COVID19 had a huge effect on global employment.
Higher education has shifted, and there is now a huge demand for remote work and more ‘freedom’ within employment. Especially by GenZ and Millenials.
So just how tricky is the job market right now? Take a look at this here from Indie Stowell.
“The main issue my clients are facing right now is how flooded the job market is.
It’s becoming harder than ever to secure a job, and degrees in particular are no longer enough to stand out."
So how does Indie’s work, help people get their dream job through LinkedIn?
“I am a freelance personal branding specialist, working under The Marketing Lab.
We help students, recent graduates and job seekers, secure their dream careers by teaching them how to build their personal brands on LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn is the most powerful business networking app, in the world.
Having CEOs, hiring managers, and other potential colleagues, at your fingertips, is a game-changer.
“I help my clients figure out what their USP is and leverage that to make them stand out.
By doing so, they become seen as the “go-to experts” within their niche, hence making them stand amongst everyone else in the busy job market.”
In a nutshell. Make them stand out.
So here is the 5 key areas, Indie says to tackle first, when finding you perfect job, via Linkedin.
Purpose: Define Your Why
What is your reason? Behind everything else, what drives you, more than anything else?
Once you make this clear to you, and have it in the forefront of your mind, everything falls into place a lot easier. In Indie’s own words…
“You need to get specific on:
a) Why you want to build your personal brand.
b) Why in particular have you chosen LinkedIn to build your personal brand.
c) What is your end goal / what are you looking to achieve?
Motivation doesn’t last, so you have to have a deeper, stronger reason for why you’re doing this to maintain consistency.”
As we say, the key is your reasoning. If you want the right pull towards success, you have to find the right reason to head towards it.
“I don’t wake up at 7:30 am every day and think “I can’t wait to post and engage on LinkedIn today”, but I do it anyway, because ‘my why’ is so strong.
My why is that ‘I never want to return to the 9-5 office life again’.
My LinkedIn personal brand got me out of that life, so I’m going to keep on working on my brand, to ensure that I never return to a job like that.”
Industry Relevance: Pick 3 Brand Pillars
“These are the 3 topics that your profile and content will be centred around.
You need to pick 3 things that relate to your industry and you know you are good at / have experience in.”
For us at Nexus Gecko for example, we write about content creation, sales systems, and platform building.
For you… well, you’ve got to decide your plan of attack.
“But even more importantly, you need to enjoy talking about them.
If you don’t enjoy the subjects you pick, you’ll never be consistent.”
And this is so well pointed out my Indie. You must have something, you are intrigued by.
It allows for that creativity to flow, and makes things on those rocky days, a hell of alot easier.
Niche Selection: Who Do You Want Your Content To Speak To?
“If your content speaks to everyone, it really speaks to no one.
The more specific you can be the better.”
The riches are in the niches. And it couldn’t be more true.
Find your specific avatar, and exactly who is the person you would be talking to, if you were having your content, read out in real life.
Who would benefit from it the most?
Who can you help more than anyone else?
Who would be more appreciative of this, than someone else?
“Sure, this may reduce your engagement, as the audience it applies to is smaller.
But in the long-term, the opportunities you receive will be so much greater, because you’re targeting the exact people that can help you.”
Engagement may drop yes, but, likes ain’t clients.
At the end of the day you want people to understand your content, and make their way over to you, for advice, services or coaching.
Not something that they can smirk at on the feed, and forget it 5 minutes later.
Keep Consistent: Figure Out YOUR Posting Schedule
“Just because other creators are posting 7x days a week, doesn’t mean you have to.
Going from 0-100 right away will only lead to burnout.
Instead, it’s best to start small (even if that’s just posting 2x a week) and build on that over time.”
And the key?
Scheduling in advance. You can simply use the like clock icon, on your desktop, and schedule your content for later.
It means you can save all those good ideas you have.
Allows you to plan in advance, and take the pressure off yourself.
Shows Linkedin you’re committed to posting (helps the algorithm).
Socialize: Network with Industry Peers
It is a social network, after all. Get social.
“Who you network with will be entirely dependent on your end goal.
If your goal is to secure a job, you need to be networking with hiring managers, business owners and CEOs.
If your goal is to land clients, then you need to be networking with potential clients.
This means replying to comments, commenting on their posts, sending personalised connections, and sending DMs.”
Whatever the outcome you want, start putting things in place to get there.
Send connection requests to the right people (you have 100 per week you can use).
Comment on well-performing posts, of people you look up to, or want to get to know.
Regularly post about what interests you and what you know. Impress people.
What Made Indie Start Doing All This?
“18 months ago, I was a student struggling to apply for a graduate role and being rejected by every job I went for.
It made me realise that too many people have degrees and having one just isn’t enough to stand, so that’s when I realised that I needed to leverage my personal brand on LinkedIn to bring job offers to me.
I was able to do this, and 3 months later I’d secured a graduate job role at Flowd.
Personal branding changed my job search around, so I now want to help it do the same for others.”
By just shifting her approach, and putting her name and expertis eout there rather than just her degree, she turned things on its head.
And this is why others are failing.
Their simply sheep in a large field, not knowing which way to turn. And in no way is it their fault. They’re just ding what they think is enough, and it’s not.
And for Indie, it changed everything. She told me about one of her best experiences, of the past 18 months.
“One of my proudest case studies yet was my client Sheila Santos.
She graduated from university in the summer of 2023, and had been unemployed from then up until the moment she came to me in February 2024.
Within 2.5 weeks of us working together, she had secured a job interview in her dream role, all because I taught her how to optimise her LinkedIn profile, build a powerful content strategy, and utilise the platform to its full potential.
Thankfully she aced the interview, and a week later was offered the job. She went from 6 unemployed to working in her dream role after just 3 weeks of us meeting.
Because it was such a fast turn around, it makes it one of my favourites!”
How can you, work with Indie?
Indie can be found right here, on Linkedin. Simply give her a message and you can take things from there.
Also, you can check out the marketing lab here.
Like all of our The Best In guests, we asked Indie, “Who are 3 other creators on LinkedIn people should definitely go follow?” Here are her picks:
Sophie Miller - “She is the reason I started posting on LinkedIn back in 2022, after attending one of her webinars.
Without her, I might not have learnt about the benefits of LinkedIn, so for that reason she’ll always be my favourite creator.”
Luke Redhead - “A lot of creators on LinkedIn like to pump up their success, and it can be very deflating when you’re starting out on the platform and not yet seeing success.
Luke has never done that.
He doesn’t shy away from sharing his failures, as well as his successes. That level of honesty is shown enough on social media, so when I see it, it really stands out.”
Fatima Khan - “Because I’ve seen her journey from the very beginning (I was with her when she started posting at uni), and I’m just so proud of everything she’s achieved!”
Thank you so much to Indie for appearing on Nexus Gecko, and if you’d like to appear in our The Best in series, you can reach out to us here.
What is Nexus Gecko?
Nexus Gecko is a content and sales agency, founded by Claudia Lee.
We are a concise team of writers, SEO specialists and graphic designers who build content systems for companies and entrepreneurs all over the world.
If you would like to know more about having 1 month of content, in just 3 days, all made, managed and scheduled, you can reach out to us here.
