preview for what you will be presenting. You have an entire breakout session to give people advice about LinkedIn and building their LinkedIn profiles and using LinkedIn Learning as they relaunch their careers.
So, I want to know if we can maybe get a summary and just a few sample tips about creating and updating your LinkedIn profile as a relauncher, and also how to best use LinkedIn Learning. So starting with the profile and knowing that people at the conference are going to be people who, men and women who have taken career breaks for childcare, elder care, pursuing a personal interest, a personal health issue anywhere from one to over twenty years, and now they're looking to get back into the workforce and to use LinkedIn as a tool to help them in that transition. Any particular starting points or things that people need to think about when they're building their LinkedIn profiles?
Oliver Schinkten: Yeah, absolutely. And I really love what you're doing because I am extremely passionate about empowering people to be successful, and I'm confident that LinkedIn is one of the main tools to help them do this. So there are a lot of ways that anyone can use LinkedIn when returning to the workforce or trying to find a job. It can help them to establish and improve their digital footprint. It can help them connect with others and build a professional network, search for jobs, learn new skills, apply for jobs, so all those different things. Another important thing about LinkedIn that I think is especially true to people returning to the workforce, after a layoff or a time off, is that it provides you with an opportunity to tell your story. I think it's an opportunity to share some of your personality, your skills, you're interests and more, in a way that a resume or a job application really can't do. Because, I've worked with a lot of people in this situation, I think one thing that can be, and I've been in this situation actually, and returning to the workforce can be really stressful. And I've found that one of the main stress stressors is that you're concerned about this and conscious about this gap in your work or experience, or that you're switching careers or fields.
And I feel that when you have this and you're filling out a resume or an application, it doesn't leave you much space or opportunity to explain yourself, or at least let them know more about you and what it is that you can do. But this is where I think that LinkedIn is such a powerful tool and that a LinkedIn profile can do that through your summary and writing, that it's a conversational tone talking about what you're passionate about, your work ethic, your personality, your story, your perspective. You can list your skills, things like volunteer experience. You can start to network with others. Especially for relaunchers, I think it is a powerful tool that allows you to share your personality, share who you are.
Carol Fishman Cohen: Let me just ask you some more details about some of these comments that you just made. So, one of the frequently asked questions that we get from relaunchers is, how do they portray their career break on their LinkedIn profile? And in the case where they, during their career break are doing volunteer work and taking courses, and then in the case where they are not, do you have any particular recommendations about handling that?
Oliver Schinkten: Yeah, the situation obviously is very different for everyone. Everyone is possibly on a break for a different reason. And when other companies reach out, they're going to have different feelings about it.
One thing that I always say is, not to be afraid of it or hide it. I don't think necessarily it's something to be scared that it's going to prevent you from getting a job. I've seen people take a different approach though, where some don't mention it, they just leave their profile and wait to be asked.
And others use a place like that summary section, where you can have up to 2000 characters, put stuff about yourself. I've seen people say in there, "I took a couple of years off for taking care of my children, now I'm passionate about getting back into this." So, that's where I think that the summary section really allows for a nice way for you to explain what it is, why you had that break, why you're maybe switching even industries or something like that. Another thing, and probably the most difficult part, when I've worked with people in this situation, is the headline, which right when you go to your profile, in my opinion, the first thing people see, obviously is your profile picture, but the first thing they read then is your headline. And a lot of times the recommendation there is to put your job, maybe I put "staff author, LinkedIn." And in this case, when you're in this time off, you don't necessarily have a position, that's where it can be a little bit more difficult.
However, there typically it's recommended that you take one of two different approaches. One would be maybe just to list what it is that you're looking to do. If, for example, you are someone who wants to go into digital marketing, you could put digital marketer or expert in digital marketing.
Another thing is that some people like to be even more open about it and put things like, digital marketer, actively seeking employment," or "available for employment," and putting those types of things directly into that headline. I think it is just being open, being honest and telling that story.
Carol Fishman Cohen: And another question that comes up is, if people have volunteer work that is relevant to their career goals versus substantive, but not relevant to their career goals. I know that LinkedIn has a category for volunteer experience. And then of course, there's the main body of the LinkedIn profile.
Do you recommend segregating those two volunteer experiences and putting some in the main body and some in the separate volunteer section depending on what it is, or should it all go in the volunteer section?
Oliver Schinkten: Yeah, I think it could go in different places. I think if you think that it's relative to the work you're doing and perhaps the type of jobs that you want to apply for, putting it in that main body, but having it there in the volunteer section is excellent as well.
I think a lot of times people will look at now especially, will look at maybe a gap in a career and then look a little bit deeper and say, "Why? Did they do anything during that time period? Was there some volunteer experience? Was there learning that took place?" So in other words, maybe you took some courses or perhaps even, honestly, as far as read some books and stuff like that, that you can enter into this to show that you're on top of your game, that you are staying educated in the industry, and that type of stuff.
So I think all of that kind of adds to that picture of whether you feel it's relative to the job, then put it in the main section. But if you feel it's just something you are doing, put it in the volunteer section and stuff like that really does help.
Carol Fishman Cohen: You know, it's really interesting, the idea that if you've read a lot of books, because one of the things that we talk about, especially in regard to age-ism and relaunching is that we believe subject matter expertise is the antidote to age-ism.
So, the idea that you would have an entry in your main profile, I'm guessing it would be in the main profile or maybe under volunteer, where you are working on subject matter expertise and reading all the top books on the topic. Some reference to this building backup of subject matter expertise on your LinkedIn profile, I never thought about portraying it formally in that way.
Oliver Schinkten: Yeah. And whereas you can look at it and say as a relauncher and as someone going back into it that you're concerned about, maybe things have changed a little bit, and obviously things are changing extremely fast. And you can look at it saying "Maybe some of my skills and stuff are outdated," but I actually think this day and age provides a really great opportunity for relaunchers. And that is the fact that things are changing so quickly that when they're looking for people now, they're looking for people who can who can perform, who can do something who are passionate, who have a good work ethic, but also people who are constantly learning.
And I'm a huge promoter of lifelong learning, I think it's the key right now. But in showing there, even in your summary, if you can say, "I'm a motivated learner, I've read these several books," and you put that down or, "I've taken courses, I've taken these things." I think showing that is so powerful where you can use it as, and the reason I say as an advantage is because, as things are changing so much, you have this opportunity to jump onto new things and know them as well as anybody does, even if someone's been in the game for twenty years, keep learning new things.
Carol Fishman Cohen: Because this is just a brief glimpse of what you will be covering in more depth on May 1st, let's just jump to the course side of it, you mentioned courses. Can you talk about LinkedIn Learning and the resource that it provides for relaunchers in terms of even the breadth of courses that are offered in some of the topics?
Oliver Schinkten: Yeah, sure. and this is a topic I'm extremely passionate about and that, like I said, is lifelong learning. And this is where my main role with LinkedIn comes in, is that they have now where in the past they didn't have access to additional learning. So if you wanted to update your profile, you could do that and take courses and get certifications and stuff and then add it.
But now they have and ultra impressive library of over 10,000 courses on a wide range of topics called LinkedIn Learning. Now, on the LinkedIn Learning platform there are some free courses and free videos, however, to access the full library is a premium feature. But when you have a premium LinkedIn account, you'll have access to this entire library.
And in there, like I said, they have over 10,000 courses. They're going to have courses on specific software titles, for instance, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Drive, Adobe Photoshop. So there's the opportunity to go in there and learn some of these different tools that you see as important into the industry you're going in and learn them extremely well from experts that are teaching these courses, that I think are structured extremely well. They're ones that, you might take a course that is two to three hours long, but it will be broken up into smaller videos that walk you through the different things that you need to learn and what you need to do. You can skip around if you need to.
They also though, besides those tools and software courses, do have additional business skills and some of the soft skills type courses, which I think are also extremely important. And in looking at them recently, just curious as to what would be really beneficial to relaunchers and things like that.
Some of the titles they have on there are things like Mastering Interview Questions, which is a complete course, another one on writing a resume, there's one titled Creating a Career Plan, another one that's perfect is Recovering from a Layoff, and Job Searching Strategies. So those are all courses that you can take on there as well.
That will have experts providing great information, insight and things that you can really take and learn from.
Carol Fishman Cohen: That's super helpful. And I hope our listeners are getting a taste of what is going to be a much broader presentation from all Oliver at the iRelaunch Return to Work Conference with the Stanford Alumni Association on May 1st at Stanford University in the Bay area.
And Oliver will also be there for a part of the day for people to meet with at lunch, and we're really excited to have you, Oliver, there with us. So thank you again for today and participant for participating on May 1st.
Oliver Schinkten: Yeah. Thank you, and I'm excited. I know that LinkedIn can be very intimidating. At the same time, my goal at the conference is to help people really understand how to optimize it, how to utilize the different tools that are there and have them walking away more confident about how they can leverage LinkedIn, and really have some action steps that they can implement right away. So I'm extremely excited to be a part of that, I think it's going to be a a great opportunity, a great time.
Carol Fishman Cohen: Wonderful. You've been listening to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we speak about advice, strategies, and success stories for returning to work after a career break. This is a special podcast to introduce Oliver Schinkten, who will be speaking at our iRelaunch Return to Work Conference with the Stanford Alumni Association on May 1st.
We hope those of you listening will be excited and motivated to join us that day and join the over 400 people who will be there. Thanks very much, and see you. there.
