Job Hunting Made Simple Starts Tuesday 9 September

Ready to land your next role? Join my proven coaching program to fast-track your job search and secure the career you deserve.

LinkedIn is Not Optional

Episode 286 - If You're Not Showing Up on LinkedIn, You’re Invisible: How Job Hunting Has Changed for Professionals Over 40

Experienced corporate professionals over 40 face a paradox: they bring extensive expertise, leadership, and resilience, yet they often confront hiring biases. If you’re over 40 and navigating a career change, know this: You don’t need to reinvent yourself. You just need to reposition. You’ve built a career. Let’s make sure it continues to serve you. 

Here’s what I want you to remember: 

  • Your age and experience are assets. 
  • A strong resume and LinkedIn profile work together. 
  • Telling the right story matters more than sounding impressive. 
  • A focused, intentional search beats mass applications. 
  • Reconnection is more powerful than cold outreach. 

This episode (286) is part 2 of my discussion on how to use age as your advantage to help mid-to-senior level professionals navigate career transitions confidently and effectively. The first part is episode 284, in which I analyze the current job market and discuss how to leverage it rather than see it as a barrier to entry.  

In this episode, I shift focus to personal branding and career positioning, covering resumes, LinkedIn, and storytelling. I also provide real-life client examples, practical advice, and a mindset-first approach to provide you with strategies to remain competitive and in demand. 

Mindset Shift: Reframing Age as an Asset 

One of the most important steps for professionals over 40 is to embrace their experience as a strategic advantage rather than a liability. Renata urges listeners to reject internalized ageism and instead position themselves as calm, reliable, and insightful leaders. Think of yourself as not just a candidate but as a strategic advisor. I share the example of a client who started working with me in his late 60s. His success highlights that experience, when framed correctly, is still highly valuable in today’s uncertain environment. Here is the key takeaway: Your value lies in your pattern recognition, leadership stability, and ability to manage change. Highlight these qualities with confidence. 

Resume Strategy: Make Your Experience Work for You 

Many professionals unintentionally sabotage their job search by submitting resumes that are outdated, overly long, or not tailored. I coach my clients on building resumes that are both ATS-friendly and compelling for human readers. 

Here are my key guidelines: 

  • Length: Stick to 2 pages (US) or 3 pages (Australia), and make every word count. 
  • Content Focus: Emphasize the last 10 to 15 years. Prioritize achievements over responsibilities. 
  • Executive Summary: Don’t waste this prime real estate. Use it to highlight your value and relevant keywords. 
  • Tailoring: Adapt your resume to each job ad without reinventing the wheel every time. 

Here is a client example: A client in her late 40s wanted to pivot from large corporates to smaller, purpose-driven organizations. Her original resume was too focused on matrix structures and internal lingo. We reframed her narrative, and she secured a new role in a smaller, mission-focused business. In fact, hiring managers praised the clarity and alignment of her new resume. 

LinkedIn Optimization: A Must-Have, Not an Option 

LinkedIn is not optional if you’re a white-collar professional. Recruiters use it as a search engine. Your profile has to work for you even when you’re not actively applying. LinkedIn is your living professional brand. I often tweak clients’ profiles over time as we test what works. 

Here are some LinkedIn best practices: 

  • Headline: Use forward-looking, keyword-rich phrases. Example: “Senior Commercial Leader Driving Growth | FMCG & Retail | Board Advisor.” 
  • About Section: Write in the first person. Show who you are and where you’re going. 
  • Keywords: Sprinkle them in your headline, about section, and job titles. 
  • Engagement: Be active. Comment thoughtfully, post occasionally, and validate your expertise. 

Storytelling: From Hero to Guide 

Storytelling trips up even the most accomplished professionals. Many either downplay their value or focus too much on themselves. I teach a powerful shift: Don’t be the hero; be the guide. The organization is the hero, and your role is to support its success. 

Here is an example: “When our company was hit with supply chain issues, I led a cross-functional task force that redesigned our procurement process. We reduced delays by 30% and saved over $1 million.” That kind of framing shows you’re strategic, solution-oriented, and team-focused. 

If job loss has left you emotionally drained, storytelling can be tough. This is where working with a coach or mentor, or at least practicing aloud with a peer, can make a big difference. 

Strategic Job Search: Less Is More 

I see too many professionals treat job searching like a numbers game. But volume isn’t the answer. It leads to burnout, inconsistencies, and worse: getting ghosted. 

My Three Pillars of a Smarter Job Search: 

  1. Clarity: Know your value and the target roles that align with it. This is not a quick step for most. When I’m working with clients for 3 or 6 months, we may stay from 2 to 6 weeks developing clear goals and translating them into crips pitches, resumes and LinkedIn profile and activity. This often overlooked step is, in fact, the secret to my coaching success and my clients’ quick conversion to jobs they want.  
  2. Strategy: Apply intentionally. Evaluate ads carefully. Don’t waste time on long-shot roles. When working with clients, we work closely on the roles they apply for, reviewing each opportunity and applying to the ones aligned with their clear goals. We also make a lot of continuous improvements after each application based on the results we achieve, identifying the patterns of success and reinforcing them in future applications. 
  3. Action: Consistent, small steps matter more than frantic job board sprints. Use a tracker to schedule time for networking, profile updates, and reflection. Applying for jobs is a holistic process. If you just sit at your chair and send out job applications, your chance of conversion is less than if you spread your activities between applying, networking, and learning. If you’re at the senior level, it’s especially important to be selective. Your reputation is built on what you say yes to and what you don’t. 

Networking Without the Cringe Factor 

Most of us already have a network; we just need to reconnect. I coach my clients to start simply and focus on genuine connection. 

Here’s a Message You Can Use: “Hi [Name], I was just thinking about our time at [Company] and wanted to reconnect. Would love to catch up soon.” That’s it. No pitch. No pressure. 

And if you’re introverted? That’s okay. Skip the big events. Have one-on-one coffees or write thoughtful messages. Play to your strengths. Always. 

Future Outlook: Preparing for Part Three 

At a future episode, I’ll cover the hidden job market: how it’s changed and how you can tap into it. I’m also creating a downloadable checklist summarizing parts one, two, and three of this series. It’s designed to help you stay focused and confident during your job search. So please keep listening, subscribe to The Job Hunting Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter. This way you won’t miss out! 

Renata Bernarde

About the Host, Renata Bernarde

Hello, I’m Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I’m also an executive coach, job hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach professionals (corporate, non-profit, and public) the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.

 

If you are an ambitious professional who is keen to develop a robust career plan, if you are looking to find your next job or promotion, or if you want to keep a finger on the pulse of the job market so that when you are ready, and an opportunity arises, you can hit the ground running, then this podcast is for you.

 

In addition to The Job Hunting Podcast, on my website, I have developed a range of courses and services for professionals in career or job transition. And, of course, I also coach private clients

Timestamps to Guide Your Listening

  • 00:00 Introduction to Career Transition for Professionals Over 40
  • 10:21 Mindset Shift: Embracing Age as an Advantage
  • 18:33 Crafting Effective Resumes and LinkedIn Profiles
  • 31:45 The Power of Storytelling in Job Applications
  • 37:10 Strategic Job Search: Quality Over Quantity
  • 41:58 Networking: Building Connections with Confidenc

Before we continue, I want to address a few things that have happened in the past couple of weeks and why I think there may be lots of newbies listening today to the Job Hunting Podcast. I wrote an article about episode 284 and that article got a lot of views on LinkedIn. And if you haven’t seen it, that’s fine. I’ll put a link to it below, but it really hit a chord.

with lots of you and I got many, many followers after publishing that article. So that was the first thing that happened. That’s why I think, you know, many of you are new here. Then I was invited to speak at a LinkedIn live event with Elizabeth Lotado, who in fact was a guest here on this podcast for episode 283. That’s how I got the invitation. Elizabeth is a LinkedIn educator. She has courses on LinkedIn.

She’s also a writer. wrote a book about self leadership and we spoke about some of the issues that I’m going to talk about today, but very briefly. And it sort of also introduced me to a new group of professionals. And if you’re here because of that live conversation, thank you for finding the Job Hunting Podcast. Episode 285, which I recorded.

last week with TJ Slattery. And that episode was a bit of an outlier for the job hunting podcast, because we discuss entrepreneurship. So if you want to be your own boss and open your own small business, then that episode is for you. It’s not something we talk a lot about. The job hunting podcast is designed for people that are looking for work.

But I do get it that when you have a redundancy package or you want to leave your job that you don’t like, that you may be thinking about opening your business and starting something up yourself. We also spoke in that episode about joining a small business as a professional hire. And that could be a great first step if you are interested in working in a small business environment.

And I think that that episode had a very different listenership and opened up a whole new group of people that might be listening today. Finally, I was a guest of another podcast show called Agile Leadership, and that’s hosted by Watermark Executive Search. Watermark and I have collaborated several times. I’ve done several webinars for them. They’re very well attended. Usually when I run webinars for

For Watermark, there’s like 300, 400 people attending that alone registered. So I think that the podcast show is very popular as well. My guest was one of my clients, Petra Grinja, and we discussed career coaching. So Watermark wanted me to be on the show to discuss what career coaching is. And I thought to myself, I might as well bring along a client because

You know, it’s one thing to be talking about what you do. It’s another thing for a client to share her experience. And she also spoke about leadership coaching that she had done before, about executive education, in particular, the MBA, and sort of comparing and contrasting all of those professional development streams and what they’re good for each, you know, difficulty or problem in her career. So…

I think my audience has grown. I hope so. I can see the results already on my followership on LinkedIn and the amount of work that I am getting as well. So if you’re new here, you can watch me on YouTube. I don’t know if you know that. I don’t think you need to, but just in case you’re interested to see my office and have a look at what I do. It’s a Friday afternoon. I will even tell you what day it is.

It’s Friday the 11th of April, just a few days before this episode is released. I learned the hard way during the pandemic not to batch episodes because my audience really needs to get information as it happens. Having said that, though, we have over 286 episodes and these are conversations with recruiters, with executive coaches.

with leaders and just by myself, I do a lot of solo episodes as well. I don’t think that they age. I think that this is the sort of podcast where you can go back to the archive and listen to past episodes based on your interests. So if you go to the job hunting podcast website, it’s easy to find. Just Google it. You will find it. You can use the search box to find for

find specific issues you’re interested in, or you can use the categories that we have created to find the right playlist for you. And I think that there are some episodes that I’m even embarrassed to say, like my first episode is so popular and it’s embarrassing because of course I was recording it on my phone and it wasn’t that high quality and I wasn’t comfortable speaking as well. And I think you can tell, but what

I think matters is the topic. It was so important. And I had been waiting so long to speak about those topics that the first few episodes are really interesting. And sometimes we think about bringing them back. We do that when I take breaks, we rebroadcast a few episodes. But frankly, I always have new ideas. So if you want to go back to more of the classic issues that you’re facing, maybe previous episodes.

early episodes might be good ones for you to watch. What we have here on this podcast is also a loyal followership. Like, I know people that have listened to every single episode. I know this because when they see me, they tell me. They have listened to every episode and they quote the ones that they like most and the ones that really resonated with them. And I’m so impressed. So I can’t really be replicating.

topics that much and I would urge you if you are new to the podcast to go back and listen to the old ones. I also have a newsletter with extra content. I’m working really, really hard. I have always worked hard on the newsletter, but more so now than ever, I want the newsletter to be something people expect every week and that it has content that will really, really help them. It’s like the conduit between

my free resources like the podcast and my LinkedIn posts, for example, and my paid behind the client wall IP. And I find that if I build that bridge, it means that whenever you need me, if you ever need to work with me, buy a course or buy one of my services, I’m easy to find. I’m going to be in your inbox. You just need to find me there. And the newsletter will also give you

Hopefully very good tips and advice for you throughout the months and years that you will be following that resource. All right, so let’s go into the first item that I wanted to talk about today. So if we’re talking about how to resonate and be a strong candidate in a complex market, being

40 plus, 40 years old and above. The most important thing and where we need to begin is with your mindset and thinking about age as an advantage. One of the biggest, biggest mindset shifts that I work with my clients is this. Your experience is not a weakness. It’s your greatest asset.

has to be the mindset of a professional looking for work in their 40s, 50s, 60s, right? Yes, age bias exists. Of course it does. It’s in the job market. There’s nothing you can do about it. You cannot control it, but you have lots of other things that you can control, like your mindset and how you present yourself in the job market. What I find that

I find that happens all the time because I do consultations and I have my private clients, is that professionals unconsciously, unconsciously play into it. And they play into the ageism by downplaying their accomplishments, by agreeing with the ageism. know, it’s an unconscious bias that you may have as well. And aiming to look younger.

in ways that really doesn’t resonate with the recruiter or the hiring manager. Avoiding topics like the long tenures that they’ve had in previous jobs or their extensive leadership experience, being worried about adding things like with 20 years of work in x area. Is the noise outside a bit too much? Let me close the door.

You know, I personally love a little background noise, but it’s, it’s Friday afternoon and it’s quite noisy. So I closed the door. So I’m here to tell you that you need to own it. That’s your experience and that is your competitive advantage. Bring all of that wisdom, that stability, that pattern recognition as your competitive advantage.

Right? That resiliency over the years as something that you’re proud of. You’ve weathered changed. You managed crisis. Like I said, in the part one episode at 284, you, this is not your first rodeo, right? You’ve helped build teams. You’ve delivered results over the long haul. You survived restructures. Maybe you haven’t survived restructures like

You know, this is not the first time that you’re looking for work due to, you know, redundancies, for example. These are qualities that companies need more than ever in these uncertain times. Okay. And here’s the reframe that I want you to hold on to. I am not just a candidate. I am a strategic advisor. I am a calm.

presence and a guide to help teams succeed. I will give you an example. My oldest client is 71 years old. Honestly, he hasn’t started working with me at 71. He started in his late 60s. He’s not a client anymore. He turned 70 when we were working together. And he sent me an email earlier this year.

that goes like this. I’m going to read it, skipping all the parts that could, you know, are private. All right. So I want to read it to you so that you can see what I mean. We’re going to talk about it once I read it. Hi Renata. I hope you’re well. Just a quick note to say hello and congratulate you on your best solo episode of the podcast. That is episode 276, by the way. OK.

Really great and I have forwarded it to a few people who I think should watch it. We have been really well celebrating Christmas with the family, etc. etc. So he go on about, you know, his family and what they did for Christmas. This was earlier in the year. I think he messaged me in February. Looking forward to 2025. Hoping to relax a bit more and travel. Last year was crazy with me working

nearly eight months full-time plus boards. Great money and great to be wanted and needed, but I hit Christmas pretty exhausted and regretting that I have not kept in touch with many people. So I’m stepping off most boards and have accepted only one three-month gig.” And then he goes on to say how interesting that most of the work that he’s getting is in the private sector because

That’s not his sector. That’s not the sector that he worked most of his life. Again, I hope that you’re keeping well, blah, blah, blah. And yeah. Okay. What do you think of this message? I mean, what a big problem to have. What a wonderful problem to have to be so busy and working this many hours and this many months of the year at 72. Now, this is something that he wants to do.

Not that he needs to do. This client was a very senior executive public servant in government and transitioned out of a very senior role and did not want to be idle. He wanted to continue working, doing consultancy, contracting and boards. And that’s what we did. We transitioned him. Well, he did the transition. basically just supported him in doing that. Age has not been a bias.

for him, right? And sometimes you may think, but he was senior, he was known. Sometimes that can be a barrier. have many clients, this one included, come to me in thinking, I am too senior, people will not want me. And they are right in many ways, that is that unconscious bias. What are you going to do here? You know, are you going to aim for my job?

Do you, you know, like there is that bias as well of seniority. So there are so many biases. You can find all of these excuses and I know that they’re not just excuses, they are real biases, but you need to control your narrative and to be confident about the value and the transferability of experience and skills that you are able to do to ignite growth in that organization.

to make connections, to build sails, to build teams, whatever it is, you know, to go on to boards, if that’s what you want. I want you to see that here he has overcome two things, ageism, issues with seniority, actually three things, and transferable skills to a different sector. He’s actually quite surprised that he’s getting more gigs in a sector that he had little experience in. Okay?

So I want you to know that this is all possible and it begins with mindset, but then there are other things as well that we need to do. So now let’s talk about what that other thing needs to be. And it is resume and it is LinkedIn. And for the older you are, the more reluctant you seem to be about LinkedIn. It’s very rare that I get a much older client who is comfortable with social media.

and LinkedIn included, but LinkedIn has a strong hold on white collar work. If you work in an office and you work behind a computer and you work with teams and projects, there will be, it will be very rare for you to continue your career sustainably without LinkedIn, at least for now. I don’t know how long this will last, but it’s an absolute monopoly. Okay.

So why resume and LinkedIn need to work together in synchrony, right? There needs to be a symbiosis there between the two of them. Because if that is happening, then everything about your value, about your experience becomes more obvious to the decision makers. So let’s talk about those.

personal brand assets like resume and LinkedIn. example, resumes. It needs to be two to three pages max, right? Two pages in the US, three pages in Australia. There are variances in other countries, but it needs to be focused on making sure that you’re using only two pages or three pages, maximizing the space. So it’s not one and a half pages.

it’s not two and a half pages, maximize the space and make the most out of it. Focus on the details and experience of your last 10 to 15 years. This is something that if I’m working in a consultation or with a private client, maybe there are exceptions to that rule, but the last 10 to 15 years of your work experience,

will undoubtedly be more important, not only for the way that the software is that are designed to read your resume. They are coded for recency, but also because it’s important, know, things are changing too much. So try to focus on 10 to 15 years. And if you are an outlier on this, and I have clients that are, we can work on identifying ways around it. So.

Maybe come to me for support as in a one hour consultation or work with another coach to help you do that. And then use a strong career summary. So many parts of the resume people hate doing. And the executive summary at the top is one of those that people never know how to position themselves as well. And I see a lot of fluff and words that have no meaning and not a strong

ethos, know, a crisp and clear message about the experience that you bring. But that executive summary is so important, both for the software that’s going to read your resume, but also for the human eye. Eventually, the human eye will hit your resume and you want that to read beautifully and to be a succinct version of what you want to achieve.

It’s important to tailor resumes to job ads and learning to do that is a very technical skill that I think it’s underrated. think people don’t realize how important it is. And for that reason, they tend to overdo the tailoring and start from scratch every single time and become completely exhausted by that process.

This is something that a coach can help you do. They shouldn’t just be doing master resumes for you. They should be telling you how to do this. I teach people how to do this in Reset Your Career, a short online course that you can do in a weekend, right? Less than a weekend if you want to skip everything and just do that one master class. So this is such an important technical thing and it’s…

It’s the use of keywords, it’s how you present, it’s mirroring language. There are things that, of course, you’ve heard about, but how you do that at every single time you apply is what makes a difference in you not being exhausted and you being completely overwhelmed if you don’t know how to do it properly. Focusing on your achievements and not your responsibilities.

is also so important. And I think, I think, no, I know because I do consultations a lot for people that want to review their resumes. And I see a lot of responsibilities, basically just copy pasted from job descriptions into resumes. And that is not going to fly these days in a very competitive market. You want to make sure that you’re listing your achievements.

I want to give you an example that I think is a bit more sophisticated than what I’m saying, but I think because of that, I want to share with you because I know many of you have clicked on this episode because you have already tried a lot of things and it didn’t work. And for that reason, I know some of the advice that I’m giving for you today might seem very obvious, but the right application is the key.

Right, it’s one thing to know what you need to do, it’s the other thing to do it. And TJ explained this really well in the last episode, even though it was about small business, there’s some sort of quotes from him that is like in my mind right now. And it’s like, he used South Park to explain, it’s a little story from South Park. I don’t watch South Park, but it was like, you were here, you want to achieve X.

but you don’t know how to get there, right? So you’re here, you know what you need to do, you know where you want to go, but you just don’t do it, right? So that’s how I feel many of the people that reach out to me for consultations and private coaching, that’s where they are. Okay, so here’s the example. I have a client, she finished working with me end of last year, she’s either in her late 40s or early 50s, I don’t know.

And we worked together for a few months. think it was three months, six months, three months. And she wanted, she had a very special, interesting career. And like many clients of her age that reach out to me, she wanted out of her sector, out of the large scale businesses that she was working on.

That’s very common. know, people get tired and they want to try something new. She was very keen to work on a smaller scale with more purposeful organizations. We had to redo her resume. The resume was too focused on cross functionality, matrix structure. The whole language and narrative was what she knew, you know, and it mirrored.

the experience that she had in large scale, it was probably making the recruiters and the decision makers feel quite shy and small compared to her experience. Now she is employed in a smaller but highly purposeful organization. And as an aside, I have also had several hiring managers

tell me that that CV that she sent, that many of my clients use is really, really well put together. working on writing the CV for the hiring manager, not for you, for the new sector or the new type of organization that you want to work for and not the ones that you’ve worked before is really important.

Right? And the same goes for LinkedIn. I’m not gonna talk about LinkedIn as much today because I feel I talk less about resume and I talk more about LinkedIn on the podcast and are you probably tired of hearing my very strong views on LinkedIn? But, you know, interesting things and things that people don’t think about is the fact that LinkedIn is a search engine.

It’s a search engine like Google is for you or even Chat2BT now. So many people are now just using Chat2BT. For recruiters, the search engine of choice for them is LinkedIn. If they need to find candidates and they will find you even before they advertise a role, they are looking for keywords. They will put keywords into LinkedIn recruitment, which is their platform that they subscribe for.

And those keywords, need to be in your headline. They need to be in your about section. They need to be on your job titles and in your most recent jobs for you to rank highly in the list that they’re going to get once they input all of those keywords and instruct the system to spit out a list of candidates for them. So your headline should speak to where you want to go, not just where you’ve been.

Right? So for example, senior commercial leader driving growth across retail and FMCG board advisor. That is the sort of keyword rich headline that I help people create, but you can try to do that yourself as well. It should not be a lie. It should have information that is consistent with what you do.

But for my client that I had a few months ago that was in finance, but she now wanted to be in operations instead of writing finance in her headline, she wrote senior commercial leader. Right? So those things are important for you to kind of, okay, what is it that I’m going to do in order to, and when I’m working with clients privately, we tweak.

time and time again, every couple of weeks we have a session and we’re tweaking, know, if they’re not getting results, we tweak again, we tweak again until the LinkedIn is optimized. And it doesn’t need to be crystallized. You can continue to tweak it and make sure that you are continuously improving the way that you come across. Your About section on LinkedIn should be written in first person. This is such a

important thing. And I know that many of you have written it in third person, but it’s not as welcoming and it’s not as compelling as a career story as one that you write in first person. And finally about LinkedIn, and then we’re going to move on. You know how I feel about LinkedIn activity, posting regularly, commenting thoughtfully, nurturing.

connections through the commenting that you do is absolutely essential to validate all of those claims that you have been making, that you left in good terms, that you have connections in your previous employment, that you know about cybersecurity or logistics or commercial operations or managing teams or marketing. It will show not only

in your profile, which is more crystallized, but also in your activity, which is fluid and organic and interesting to read. So share insights or industry news and say congratulations to your peers. You don’t need to be a LinkedIn influencer. You need to exist and be visible to validate and corroborate all of the things that are on your resume and in your LinkedIn profile. Because guess what? When you apply for a job,

or somebody’s advocating for you internally for a position, the first thing that the person in charge will do is go to LinkedIn and look at your profile. Right? I think you know that.

Okay, so the next thing that I want to talk to you about is storytelling. my god, isn’t it horrible? Nobody, nobody wants to tell their stories, but positioning yourself as

The guide and not the hero is a huge part of your personal branding learning. It’s how you communicate your story in interviews and networking and in conversations and even on LinkedIn in a way that’s not show-offy. I have a whole masterclass inside research career about you not being the hero of the story and you being the guy or the guide.

Right? The hero is the organization and we sort of showcase ways of doing that in that masterclass. And it requires a mindset shift. You are not there to show off. You are there to be included and part of. Don’t make yourself the hero. Inside Reset, we talk about, pretty sure we talk about Luke Skywalker and he’s the hero and Obi-Wan Kenobi being you. Right?

You are the person who will help the hero, the organization, the team, the project, the business to succeed. Even the way that job ads are written, you know, are written in that way. Here we have a hero in trouble. We need somebody to come in and help the hero manage this large project or manage this team or achieve growth in this new market. Right? There is an issue there and you, as the guide, will step in and support.

So using those simple storytelling frameworks that you may even know, it’s amazing how many communications professionals reach out to me for support when they’re looking for work. I never expected that to happen. So these frameworks are something that they have used for their employers, but it’s harder for them to use for themselves. And frankly, I have used coaches, even though I knew these things from a long time ago.

I think there’s an emotional attachment. Sometimes there’s also grief from the way the letting go of the previous job happened that gets in the way of you telling a compelling story that’s not emotionally loaded. So working with a mentor or a coach can really support in that way. But the other way that you can do this, which is free,

It’s just by practicing, practicing speaking it out loud, right? And using those simple story frameworks when talking about your experience and explaining what the challenges have been, why you left the organization, why you are interested in this new job. Tell me about yourself, all of those things. And answering the behavioral questions, which really need

professionals who are the job candidates to master not only the star, know, I think the episode that my client mentioned before, which I will link below, I talk about, you know, how people focus so much on answering questions in the star format, when in fact what the most important thing is for you to answer it in a way where you’re not the hero, the hero is the organization.

and you’re stepping into support.

So go back and listen to that episode as well. So many episodes for you to listen to, but they will help. think if you’re currently looking for work, think preloading the work by taking this time to reflect with hopefully the support of this podcast is time well spent. You may think, my God, I need to start applying for jobs now, but you will be way more prepared.

to apply for jobs once you listen to some of these episodes, this one included.

Okay, so what does it look like to answer a question as the guide and not the hero? It goes something like this, and I’m gonna read an example for you. When our company was hit with supply chain issues, I led a cross-functional task force that redesigned our procurement process. As a result, we reduced delays by 30 % and saved over a million dollars.

As aside, I think there needs to be a little bit more context between every sentence that I just said, some use of jargons if you’re talking to the decision makers to really show your technical competencies and experience in a little bit more context for them to be happy with the answer.

but I just wanted to show the most important sentences there so that you can think about how you can use that example to create answers to questions that you are getting or you will be getting in the future. That type of answer is clear, it’s confident and it’s valuable and you’re not the hero of the story, right? All right. Then it’s about…

targeting your job search strategically. Again, this is a very, I’m talking about issues that are the most popular issues that I come across. And I want to talk to you about how to focus your time and your energy wisely when you’re applying for jobs, because so many professionals treat job hunting like a numbers game, right? So they apply to as many roles as possible, as quickly as possible.

There’s a lot of FOMO, fear of missing out when you’re looking for work and you see a job that seems great. So even with my clients that are working with me, I need to try as much as possible to explain to them the importance of holding on and not applying to everything. Especially if you are at the top of the pyramid, there’s less and less degrees of separation between you

and your peers, you and recruiters. So for you to have a sustainable, healthy career for the next 10, 20 years, you need to be applying in a way that is consistent to your branding, consistent to your reputation and to what you want to achieve. So, yeah, this is such an important aspect of coaching is to introducing the client to pacing.

and pacing themselves and really reflecting and being strategic about job applications. you know, overburdening yourself with job application often leads to burnout, to frustration, to ghosting from recruiters because recruiters tend not to trust candidates that apply to too many things. And it’s a wasted effort.

So instead, I think what can really help is for you to stick to three pillars of job hunting. First one is clarity. Know what you’re offering and what you’re looking for and stick to it. I know it requires patience. I know that for some of you, if job hunting is financially draining, it can be hard, but this is not about waiting longer to get a job.

This is about job hunting smarter. And if my experience is correct and my sample of clients is a sample that I can rely on, it’s faster. The second thing is strategy. Don’t just react to job ads. Have a clear plan. Check the job and make sure that it’s worth your time applying for it.

And sometimes it’s not worth it if it’s been too long. It’s three weeks old, has over 200 applications. Even though it’s still advertised, you know, that boat has sailed. And other times it’s too far away from your expertise. And in a job market this demanding, this complicated with so many candidates looking for work, it could be a waste of time as well.

And then the final thing I wanted to say is the action. So take small, deliberate steps daily to move you towards your goal. Don’t worry so much about being bold and staying overnight and applying for all the jobs you can find and it’s not gonna work. One of the worst things that you can do is the example I just mentioned. Spending 24, 36 hours without sleep applying for jobs.

and then sleeping in and missing on recruiter’s calls, taking too long to reply to them. It’s better to be incrementally consistent than to go through those sprints and burn out. Use a job tracker. So block weekly time for high impact tasks like targeting companies proactively. If there are things that you hate doing, do them first.

and block out times in your week to make sure that you are not only looking for jobs, but doing the other tasks like reviewing your resumes and listening to this podcast and so forth. Going on LinkedIn and nurturing your relationships, connecting with more people. So finally, I want to talk to you about building your network, okay?

No cringe required. I get it. Networking is hard. I went to… Let me open the door again, because now I’m hot. I went to an event last week. Not only it was… It’s been a long time since I’ve networked and you’re talking to somebody who used to organize events. So for me it’s like, my God, my life has changed so much. I now work from home most of the time and this was a big networking event and I came back sick.

One thing that many of you don’t know is that this is not how I sound. have a husky voice after losing my voice and feeling quite unwell after attending an event. I know networking is awkward, especially if you haven’t done it in a while, but this is the thing. You already have a network. You just need to reconnect with it and give yourself permission to be vulnerable, ask for advice.

listen and you can start simple. Reach out to your former colleagues and mentors and classmates. You don’t need to ask for a job. You don’t need to be too forthcoming. You just need to send a friendly message, something that sounds like this. Hi John, I was just thinking about our time at Exxon, McDonald’s, Apple and I would love to catch up sometime.

No agenda, just seeing how you are.

That’s it. don’t need to, you know, this can even be a message you can send together with your invitation to connect on LinkedIn. It’s always good to send a message with your invitation to connect. So I think that those things are so important. And one thing that I wanted to say, because I got this question when I was doing the live event with Elizabeth is about

introverts, right? So I want to say this introverts, it doesn’t mean you can’t network. It means you need to approach it in a way that is comfortable for you. So, many introverts are great connectors. They are not necessarily shy. It’s just that it might mean that you’re

social energy and social battery is not as big as the extroverts and that’s fine. But if it means if being an extrovert, sorry, if being an introvert means that you prefer deeper conversations over small talk, for example, that’s great news for you. That’s what networking should be about in a professional setting. So one on one.

coffee catch-ups, small group interactions. Go for that instead of attending large events. Make sure that you think about what comes more naturally to you. So for example, I love doing podcasts and talking, but it could be that you prefer writing. So, know, write or maybe you just want to catch up with people and have, you know, conversations one-on-one. Whatever is easier for you to do, start there, right?

Play to your strengths, always. I always say this, when you’re looking for work and you’re in frictional unemployment, so between jobs, the best thing that you can do is focus on your strengths, right? If you want to grow your strengths and do professional development, you can do that when you are employed, because that’s usually harder to do. And this is already hard enough.

Looking for work is already hard. So focus on all of your strengths and if you don’t know what your strengths are, then now is the time to do the self-reflection and find out.

I think I’m going to stop here today and continue with this section in part three. There’s so much that I still want to talk to you about and there will be a part three coming up in the near future and it will be talking about the hidden job market because so many questions I get about the hidden job market and what it means.

And it has changed a lot. I addressed it shortly in my live conversation with Elizabeth, which I’m going to add the link below. Every time I mention something, I usually remember to add the link in the episode show notes. So make sure that you go there. And I also want to do a little downloadable checklist. So in addition to listening to part one, two and three,

and maybe you’re trying to take notes, I want you to have a checklist so you can go through it when you’re looking for work. And it will be a pleasure to do it. So I’m going to do that and make it ready for you to download with episode. I don’t know what number it will be, but it will be part three. So make sure that you’re following us. It will be coming up in the next two, three weeks for sure. OK.

Maybe in the next week. I don’t know. I need to see what’s lined up for next week. I’m a bit out of the loop, too busy with work. What else? So I want to make sure that you’re following this podcast wherever you found this. If it was Apple or Spotify or YouTube or Audible, please subscribe. Remember that you can also subscribe to the newsletter, which has a little bit more…

Giveaways and interesting content for my subscribers. So I would highly appreciate you giving it a go and I’ll have a link to it below. That’s it for now. Thank you so much for listening. It was great chatting to you and have a great week. Bye.

 

Related Posts

Optimism Wins

Think Like a Recruiter

Mastering Your Professional Reputation

LinkedIn for Job Seekers

A Career Coach’s Top Tips

Navigating Career Challenges

Share the Post:

Home » Episodes » LinkedIn is Not Optional
Scroll to Top

Subscribe to The Job Hunting Newsletter

Join our ever-growing community of professionals who are taking their careers to new heights. Every Tuesday, I’ll send you The Job Hunting Newsletter, with the latest episode of The Job Hunting Podcast and other resources to help you make career plans that work.