When you have time, again, this is week after week, you’re spending a little bit of time here on your LinkedIn profile. You can move on and update your headline. You can update your skills and update that photo. Big updates, these are little updates that are maintainable for somebody who has a really busy schedule like you. And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast, where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life. My name is Chris Villanueva, I’m the founder and CEO of Let’s Eat, Grandma resume service. Today we’re going to talk about LinkedIn for busy professionals. If you are a busy professional and you know the value of LinkedIn, you want to use it in your life, but you feel like you have no time, then this is your episode. I’m going to talk about things that you can do today to take advantage of this platform in as little time as possible to make sure you can advance in your career and land a job if that’s what you’re looking to do.

Chris Villanueva 01:03
In my opinion, LinkedIn is great. I have personally have been able to score many clients, paid gigs, partners, and even podcast guests for this very podcast. However, I had to learn some things and how to use the platform properly before I could truly take advantage of it. So here’s what I’m going to have you do every single week for twice a week. This is if you have a busy schedule and very little time for the platform. I want you to take advantage of this routine. First of all, before you even delve into the platform, before you even sign in, make sure you understand your purpose for being on the platform. I say this because if you do not understand why you’re on the platform, you will waste so much time and this is going to just create overwhelm for you and it’s not going to add any value to your life.

Chris Villanueva 01:54
Understand why you are on LinkedIn. Are you doing it because you need a job now or are you doing it because you want to start looking for career advancement opportunities in the medium term? Are you doing it because I don’t know, you want to find a mentor? Whatever it is, write down or at least say it out loud. Clearly this is why I’m using LinkedIn. Otherwise, you are going to be scrolling and aimlessly just on the platform. So I want to make sure that you set aside two days. I typically like to go on LinkedIn on Mondays, and I like to go on Fridays. So maybe you put in 30 minutes on Monday and you put in 30 minutes on a Friday. The key is consistency. It’s not necessarily how much time you’re putting into it. So what I would recommend doing now that you know your purpose of being on the platform is I would recommend reversing it.

Chris Villanueva 02:50
This is what most people will not tell you to do. They’ll say, get on LinkedIn and send a bunch of requests and go crazy. I’m asking you to go out into the world and take back what you have gotten from the world and put it on LinkedIn. So in practice, this means throughout the week meet five professionals throughout your week who you can connect with on the platform and do something with. These are the best connections you can possibly make on LinkedIn because you’ve made it out in the real world, and these are folks who trust you more. These are folks who understand you more and folks who have better context. So maybe it’s somebody in your field, maybe this is somebody who has been a coworker for a long time, but you’ve never really had a full conversation about their career path. Maybe this is your boss’s friend.

Chris Villanueva 03:42 
Maybe this is somebody in a department that you want to move to eventually. But this is what I mean by taking advantage of this. If you’re a busy professional, you don’t want to spend much time with the platform, don’t spend much time with the platform. Spend time outside the platform and take those connections and solidify them even more on LinkedIn. I’ve done this time and time again, I’ve been surprised by what I have been able to learn by doing this because I will find out that somebody, for example, worked for a company that I used to work for or say was an alumni at my university or did the same things that I do, or maybe I saw that they’re taking a class or learning skills in the same area of expertise that I am in right now. Do some reverse stocking, whatever you want to call it.

Chris Villanueva 04:34
But this will force you to meet people in real life and solidify and make this more real in the platform, not the reverse. So try that reverse advice and I hope that it’s going to serve you well. The last piece of advice I will give you is to update your profile periodically. I have certainly let my profile run stale. I’ve not touched it for a while, but updating your profile is one of the best ways to keep you relevant and to keep the profile that you’ve been working on or the profile maybe that you’re just starting right now, relevant and visible on the platform. And by updating your profile, you will keep others up to date with what you are good at and where your skills and experiences and accomplishments are. Trust me, if you think that there’s nothing to update, I can tell you there probably is something, and by updating your profile, you work with the algorithm, you’re more likely to be visible on the platform and moreover, you are able to keep up to date.

Chris Villanueva 05:45
What I would tell for folks who are updating their profile and don’t know where to start, think about your recent professional experience section. That is probably the first place I would tell you to look and see what you’ve done recently. Second, I would say maybe you can update the very first few sentences of your summary. I’m sure something has changed by way of where you are at right now in your career. Maybe you’re looking for a certain type of advancement. Make sure those first few visible sentences are updated and look great. I know pictures can be annoying. I know headline can be hard to think about sometimes, but at least start with your professional experiences and then move on over to your summary later on when you have time. Again, this is week after week, you’re spending a little bit of time here on your LinkedIn profile.

Chris Villanueva 06:36 
You can move on and update your headline. You can update your skills and update that photo. I did big updates. These are little updates that are maintainable for somebody who has a really busy schedule like you. In summary here, spend two days. This is if you’re busy. I would say if you have a little bit more time, if you’re more active in your job search, I would say ramp that up to three, four, maybe five days. But if you are busy and looking to network here and advance your career a little bit more slowly, I would say spend two days and 30 minutes a day commenting meaningful comments. Let’s say get 10 comments per session and then I want you to go out in the real world and find five folks per week who you can bring and connect with on the platform. These are people who you may meet, these are folks who you may already know, but you’re just looking to solidify that even more on the platform.

Chris Villanueva 07:32
And the third thing I’d recommend doing is updating your profile to keep it fresh by focusing on your recent professional experiences and your summary. Alright, I hope this was helpful. I’m going to keep this episode short again because I know you are a busy professional. That’s why you’re listening to this episode. But I hope it was useful and connect with me on LinkedIn if you have not already done. So, let’s have you start there. My name is Chris Villanueva, CPRW. I would love to hear about what you thought about this episode. Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you next week, Career Warrior Podcast. And before you go, remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at, Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search. And with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention, you’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.