6 LinkedIn Principles That Get PhDs Hired

Hiring is the highest it's ever been.

You might be thinking that's impossible, I'm not getting hired.

It's not because you're not doing what you need to do or you're not trying hard.

It's not because your PhD is not valuable, it's not because you're not valuable.

It's because you're likely invisible to employers.

One of the best ways to start being visible to employers is on LinkedIn.

Here are 6 principles that will make you visible on LinkedIn so you start getting contacted by employers...

1. LinkedIn is not a mystery, it's an algorithm.

A lot of PhDs think LinkedIn is some kind of mystery.

They don't understand how it works.

Maybe they try reaching out to people, they respond to a few people's messages.

They update their profile a little bit and they don't understand why it's not working.

Why are recruiters and employers not contacting them daily, and they should be.

The hiring market's up so high, unemployment's as low as 2% in some cities where there's a lot of PhDs, like Boston, for example.

Unemployment is the lowest it's ever been overall worldwide.

So you should be having people contact you constantly.

If employers are not contacting you, it's because you haven't been thinking about LinkedIn in terms of it just being an algorithm.

It's very simple.

An algorithm is stupid, in one sense.

As long as you know what keyword that it's looking for in your profile, you can show up higher in the search results.

As long as you know that the LinkedIn's algorithm really favors activity.

If you like people's post and you comment on their posta, you're actually going to show up higher in the search results on the LinkedIn that recruiters and employers use.

It's called LinkedIn Recruiter.

So, don't think of it as a mystery.

It's pretty simple.

The more active you are on LinkedIn, the more LinkedIn values you, the higher you show up in search results.

Don't overthink how to be active.

Like posts, comment on posts, connect with more people.

Reach out, give more introductions.

Just be active on LinkedIn.

It's not a mystery, it's an algorithm.

2. Your primary connections matter less.

That's right, primary connections matter less than your secondary connections.

Your secondary connections are the people that are going to help you get a job.

There has actually been studies on this.

They show loose friendships, acquaintances are much more likely to get you a job than people you know very well.

The same is true on LinkedIn.

It's the people that are going to be able to introduce you to hiring managers and recruiters that are going to get you hired.

It's not necessarily to be connected directly to a hiring manager and a recruiter.

It's not about being directly connected to those employees.

So, when you look at somebody on LinkedIn, and this is true in networking events too, quit just searching for the most important person in the room, or the most important person on LinkedIn.

Instead, look for a way to backdoor your way in to getting an introduction to that decision maker.

Look at the shared connections.

If there is somebody you want to connect with, instead of thinking "How can I directly reach out to this person, cold contact them, what's the perfect networking script I need to say?"

Instead of doing that, think of well, who else is this person connected to?

LinkedIn will show you everybody that person is connected to.

You can reach out to one of their connections.

In fact, you likely have a secondary connection, somebody that you're connected with and they're connected with, who you can network with first to get an introduction to that person.

And for us in the Cheeky Scientist Association, this is one of the biggest benefits of the Association, is you get access to 7,000 PhDs who can introduce you to other people.

So they become your secondary connections.

Right now, instead of just focusing on getting more primary connections, focus on looking at who those secondary connections are.

Find the people you want to connect with, and then click that secondary connection button on LinkedIn to see who they're already connected with that you could connect with first.

3. Asking for favors right away puts you in the 'forever box'.

In the 'forever box' you're forever labeled as an ask person, as somebody who just wants help getting a job.

I've had so many people contact me, including the employers that we work with, they tell me that this happens to them all the time too.

Often where a PhD just reaches out and says hello, I have all of these skills, help me get a job, here's my resume, please review it.

Or any combination of those asks.

If you're sending out messages where you're asking for a bunch of stuff right away, or even for one thing to somebody you haven't met before, you're in that forever box.

As in, I'm never going to talk to this person because I know that they just want something from me.

They know that you're not interested in building a relationship.

It's a huge turn off on LinkedIn, so don't send out messages to people asking for help no matter how desperate you are.

And that's really the key here, before you get into desperation mode, before you defend your thesis and realize you're unemployed, before your lab runs out of funding if you're doing a post-doc, make sure you're reaching out adding value to people first.

It's very easy, build that professional relationship, get an introduction to somebody, compliment them on their work, a recent promotion that they have.

4. Future facing profiles to future pace employers.

Future facing means that your profile is focused on where you're going.

Too many PhDs think that their LinkedIn profile needs to be like their academic CV where it's a peer-reviewed timeline or a peer-reviewed history of their work where they're just talking about their job duties, methodologies, the past.

You need to focus on your results, things you've accomplished and how they will apply to the jobs you want in the future.

That's what we mean by making it future facing.

You have to talk about how what you've done is relevant to what you want to do and what you can help companies do.

How you're going to take where you are now and apply it to the future.

When you do this and an employer reads your LinkedIn profile, it future paces them.

So, future pacing is very important, it's a very important concept in your job search in general.

When you show up to an interview, for example, a great question to ask is: can you tell me about a time, a recent time, where you hired somebody and they did a great job on-boarding and fitting themselves into the company culture?

Now, what that does is the employer then tells you a story about somebody who came onboard did a great job, was a great hire, and they start visualizing you as that next great hire.

That's one way to future pace during an interview.

Another way to future pace is to say, well let's say you hire me tomorrow theoretically, what would the on-boarding process look like?

They say well okay, we hire you tomorrow, these would be the next steps, this is what you would do first, here's your first role.

Right, they start to see you in that position.

Future pacing is very valuable.

You can future pace on your LinkedIn profile by talking about what you're going to do in the future.

So employers start saying oh they have achieved this, that's exactly what we need them to achieve in this position.

So making your LinkedIn profile future facing, future paces employers.

5.Skills, job titles, location.

Remember those three things, because those three things are all that matter.

Maybe not all, we don't like to use that kind of language as PhDs, but it's about 95% of what matters on your LinkedIn profile.

If you want to show up in the search results on LinkedIn Recruiter, those are the three things that they're searching for.

If you go to LinkedIn Recruiter, there's three big search fields that recruiters and hiring managers can type information into.

Guess what they are?

Skills. Meaning the skills you're looking for in a job candidate.

Job titles. Meaning the job titles you're trying to fill.

Location. Meaning the location where the job opening is.

The problem is that PhDs focus on everything but those three things.

You've never had an industry job, so you don't think to put job titles on your LinkedIn profile.

You need to put job titles, in your headline.

Whatever the top two or three job titles you want are, put those job titles in your headline, put them in your summary.

Talk about them, say I have skills that are relevant to an R&D scientist position in industry.

I have skills that are relevant or I've done this that's relevant to a project management position.

Find a way to put those job titles in your LinkedIn profile or you're never going to show up in the search results.

Same with your skills, focus on not just your technical skills, but your transferable skills.

Go to job postings, click as many job postings as you can, look through them, look for the transferable skills and the technical skills that are used the most, put those on your LinkedIn profile.

And then finally, location.

Too many PhDs think that by leaving the location blank on LinkedIn that they're going to show up in more search results, but you actually show up in less because every employer is trying to fill a job in a certain location.

And trust me, they want somebody who's already in that location.

It doesn't mean that they won't hire you if you have to relocate.

It just means that they're first going to search for people in that location.

So put your top one, two, three locations where you would like to work.

Your top one or three, up to three different cities that you really want to work in and then put this phrase on your LinkedIn profile, preferably on your headline too, if you're willing to relocate, put that phrase: willing to relocate.

But you have, have to make sure that you show up in the search results for skills, job titles and location.

Everything else is a distant second.

6. Be a cyborg, not a human or a robot.

So a lot of people will tell you to be a touchy-feely human, to tell a narrative, to be a bleeding heart on LinkedIn.

They will tell you to open up and be vulnerable and authentic and show who you are to the world.

This is nonsense, okay?

You need to be professional on LinkedIn.

You want to get hired by a Pfizer, a Dow Chemical, a Google, an Apple, these companies they're not looking for someone that's talking about everything they're passionate about.

Somebody that's being overly vulnerable, or weird, or touchy-feely.

For STEM positions especially, they want a professional that's going to come in, and get the job done.

So, yes, show that human part of yourself, things that you've done outside of STEM, outside of academia, things you've volunteered for.

Show a little bit of your human side, but don't overdo it, be professional.

But at the same time, don't be a robot.

Don't just list your quantified results.

Don't just list your skills, et cetera.

Talk a little bit about yourself, tell a little bit of your professional story.

Not your overly personal story, a little bit of your professional story.

So when I say a cyborg, I mean be part human, part robot.

That perfect combination of being professional but being seen as a human that somebody can have a conversation with.

Remember to sign up for this week's LinkedIn webinar, Thursday July 25th at 1:00 p.m. & 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. At the webinar I'm going to show you specifically how to create a LinkedIn profile that will increase the number of interviews you get called into, and therefore increase the amount of your salary offer. Register for the webinar here.