My LinkedIn Journey

These past couple months have been nothing but amazing progress within my career and my personal life. Let me start by providing some background.

Prior to June this year, I had never touched LinkedIn, never networked with anyone, and was not the best with my communication. I did however partake in a summer program called Xtern. Xtern acted as a middleman recruiter for motivated college students looking for an internship. I was one of the lucky one hundred and fifty candidates selected for this program out of the two thousand applicants. After selected, I was moved onto the interview stage. I landed my internship at Mursix Corporation and was brought officially into the Xtern program.

Xtern brought so much to the table in terms of benefits they provided. Not only did they provide free housing and an internship but they also brought these professional development events hosted in Indianapolis, IN throughout the Summer. My internship was around two hours away from the first event so I was initially planning on not going. I remember the event was on a weekend and it was Thursday when something in me was just screaming, "You need to go". I was thinking to myself that I really did not have anything to lose.

I go to the Xtern event and there's lots of the other Xterns there. Lots of presentations from different CEO's and upper management talking about the tech industry, culture, and more. But there was one presentation from Adam Scholtes where he was discussing the importance of really honing in on building your brand on LinkedIn and just networking.

I took this presentation to heart and went back to my dorm and instantly created a LinkedIn Account. I started setting up and filling in the details of my account. At this point I had zero connections and I knew the journey was going to be daunting and have its ups and downs but I was determined no matter what.

I started with making connections with people at my internship along with Adam Scholtes. I maybe got around 25-30 connections pretty quickly. After this I noticed that you can click on your first connections, look at who they are connected with, and even add them. I started doing this for all my connections along with making good use of the first free month of LinkedIn premium. Essentially, it was a lot of cold adding people and just hoping that they would connect.

Every time that I would make a new connection, I would send them a message and I liked to keep it simple. I would state who I am, what I've done, and why I am connecting with them. This kept going on for the next week. By the end of the week I already had around 75 connections. Most of the people that I had reached out too were all just messaging over LinkedIn. No zoom meetings or calls had taken place.

One particular individual I had reached out too changed all of this. His name is Ken Ferguson , A IT executive and IT Leadership recruiter. Ken asked me to hop on an hour call. I was absolutely thrilled and happy to hop onto a call. I was nervous and not know what to expect. I was just throwing myself out into unknown territory, but I did prepare some questions for the meeting.

I remember hopping on the call and Ken was so nice and warm towards me. He started asking me questions about what I was interested in and providing some of his own insight about who he was. I started asking Ken questions I had prepared like: what he thinks makes a great leader, observations he's seen from helping companies hire people, what soft skills are valuable, and so forth.

I was only expecting the meeting to be about an hour long. Time goes on and two hours had passed and I felt just a straight adrenaline rush from hearing the advice and insight Ken had provided. We went over a wide array of topics like career advice, personal advice, a template for taking a job, building my brand on LinkedIn, investing, etc.

I really could not believe how much help Ken had provided and at the cost of nothing. A whole two hour meeting which has set up the foundation for my whole LinkedIn journey. I really want to thank Ken Ferguson for all of the help he has provided along the way and for believing in me.

At this point, I decided to challenge myself to have at least three zoom meetings a week with Cyber Security professionals and CISOs. This is where my LinkedIn journey really started to sprout as after around two weeks, I had reached over one hundred connections. I had completely blown my goal of having three zoom meetings every week and was having around five to seven meetings every week.

I did not care if the person was at the top of management like a CISO or if they were in a more technical position like Cyber Security Analyst, I was happy to meet people. A lot of people underestimate the sheer value of advice. I love the saying, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". The importance is that you hear a lot of perspectives from all sides of the spectrum and formulate your own opinion.

After about a month, I had around thirty meetings with different people. One important advice that I received from Ken is to be industrious. I took notes on each person, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of the people that I had met with to easily recall important details from the last meeting, I always met with new people, and I retained my connections I've made by continuing to reach out with them.

As of today, (three months of being on LinkedIn) I have made 800 connections and had 83 zoom meetings/calls. I have received lots of amazing career advice and personal advice. I am so grateful for everyone that I have had the opportunity to chat with. I have had more growth in these past three months than I ever had in my entire life.

Just a note, I started from scratch with zero connections and nothing to go off of to where I am today. I really wanted to write this article to help demonstrate that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Here are 10 key takeaways I have learned in my Linkedin Journey from my own experiences and others:

1. Networking is so important. It's about who you know, but it is also about who knows you. All the people I have talked to on LinkedIn have told me they have received most of their jobs and career advancements from having a connection.
2. Everyone fails in life. Failure should not be taken as a negative thing. Life is not about whether or not you are going to fail, it is about the actions you take when it happens.
3. Always have your goals set. It is okay to not know where you are going in the short term, but having an overarching goal can help save a lot of time and help put you back into perspective.
4. Don't wait until tomorrow. If there is something that you want to start, don't wait until tomorrow. It's always easy to brush it off until tomorrow, but that eventually becomes a habit. Be a go-getter, chase your dreams, and don't be afraid to fail.
5. Be open to all perspectives and advice. People come from different backgrounds and culture. No matter how similar people's interests and career paths are, each opinion is unique. There is always something that can be learned. Once you have different perspectives, form your own opinion and share it with others.
6. Communication is important. I am an introvert and I started out being so nervous to talk to new people in the tech field. Let alone I was nervous about talking to people in general. During my LinkedIn journey not only did my nervousness improve, but also my communication. It is important to be able to communicate to upper executives, general users, managers, friends, etc. Be able to empathize and understand certain niche's from each level.
7. Don't get complacent. Never stop learning and never take what you know for granted. There will always be more to learn and more to see out there. You need a growth mindset to be able to succeed as there's more information and you can continue to improve no matter how far you are in your journey.
8. It's okay to take smaller steps. It's always nice to have that huge promotion or new career position, but you won't always be taking giant leaps in life. There are times when smaller steps are going to be needed to reach a goal. If you always try to take giant leaps, you will fall eventually.
9. Share information with others. It's always great to improve yourself, but bring others along with you and share advice/mentor. I am writing this article on the basis that I want to uplift others and I want to see others succeed with me.
10. Take care of your mental health. Burnouts may happen in your career or personal life. Be sure to take a break from time to time and give yourself recognition of the hard work you've put in. Your mental health is the most important part and it's what will keep you going strong.

Again, thank you everyone that I have met along the way on my LinkedIn journey. Even if we've had a small conversation or a lengthy one, everyone matters to me and I hope the communities of LinkedIn continue to provide the help that I received and I wish everyone looking for that help all the success.