Showcase your skills and passions

One of the things that I think helped me in my career transition was showcasing some of my skills regularly on LinkedIn through posts and articles.

The benefits of this can include:

• Practising and developing your skill;
• Demonstrating your skills to potential employers who look at your profile;
• Building your confidence in sharing, and possibly through receiving positive feedback;
• Connecting with like-minded people;
• Unexpected opportunities.

Choose a skill or interest

For me, the skill I shared was creating visual summaries of information that I had learned about learning and development. This helped me to remember the information and helped others who were learning about similar topics. It also led to unexpected opportunities such as being asked to create graphic summaries for a book publisher.

But your skill could be anything, for example:

• If you are good at graphic design, create designs and write a post about the tools you used or choices you made.
• If you are interested in historical research, write posts about something interesting from history.
• If you are good at writing, share things you have written.
• If you are good at making videos or animations, share them.
• If you are good at using a particular piece of software, share tips and tricks for using it.
• If you are good at photography, share your photos.
• If you love reading, share your book reviews and recommendations.
• If you enjoy journaling, share (appropriate) highs and lows of your week that show how you have overcome challenges, solved problems or worked as part of a team.
• If you are passionate about sustainability, mental health, racism, or something else, share tips and information about it.
• If you have a side hustle, write about how your business is going. Share your process.
• Share things you have learnt about your skills and interests. If you take a course on LinkedIn Learning or elsewhere, write about your top takeaways or how you will apply this new knowledge.
• Share and comment on articles you have read.
• Write posts based on your area of expertise or passion.
• Start a newsletter on LinkedIn about your area of interest.
• Curate and share sources and links for your area of expertise.

Identify your skills

If you're struggling to think of a skill or topic:

• Think about things which come easily and naturally to you, but don't seem so easy for others.
• Think about what other people come to you to ask for advice about.
• What could you teach someone else about?
• Ask other people what they think your skills and talents are.
• Think about what you spend your time doing, in and out of work. What do you read about and learn about?
• What would you do with your time if you didn't need to work to earn money?

If you're really stuck, look up people you admire on LinkedIn, or people who have the job that you want. What sort of things do they post? Keep looking until you find something that makes you think, "I could do that!"

Ikigai

A few years ago, I came across the Japanese concept of ikigai , which means 'reason for being'. Your chosen skill or topic could be taken from any of the four areas on the diagram below: what you love, what you are good at, what you can be paid for, or what the world needs. Even better if it falls into more than one category!

Choose a focus

Try to choose one skill or one topic and post fairly consistently about that, rather than creating a haphazard mixture of different types and topics. This can be hard if, like me, you are interested in lots of different things (sometimes described as a multipotentialite or 'scanner '). I get around this on other social media platforms by having multiple accounts, each focusing on a particular interest. On LinkedIn, I've mostly stuck to topics related to the career I've transitioned into (instructional design), showcasing my skills of creating visual summaries and writing.

Think about how you want others to see you on this platform, and share other skills and interests on different platforms. If you want to, you can use a website, blog or service such as Linktree to connect all of the platforms where you share content. Or you can keep them separate.

Give value to others

Think about how you can give value to other people who want to learn about your topic or are interested in reading about it. But don't be discouraged if you don't get much reaction to begin with. Don't do it for the 'likes' or just to impress potential employers. Do it for yourself. Keep going, and people will start to find you, follow you, and interact with you.

Share your gifts

As Marianne Williamson said in her 1992 book, A Return to Love:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?... Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do... And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

As Apple stated in their 2018 advert, accompanied by a Billie Eilish song, "Share your gifts."

Demonstrate transferable skills

These areas may not end up being the things that earn you a living. Creating content about a hobby or passion demonstrates that you have a transferable skill that you can apply to the area you want to work in.

However, think about how what you are sharing on LinkedIn is different from what you may be sharing on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. If you are just sharing a photograph of a coaster you have crocheted, LinkedIn may not be the best place. But if you are sharing a tutorial, this may demonstrate transferable skills in writing, photography, video or instruction. Or you may be writing about what crochet has taught you about transferable skills such as resilience, finishing projects, connecting with others, etc. Remember that you could write a post that includes a link to a blog post, YouTube/Vimeo video or your portfolio, rather than sharing the whole thing on LinkedIn. Keep in mind what you want a potential employer to see about you when they look at your LinkedIn profile.

Check and edit your writing before posting. Make use of tools such as Grammarly or draft your posts in a word processing tool with a spell-check and then copy and paste into LinkedIn.

Post regularly, but not necessarily on a schedule

Don't feel that you have to constrain yourself to a particular schedule to 'beat the algorithm'. If you force yourself to share every day or on another regular schedule, you may end up sharing low-quality posts. It is better to post irregularly, when you feel you have something valuable to share.

Research the algorithm if you want, but don't feel limited by it. Trust that some of the people who are interested will find your content, and don't worry about the numbers too much. As I said above, do this for you, not for the 'likes' and followers.

LinkedIn makes it really easy to set up a newsletter (https://www.dhirubhai.net/help/linkedin/answer/a517925/manage-a-newsletter-on-linkedin ). When you start, you have to select a publishing frequency, but you are not tied to this in any way. My newsletter says it is published weekly, but sometimes I write two posts in one week, and other times I go three months without posting because something else in my life have taken priority (currently my new job). No one seems to mind! I write an article when I have something to say, not because it's been a week since I last wrote.

Or you can just share in posts, either by themselves or linking to content that you have published elsewhere.

You may also find it helpful to keep a list of possible topics. I have a few lists in the notes app on my phone of topics that I'm currently learning about or thinking about. But other times an idea for an article just comes to me, for example this article, which was inspired by a conversation yesterday with my sister, Laura Knight , about her career transition.

Just start

Just get started by creating simple posts on LinkedIn about what you are doing. Don't worry about creating a 'brand' - that can come later, if you want. I started by just sharing images of my summaries and gradually built on that with a newsletter, logo, blog, etc.

Connect with others

Showcasing your skills linked to a passion or hobby will lead to richer connections on LinkedIn and elsewhere.

Engage with comments on your posts. Mention other people who have inspired you or who you have learned from or connected with. Credit and link to your sources.

Find other people who are posting about your area of expertise or interest. Follow them, connect with them, comment on their posts, share their posts, or message them. Get conversations going.

Curate the people you follow, so that your feed is filled with things that you are interested in. Don't compare yourself and your journey to others. If someone's posts make you feel bad about yourself, unfollow them. View others as your network, not your competition. Celebrate their successes and support them on their journey. Make LinkedIn work for you as a source of inspiration, connection and learning.

Share your authentic self (or a curated version of your authentic self, depending on how you want to be seen on LinkedIn). And trust that the people who need to see what you are sharing (for your benefit, for their benefit, or both) will find it.