Transcription
[music] Good morning everybody. This is just Ask Julia, where we share tips, trends, insights, and resources to help you transform your career and elevate your success. I am Julia Holian.
I will be leading today's session on the new LinkedIn algorithm. If you are watching live today, we will have a live Q&A session after this presentation. So feel free to stay on. Um, you can ask us questions about anything. It can be about this topic. It can be about absolutely anything career-oriented. Um, we're always happy to help.
If you are watching this as a recording, uh, feel free to click the link in the description below and you can sign up for other or future Just Ask Julia sessions and join in or or watch other replays. So let's go ahead and get started.
So I am going to do my best to articulate what is happening with the new LinkedIn algorithm. So if we look at it, um, I'm going to break this into three different segments. I've created visuals to help kind of understand what that looks like. But we've got what is called Llama. You know, this is LLM. Um, but LinkedIn is calling it is Llama is the first section of it. Then we have 360 Brew. And then we have the AI-powered search. Meaning these are the three sort of components of how they have altered their, um, algorithm. Not all of this is new. A lot of it is an enhancement or a refinement of of what they've been doing for a long time, but they certainly have, um, incorporated the AI segment into it. So, let's break this down.
So if we look at the Llama 3, this is how LinkedIn is now looking at you, like how you are evaluated. So I think it's very important to know that LinkedIn is looking at everything together. They are looking at your profile. They're looking at your posts. They're looking at your engagement history and everything. And that is creating what they would consider to be your professional identity. So what is your profile saying about you? Who is in your network? What kind of activity are you doing on LinkedIn? They're blending all of this to try to understand who you are. And for those of you who, um, I know a lot of you have like a love-hate relationship with with LinkedIn, if you have, if you're kind of on the hate side of it, um, I think a lot of times people look at that and they're like, I just don't know how to understand what they're doing. Um, I don't know how they're working for me. But LinkedIn's goal here, as I see it, is that they are trying to understand you better so that they can feed you the things that you want to see to make it a better experience, and they are trying to align you with the right people to make that a worthwhile relationship. So they're looking at everything that you're doing all at once. So if you looked at LinkedIn before, kind of separately, like I've got my profile, I do my job search, you know, I'm posting things, maybe I'm commenting on things. It's now like holistically looking at all of that. Um, and so when you are looking at that, you want to think, um, from their perspective, that they're saying, this person is about these things. This person is about these topics. They're about these problems. They serve these audiences. They care about these things this person is about. So as you are writing your profile, as you are commenting on things, as you are connecting with people, as you are searching across the platform, you're sending messages to LinkedIn. Um, and so I would say for anybody on here who is in a job search, I would try to kind of stay in a very particular ecosystem so that you make sure LinkedIn is really working for you. Um, if you are an accountant, I wouldn't go searching on things about photography, not when you're in a job search, because you really want LinkedIn to help you in your job search. I think if you are generally working, you can probably veer into some different areas, but a lot of our clients are in a job search. And so I would tell them, try, try to really send as many clear messages to LinkedIn about who you are, what you do, and so on.
So LinkedIn is looking at this person is about. They're also saying this person or their content appeals to. So as they're looking at your profile, like which recruiters would want to see your profile? As you comment, who else is going to want to see those types of comments? So it is, it is really trying to dig down on that and try to be of more better, bigger, better value to people.
So the next component is the 360 Brew, and that is about how you rank in things. So ranking can, for some people in a job search, think, well, where am I going to show up in a job search? Um, I would say LinkedIn is also thinking, how are you ranking in terms of is your content getting pushed out there and what are people looking at? So it predicts where you're going to show up on feeds. And how does it do that? It looks at, does it think that your content is valuable? That lends to your expertise or that's showcasing your expertise? It's going to evaluate, will your content be trusted? Now, trust often aligns back to, are you already saying that this is who I am and what I do? That also lends to your expertise. Um, it predicts who is going to show interest in in your, um, in your content or even in your profile. So again, it's looking for the consistency. Are you really clear about everything? That goes to a thing called dwell time. And a lot of people don't really know or think about dwell time. This is not new to LinkedIn, by the way. Anybody who's been in a LinkedIn workshop with us before knows that we do talk about dwell time. This is looking at, let's say you do a post. Um, how long are people going to stay on that post and read it? That doesn't mean that your post has to be, uh, long. It does need mean it, it needs to add value. It needs to have meaning. It needs to, um, create some kind of curiosity. So dwell time is something that they've always tracked, but they're, they're sort of specifically calling it out a little bit more strongly now so people think about that. Is are you doing things on LinkedIn that is getting other people to want to pay attention to it? So the dwell time is something that they look at. Um, lastly, who's going to comment? They're, they're looking at what you're doing is saying, "Is anybody going to comment back?" Um, and that we would call engagement. Um, one of the, one of the tips that I give to people when I'm thinking of like a comment and what kind of a comment would you make? And Liz and I, we often, um, my colleague Liz Hilton, who's on here, what she and I often talk about when you're thinking of of commenting is that you want to comment with substance. And a lot of people when they comment, they just kind of, um, they just kind of say, you know, thank you, congratulations, like they use what I call the easy button on LinkedIn and say, congratulations. I would recommend to everybody that when you comment, you always think of, what can I contribute to this conversation? If there's nothing that you're trying to really contribute because there isn't that kind of a conversation, then maybe you want to just say something more that that would help somebody else understand why you're commenting. Let me give you an example that probably all of you could consider this week. Most all of you, I bet on every, any given week, will get see a post where somebody that you used to work with has a new job. Maybe they got promoted. Maybe they, they have been interviewing and they got a new job, and most people will hit the easy button and say, congratulations. If you want to get more sort of visibility on your profile and you want LinkedIn to think that you are adding value, instead of saying just congratulations, I want you to write a paragraph about how you know the person, why you think they're great, what you think they're going to bring to that next job. I want you to kind of gush on them, like just write them a little bit of a love letter. So, what this could sound like is, "Congratulations, Joanna. I am so excited for you getting a new job at," and I would tag the company they're going to. "You and I, when we worked together at," and you can tag the company that you worked at when we worked there, "you were the best person to go to whenever I had a question about X. You knew so much about this thing." And it was always very interesting to me to have conversations where you would uncover things that I had never thought of. You were the best person when we were working on such and such project. So you're going to talk about the work that you did, the type of maybe projects that you worked on, the environment that you were in, but you're going to, you're going to showcase that. And then you might wrap it up by saying, um, "I'm really excited for your new colleagues because they are going to love partnering with you or collaborating with you on all the new projects you'll be tackling." What happens there when you do that kind of a, um, congratulations letter is first of all, LinkedIn is saying you're not taking the easy route. You're actually contributing to LinkedIn. You're also saying something really gracious about this person. And what I think you should be caring about is that other people are more likely to see that and be more curious about you. So if you are trying to build your presence on LinkedIn, what you want is to get people to go look at your profile, and one of the best ways to do that is to, um, comment on other things because that introduces you to an audience that is not your usually your first-degree connections. That is going to be all the new, like in this scenario, all the new colleagues that that person is going to have at this new job. It could be all the people that that person Joanna has interviewed with as she's been looking and searching for a new job. Um, it could also just be her other, her first-degree connections that are your second, uh, degree connections. So, commenting is really a big deal on LinkedIn. So, I would, I would build that out.
Um, so when we look at the AI-powered search, the, which is the third piece of the, um, algorithm, um, this is how you get found. So this is kind of more of how are people looking for you. So your profile and content have to be clear about who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and the impacts that you make. So, when you were looking at your profile, um, we want you to build that out. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later as to what that, that looks like. But we want you to build out your profile so that people are really, really clear about that contribution that you make. Um, and I, and I would say today because LinkedIn, they're, they're searching, um, in, in, in that sort of the, the LLM way, the AI way. I, I would say recruiters are looking for you and saying, "I'm looking for somebody who does this and this and this and this," as opposed to all the keywords that we were looking at for the longest time. And we said everybody has to have keywords and they've got to have the skill section. You still need to have those, but keyword stuffing, um, as it's been referred to, doesn't really cut it today. Um, the generic leadership fluff doesn't cut it. Being vague about what you love and what you're passionate about isn't enough. In today's LinkedIn, you want to be really clear about who you are and what you do, the outcomes that you create, and you want to sound like a natural person, which makes it kind of trickier because you really want to sound like you're, you're, you are a human. So, your profile has to be clear about those things. Um, you want to use the natural language to align with how people search today. So if you have been looking at your About section, for example, and it's kind of was a copy-paste of your resume, or maybe you started out saying, "I am a financial leader with 15 plus years of experience doing this and this and this." You want to, you want to put some color in there. You want to let people see who you are. Okay. So you're a financial leader. Who do you really work with and work for, and how do you help them, and what's the impact that you make, and how do they benefit from working with you? So using that natural language.
So next slide I'm going to show you is a little busy, but it's kind of breaking things down a little bit more broadly. So when you look at the themes of the new algorithm, I would say there's genuine engagement, meaning are you contributing valuable comments? Are you creating real conversations with people? Are you trying to be helpful more than promoting yourself? Are you trying to be like, engaging with, you know, people who care about who you are and what you do? Are you contributing meaningful insights? And are you telling things in like a story? Because that's what gets people, you know, curious and wanting to read it. Are you being authentic? Meaning, are you making sure that what you're talking about and what you're searching for and what you're doing on LinkedIn matches who you are? Um, are you speaking in your natural voice? And are you, um, are you doing things because you're trying to add value and you're not just trying to, um, do kind of like clickbait? Meaning, I think one of the things that LinkedIn is really trying to get away from because they specifically talk about this is they've noticed that over the last year or two, people have been going into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or wherever and they are creating a, um, uh, you know, some kind of a post that they want to do, but the post is more to just sort of like data dump information out, and they don't want that. They want you to have more of a personal story. They want want you to say, "Hey, here's what I looked into. This is what I studied, and this is what I learned, and this is what I did with it, and this is why it's valuable." And that does not mean that you have to be 100% talking business, business, business all day long. But you do have to connect the dots. I'll give you an example. If you go back and you look at my profile, you'll notice that in the month of October, I put out a number of posts. I think it went one, one a week. And it was talking about my trip to Paris and Amsterdam. But what I did is when I was there, I was talking to people. I talked to the cab drivers. I talked to the people in restaurants. And I was asking them about kind of like a day in the life of the people who live there. And I was trying to connect the dots back to how do they think about their jobs and their careers. Um, and so I created posts that were around talking about the difference between sort of the American mindset and the European mindset. Is that 100% aligned with everything that, that we do at Career Transformation Partners in terms of writing resumes and LinkedIn profiles and helping people interview and network and find that next job? Not directly, but it does talk about that mindset in your career. And so, LinkedIn liked that. I got some really good, um, impressions and likes on that because it was more authentic to my story and what I was talking about. So, you can do those things, too. Um, I always tell people that when you're going to post, try to come up with maybe four things that you want to talk about, put them on rotation. So, for example, one of them might be going to a class, or it could be about networking. And maybe once a month, you talk about that experience. And so you're weaving in who you are and what you do and how you see the world and what you think would be of value to to the people that you're connected with. And all of that really lends back to that genuine engagement and authenticity.
Now, I would still say LinkedIn does want you to look at that domain expertise. They do want you to prove what you know, um, what kind of challenges you've seen, lessons learned, the results that you've been able to achieve. So, specifically on your profiles, you should be weaving in some of those results. Um, but tell them in a story way, not in that sort of resume bullet way where it just says, you know, increase, decrease, raise, lowered. Show the context of what you were doing, why it was important, and then what those outcomes were, and share your observations and opinions about them. Um, tell stories about the projects that you worked on. Um, they want you to be consistent, so that shows honesty. It builds trust. Um, it says that you're being genuine, so they are really looking at that. And then we kind of go back to that dwell time, um, how long are people spending reading what you are commenting or posting? Um, it tracks the time that you even spend reading other things because it says the more time you spend on that, the more interested you are. So, going back to my comment about if you are an accountant, don't go look up photography. Or if you do look up photography, don't get up from your desk and go make yourself a sandwich and come back 20 minutes later because LinkedIn thinks that now you're really interested in photography and it's kind of, you know, blurring its understanding of who you are. Um, lastly, as you can see here on the slide, you know, likes, kind of interestingly, are not a big, big deal anymore. I would say still go give people the thumbs up, the like, celebrate, support, love, insightful, funny, but if you are a content creator, likes are not really what they're looking at. They are looking at how people are, um, engaging, you know, with what you're doing. Are they commenting back? So, you know, the thumbs up are great, but I would recommend that you think of, how can I get people to enjoy what I'm talking about and be curious and want to continue the conversation? Um, as I said before, they're kind of moving away from those AI-generated content, meaning go ahead and use ChatGPT if you want to to create a post, but you need to customize it and make it your voice. Um, and not making it a post just to get clicks because authenticity is what they are looking for.
So other noticeable changes that I just, I can't not tell you about on LinkedIn because a couple of them are a little interesting. Um, improvements to LinkedIn, they are really trying to use this new algorithm to, um, uh, have better, um, recommendations to you in your newsfeed. So your newsfeed gets better. Now, you have to know that you feed your newsfeed. If you don't like what you're seeing in there or you're like, "Why is this stuff showing up?" That is an indication to you that LinkedIn thinks that that's what you want to see. Um, maybe you need to revise your profile. Maybe you need to go up to the search bar and really start searching for what you want to see so that you're feeding that. Um, LinkedIn is trying to do better job matching for people. Uh, so that those of you who are in a job search are getting better matches to that. Um, and they are also trying to use this as a way to, um, send you people or identify for people, you know, other people that you may want to know. I think they've done a re, relatively good job for me on that because usually they're showing me people who are in sort of that inner circle, people I've worked with or worked at companies that I used to work for in the past, but they, they're trying to bolster that up because they want LinkedIn to be the place where you, you are talking, you are collaborating, you are meeting people. Um, for those of you who don't like going to networking functions, they want LinkedIn to be like your networking function where you're making those, those great connections. Um, the interesting one is verifications. Now, I personally have not seen this hit, except I did have two clients in the last six months who said they had a little bit of this happen, but I have not seen it really hit the waves fully. But executive titles in the future are going to need to be verified by the workplace. I think that is very interesting. They do not want people putting out on their profiles that they are a CFO, CEO, CMO, CIO, anything like that. Maybe even the VP. So, when you go and you put in your company and you put in your title, apparently, from what I understand, they're going to, they're going to say that the company has to verify that you held that title. I'm not really sure what completely is driving this, but that's interesting. Now, what I do like is the second bullet, which says that in the future, they are going to have recruiters and talent acquisition professionals be required to, um, complete the verified badge. And I think for a lot of job seekers, they will tell you that they get a lot of spam and weird stuff that comes through, and it's going to be helpful to be able to validate that a recruiter or a talent acquisition professional is who they say they are. Um, and then lastly, I think the job searches are one of the biggest noticeable changes. It is AI-driven now. If you go to LinkedIn and you look up at the search bar, it no longer has all the filters in there. You're no longer looking for just like a title and keywords. It says in that search bar, "I'm looking for." And so what you should do is you should write out, "I am looking for an emerging growth company in this industry who does these things, who has this kind of product, has this many people, is in this geographic area." You're going to type it like you're doing any kind of a, you know, other search in any other platform, but that's how you are going to search, and that's how recruiters are going to search for you. That's what I think is really, really interesting. Interesting is that recruiters now, in their LinkedIn Recruiter platform, they can still put in that they're looking for people who have certain skills in the skills section. They have certain keywords that are in their profile, but they can do a whole sort of information dump into LinkedIn Recruiter and saying, "I'm looking for someone who is passionate about or curious about or has done these things, has been at this kind of a company," and that company, like they can list all the company names, which really for those of you in a job search should make you think about, um, are you getting all of those things into your profile? And I think the About section is probably one of the great ways for those of you who don't want to show, and we recommend that you don't show, like really old, like 25, 30-year-old information, but you do want to show that you worked at maybe PepsiCo or, um, uh, you know, KPMG or wherever, but that's older experience. You might tell your story in your LinkedIn profile on your About section saying like, "Hey, here's kind of the journey that I, that I took. I've been at these big companies. I've been at small companies." So, you really tell your story in there, and that's how it's going to help you to get found.
So, what should you do? Be clear in your profile about what you do, why you do it, who you do it for, how you add value, and the impacts you make. So, [snorts] if you worked on a project, explain the project and what your role is and how that was impactful for your team, your department, your company, your customers, whomever it may be. Um, and, and get really clear about, you know, what, what your contribution was. Um, so do this on your profile, but also in your activities, you want to make sure that you are sharing that information there, too.
So, your homework assignment is to go back to your LinkedIn profile and revise your headline and be really clear about what you do. Um, as a matter of fact, for the longest time, we have sort of told people in your headline, use all 220 characters and really kind of put in specifically, um, the skills that you have, but, um, the new algorithm is recommending that you add in there. I would probably put it at the tail end of those, of that headline, um, what your purpose is, what the value is that you bring. So, you know, "I help, um, companies, you know, because you're maybe you're a marketing person, I help companies 10x their, um, their reach." So, you're going to do this in your headline. You're going to rewrite your About section. You're going to look at your position descriptions and get a lot more clear on what you, what you did, the, the value that you added, and the impact that you made. Um, but also as you comment, your commenting and posting, you want to make sure that you're clear about those things.
So, you're going to get more targeted. Also, another punch list for you. I want you to curate your network. I want you to connect with people in your profession and industry. I wouldn't spend a lot of time like deleting people who don't match up with that, but as you're going forward, make sure that you are connecting with people in your profession and industry and then follow those people as well. If they are content creators, if you're looking at your LinkedIn profile and you're not seeing what you want to see, you need to search for it in the search bar so that you are telling the system and redirecting the system to what you want to see, what you want to learn, what you want to know. Um, make sure that you're building genuine connections, which means you have to be on LinkedIn and contributing. You need to comment on things, I would say, daily, and you comment with substance. I would post once a week. As a matter of fact, it's very, kind of interesting. Um, one of the things about the algorithm now is that they don't really want you to be posting like every single day. So, for those of you who thought of doing that, they're, they're kind of frowning on it. They would rather have you do a really good, meaningful, impactful post once a week. I would also recommend that you join groups on LinkedIn. Having been a former recruiter, I will tell you this can actually help you a lot in how you get found in job searches. So, join groups that align with your profession and industry. Contribute in those groups, ask questions, um, answer questions, get involved, and then I would always tag people when you are commenting or posting because that's how you pull in these other audiences. Like when I talked about Joanna getting that new job, I said tag the new company that she's going to so that company sees that they're being recognized. Even tag the company that you worked at before. Um, you could tag people, you know, as well that maybe you worked with, but try to do that because on the right, you're going to see some other themes here. Your network shapes your relevance. Posts and comments teach the platform what you care about. And professional clarity and consistency show LinkedIn that you are authentic, you are trusted, and you are valuable to the community.
So lastly, I just want to say in managing your time and activity, um, the good news here, posting daily is discouraged. Volume is no longer important. Value and validity are not measured by likes and posts should always be authentic, um, to you. Um, bad news, LinkedIn promotes users who are highly active on the platform. So that doesn't mean posting all the time, but if you go off the platform sort of like, you know, almost every day, your visibility sort of diminishes. So, especially if you're in a job search, I would say Monday through Friday, you're in the platform for an hour every day. Um, you're searching, you're looking, you're connecting, you're following, you're commenting, you're doing all of that. Um, but I will tell you, three weeks has always kind of been a little bit of a benchmark on LinkedIn. If you, if you've kind of been away from it and you haven't done anything for three weeks, your ranking decreases and your ranking decreases in a lot of different spaces. So, you want to make sure that you don't take your foot off the gas. Um, so what does your activity need to look like on a daily basis? I would say manage your newsfeed, search for what you want to see, follow companies and people, comment on posts, and always do that by adding value. Do not hit the easy buttons. Um, share posts with valued connections. Push things forward. People don't always do that. They think of commenting, but share things with other people that you think might be curious and interested. Um, you can, you can, uh, repost. You can repost with thoughts. You can also send, um, posts to other people.
Weekly activity, post one time a week. My clients, I tell them to pick four topics. We're going to put them on rotation. Week one and week five, we may talk about their networking experience that month. Week two and week six, we might talk about a book or an article that they read. Week three and week seven, it's going to be the next thing. And so on and so forth. When you have four things that you know you're going to talk about, you can always kind of keep those four things top of mind. So everybody you talk to, everything you read, everything you're doing, you can think, "Oh, does it fit into one of those four buckets?" Now I'm kind of like figuring out what I want to talk about. Um, I would say on a weekly basis, search and apply for positions. You probably, if you're in a job search, have noticed that jobs are going up and they're coming down really fast, like within 24 to sometimes 72 hours. So, you do need to, you to look. I would say searching for positions Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are your best days because people quit on Mondays and Fridays. Recruiters sometimes post on Sundays to get ahead of the game. Um, and so having been a former recruiter, I would say Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
Um, lastly, if you want more help on any of this, we have a community. So, kind of pushing, uh, we're done with the LinkedIn. I'm going to, uh, selflessly push our community, but we have created a community to help you out. And so, um, we have three different levels. The Accelerate level is where you are going to get the most value and you are going to get resources. You're going to get weekly coaching. Um, but you also get to collaborate with other people, and we would love for you to join us. So please, um, go ahead and check it out.
And, um, I always have to recognize my colleague Liz Helton, who is on here. She is my, my partner in all of this. Um, please connect with us on LinkedIn. It is a great place if you have further questions. If you connect with us, send us a message in that connection request. Tell us that you were here so that we can all over the course of time remember how we met, but you can also then easily send us a question if you want to. So you can do that through, through LinkedIn. Um, so we'd love to have you, have you connect with us there.
Um, so for those of you who are here in the meeting live, um, we are going to start our open Q&A. Um, for those of you who are watching the replay, thank you for tuning in. Uh, you can click the link in the description below and sign up for future Just Ask Julia sessions. Um, but for those of you who are here, I am going to stop sharing my screen and I'm going to open it up for questions. I see that there are some things in the chat.