Ep. 195: Daniel Alfon – Maximizing the power of LinkedIn for your career

Resources:
1.  Quora link to building a great Linkedin Profile


2. Articles about job search/networking or how to reach out to
that mutual connection like we discussed in the middle of the
episode
3. Daniel's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Build-LinkedIn-Profile-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B00N18B2RS


Full Episode Transcript:
Neha:



Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast that explores the world
of business from the management accountant's perspective. I'm
Neha Lagoo Ratnakar from IMA. And today I'm speaking with Daniel
Alfon. Daniel is the author of the book, How to Build a LinkedIn
Profile for Business Success. He helps businesses and individuals
succeed by maximizing their reach on one of the world's largest
business networking communities. Today he'll be sharing pro tips
for using LinkedIn for career networking, business development,
content marketing, and more. If you use LinkedIn for any reason,
this is a conversation you don't wanna miss. Let's get started.



Neha:



So hi Daniel. Thank you so much for joining us today.



Daniel:



Thank you very much, Neha, I'm glad to be part of Count Me In.



Neha:



Excellent. So let's start with the why. Social media is not
something that is top of mind for many professionals, especially
accounting and finance professionals. So help us understand: why
is social media and more specifically LinkedIn so valuable for
our accounting and finance listeners?


Daniel:



Oh, that's a great question. I think the easy answer is that
whenever an employer or any client will Google your name, then
your LinkedIn profile is going to top the list on Google. That's
the simple reason. And if you care about the image and your
professional image, then you should leverage LinkedIn and make it
shine.



Neha:



All right. And as a tag along question to that, how can
accounting and finance professionals leverage LinkedIn better?



Daniel:



Great. It starts with understanding our career objective, whether
some of the listeners here could be managers who want to get
promoted in the organization or moms who had their maternity
leave and want to get back to the workforce or young people
trying to start out in business or get the the CMA certification
then having target list of companies or career objectives for you
is the prerequisite for anything you'd like to to do. And then
because your LinkedIn profile, the most frequent action LinkedIn
users perform on the platform is visiting other people's
profiles.



Neha:



Mm-hmm, that's true.



Daniel:



And it needs to speak for itself. In other words, if I go to your
profile, you will not be there to add information. And, when I
see the book that you've released and I see your headline, and I
see the photo and the VO photo is visible, and I see that you've
added feature content. I'm likelier to stay here and try to
discover what is it you do? And for the accountant or the
management accountant would be seeing what they have achieved in
their current position. And why is it a good idea for me to reach
out to them?



Neha:



Wow. I love that. Keeping the person who's visiting your profile
engaged throughout. Awesome. And thank you for bringing up career
objectives. And we are in the era of the great resignation right
now. So let's pivot to that part of LinkedIn job search. And if,
if somebody's looking for a better job, how can LinkedIn be
helpful for you?



Daniel:



Okay. The keyword is networking. When we think about the four
step that that you that you roll about, and network is probably
the single most important element we need to take into account.
We may move from one part of the world to another. Our network is
the key asset that is likely to make our career grow. And
whenever we run an advanced search on LinkedIn, LinkedIn advanced
searches or excellence, and that's probably one of the misused
and underutilized assets, you can run advanced searches for a
company you're interested in, and you would be able in many cases
to identify the person you are likely to report to. And in some
cases, you'll see that you and them, you share mutual
connections,



Neha:



Right.



Daniel:



You connect with people, you know, well, you could leverage that
meaningful connection, leave LinkedIn, and ask that person to
introduce you to your ideal hiring manager or to your ideal
customer and the power is to leave LinkedIn. As much as the
LinkedIn is a powerful platform, close to billion users. Two
people sign up every second. Still hear me out. The big secret is
to know when to leave LinkedIn. LinkedIn has shown us the name of
the person. And it showed us the name of the mutual connection.
Now is the time to leave LinkedIn because in real life, what we
are interested in is an interview. The interview is not going to
happen on LinkedIn. LinkedIn just provided us with the names, and
then we need to forget about the platform and get back to real
life. So we, we land that position or start that discussion.



Neha:



Wow, that's quite insightful. So looking up people on LinkedIn,
but moving on from there to actually network with them directly.
And how can that be done in a remote-first world?



Daniel:



It could be, when you say you run a search and you find someone
you'd like to reach out to, and you see that you do share a
mutual connection with them, or several mutual connections with
them. Then we, if you two are connected by visiting their profile
and clicking on contact info, you would get their email. Simply
leave LinkedIn. You send 'em a message. You ask how they've been.
And at one point you page the link to the hiring manager or to
the ideal prospect you'd like, and you ask them, do you know that
person well enough?



Neha:



Okay.



Daniel:



And Neha, in some cases you could, you could guess because if
your mutual connection has 300 connections, and the hiring
manager has 400 connections, then chances are they know each
other.



Neha:



Okay.



Daniel:



And if you spend 30 more seconds in, you see that they went to
the same school, or they worked in the same location for the same
company, it gives you also a probability of them knowing each
other. And if you manage to have a meaningful introduction that
can get you foot in the door, and that can start a meaningful
process, hopefully leading to a contract.



Neha:



Wow. That's some great detective work there, Daniel. All right.
So from career tips to, let's pivot to another key aspect of
LinkedIn. Now, many of our listeners are consultants, or they
work in small businesses, and I know you're an expert at getting
clients from LinkedIn. So what are your top tips from, for
business development on LinkedIn?



Daniel:



Okay, great. So I'll, I'll say this, there, there are two
pillars. I think we need to consider. One is a converting
profile. And the second is our connection strategy. So very
quickly a converting profile will make your ideal reader
understand what you bring to the table. And that your connection
strategy should enable you to use or to leverage, or to ask
people to introduce you to the hiring manager or to the ide...