Level Up Your LinkedIn Profile: Your Path to Bigger Offers and Better Roles

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[00:00:00] Michael Mordak: I just want to welcome everybody. This is amazing. Looking forward to this for a while because we had to delay it the first time around. But, uh. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the latest in our community event series. We've got just a short time today because we're only going to be doing 30 minutes for the first time for the first part of this call.

So I'm going to try to keep this intro brief. But for anybody who doesn't know me, my name is Michael Mordak. I'm the community producer for the digital project manager. In today's session, we're going to be focusing on leveling up your LinkedIn profile. And hopefully this will help you to land your next role to, you know, be able to.

Uh, work toward the next promotion you want to get, um, really just hopefully make some more money, uh, at the end of the day, that's kind of what we're here for. So, uh, that's, that's the goal. Um, and the way this session is going to work is it's going to be held in two parts. The first part, we're going to have Melissa, our guest today, who's going to walk through her best, best practices, uh, for building [00:01:00] your LinkedIn profile.

The second half is going to be a members only workshop for. Our DPM members, um, where a few bold volunteers are going to get to, uh, put their LinkedIn profiles, uh, on a screen and Melissa will, will walk through with us and make some notes about where we can make some improvements, um, for our DPM members on the call, that link is posted in our Slack channel.

So you'll be able to access that at the 30 minute mark. Um, and with that, yeah, we have the pleasure of speaking with, uh, a leading voice, uh, an actual PM influencer today, Melissa. Um, Now, Melissa, we know you're, you've got this, uh, this following, you're a PM influencer and you're also known to plan very meticulously, you can be very type A, but I did a little bit of digging and I understand that there's, you're not strictly type A, you've got a bit of a creative side to you.

So I'm wondering, um, what kind of creative projects have you been working on lately and how have they been helping you in your PM work?

[00:01:58] Melissa Khan-Blackmore: Ooh, I love this [00:02:00] question. So I, well, first of all, thank you for having me. Um, I've been doing a bit of ceramics lately. So pottery and it's definitely teaching me patience.

[00:02:14] Michael Mordak: That's awesome. Um, and that's actually really funny. You mentioned that because this Friday for Valentine's Day, I just signed my wife and I up for like a pottery date night class. So maybe I'll have an opportunity to work on patience myself. It'll be good.

[00:02:28] Melissa Khan-Blackmore: That's how the hobby started for me too. It started.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:32] Michael Mordak: Okay. That's a good, a good warning then. Maybe I better get prepared to take on a few more of these classes perhaps. Um, awesome. Okay. We are going to get started into in just a second, but first we've got a bit of a tradition. I'd love to know where everybody here is tuning in from. So please take a second.

Let us know where you're, where you're coming in from in the chat there. Um, we've got folks joining from all over. It looks like we've got people in Romania, Georgia, Peru. Hamilton, Ontario. Amazing. Super [00:03:00] cool. Love to see that. Now, if you keep hearing me talk about DPM members and you're confused because you don't know what that means, uh, that means you're a guest today.

So welcome. I want to thank you for, for showing up today. Uh, this is just one of our, uh, monthly sessions that we hold for our DPM members. Um, these folks. Our access to a community of other digital project managers, as well as a host of templates, networking programs, a certification course that they can take and a whole lot more.

So if you want to learn more about that, check us out at the digital project manager dot com slash membership. Okay, we're 5 minutes in. I've spoken a lot and now I want to hand it over to Melissa. To, uh, take us off from here. So Melissa, feel free to, uh, get your, your, uh, slides, uh, ready to go. And I'll pass it over to you to take it away.

[00:03:48] Melissa Khan-Blackmore: Yes. Amazing. Thank you. All right. Let me share.

Just want to make sure everyone see my screen.[00:04:00]

Amazing. All right, let's get started. So today I'm going to show you how to transform your LinkedIn profile into a magnet for opportunities and how to avoid the pitfalls that hold most project professionals back when it comes to digital presence on this platform.

But before we dive in, hi, I'm Melissa. You might also know me as a project management girl. If you follow my journey on Tik TOK or Instagram, and I have spent the last four years studying personal and professional branding. I've optimized over 500 LinkedIn pages and I've written over 450 project management resumes.

And I've used everything I've learned about branding to land some incredible roles myself, consulting opportunities, and speaking [00:05:00] engagements. So this stuff really is my area of expertise. And outside of that, I've also built a PMP prep community. And I actually really exciting because all of my students from last cohort have passed above target.

That was just like a huge accomplishment for me to help my students in this way. And then in my nine to five life, I've managed projects across tech, healthcare, marketing, and. Uh, veterinary care. So I'm kind of like multi industry and I'm just super passionate about project leadership in general.

So let's talk a little bit about your professional brand. So your professional brand is your secret weapon for achieving your dream job and dream opportunities. And how does LinkedIn play into this? So with over 900 million users, we know LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking platform.

So it's your digital resume or digital portfolio, and it's where hiring [00:06:00] managers and recruiters will go to learn who you are and what you can do for them. And if you apply for a role, or let's say you pitch yourself for a consulting gig, someone will probably from that company will look you up on your LinkedIn page.

So having a solid presence on there might be the deciding factor on whether or not they decide to like bring you in for an interview and ultimately hire you. Also, when your LinkedIn profile truly reflects excuse me, truly reflects who you are and what you bring to the table. This helps you feel really proud of it.

And that pride translates into more confidence in networking and applying for roles. So you really want a LinkedIn profile that you're also super proud of putting out there. And when we talk about your brand, [00:07:00] hold on, sorry, excuse me. Your brand is not just your hard skills. Yes, it includes your hard skills, but let's face it.

We're all very similar as project managers. Sometimes we start to sound the same when we aren't super specific about our specific niche skills and how it connects back to our career story. So what's going to truly set you apart is your unique professional brands plus those niche hard skills. This is going to give you a narrative and branding that's really unique to you.

And that's what makes you a unique candidate. And that's what attracts opportunities that feel authentic and purposeful to you. And also that pay you really well. So I want you to think about a brand or a public figure that you really love. Part of it. Why do you love that brand or, or, or that person, right?

Part [00:08:00] of it probably has to do with their key messaging. The way that they make you feel how their messaging resonates with you. That is all done through branding. So your brand should really be infused into every part of your LinkedIn profile and I'll show you how to do that. But there are many different ways to define your professional brand.

There are, there's like, this can be done many different ways again, but this is how I typically like to think of it as a combination of Like these things. So the first thing is going to be your career story. So this is the story of how you got here. Maybe you went through a really challenging life event that made you an empath.

You're really empathetic and now you're an empathetic project leader that should show up in your profile. That's a huge selling point for you. The second one is how you want people to think and feel about you. What makes you special and different? If you go to my profile, you'll [00:09:00] notice I'm laughing in my profile photo.

There's tons of colors and videos and the vibe is just really bright and bubbly that reflects who I am and how I want people to feel about me when they land on my page. This can also be derived from what I like to call your superpowers. So like what is that special sauce that you have that no one else has?

And how you can start to think about this is think about something your boss. or a client has complimented you on that. You don't feel many people have. That is one of the, the, uh, good ways to figure out what your superpower is or what makes you special. Number three in this equation is your hard skills.

So I think that's straightforward, but the more niche and specific you can get with the hard skills, the better. And I'll show you some examples on the next slide. The last one is your why. So your why is the reason why you want to work in this field. The reason why you want like this specific job or to work for this specific [00:10:00] company.

At some level, you likely feel a connection to like maybe a specific industry or you're making a difference in a specific type of role. You can probably tell from my page that my why is educating and empowering project leaders in their careers so they can find more purpose and make more money. Think about what your why is.

Um, most people, everybody has a wine and I'm going to, I'm going to tell you exactly how we can dig in and gather some of this stuff. So these are a couple of prompts that will help you outline what we just talked about and your professional brand in general. So it'll help us answer those four categories we just touched on.

So first we have niche skills. So these are obviously important. This is what most people already have. So agile project delivery. So instead of just. Project delivery. Maybe you are really skilled and agile project delivery in tech, though. That's [00:11:00] very niche, right? Healthcare quality improvement projects.

Very niche. Leading midsize teams with Kanban boards. So this is how you can take the skills you have and think, think a level deeper so that you can really appeal to employers in a way that's not generic or not. It's going to help you essentially blend, uh, stand out in a sea of people that look the same.

Then we have industry and fields. So remember that you're not just a project leader in general, you have project leadership likely in a very specific industry or a specific set of industries. So at the beginning. I talked about my experience in marketing, project management, healthcare, project management.

So think about your specific industries. This is really important for your SEO, which we'll talk about and then your superpowers. So your superpowers again, this is think, think about things where you're, you, that you have been consistently praised for [00:12:00] things others rely on you to do. So an example I have here is easy to work with.

So if you're easy to work with, think about why you're easy to work with. Those are probably your superpowers. And then we have accomplishments. So your accomplishments should always be on your LinkedIn profile, should always be part of your professional brand and your accomplishments should be measurable impact.

Big career wins. Think about like your biggest project, something that you really enjoyed doing and you delivered really well and you work to mitigate a lot of risks around. And then we have social impact and this connects, this is your, why this is what you care about. So on the side, we have an example.

Maybe you're really passionate about fostering healthy teams through servant leadership and emotional intelligence. That's something that I think is really important for my. My projects. Maybe you care about championing the use of technology to solve societal challenges, such as improving access to [00:13:00] health care or reducing educational inequality.

Those are really solid examples of why you're why. And then we have a couple of questions. Again, this kind of this slide kind of serves as almost like journal prompts to get to. Digging into finding a professional brand a little bit better. So the first question here you can ask yourself is who are you personally and professionally, and what do you care about?

What value do you bring that is special and why should someone hire you? And there's some other other questions down here, so we can really dig deep into our professional brand. But again, these are just some really good prompts to start with as, um, like a good starting point if you're not really sure how to define your brand.

So now let's talk about the other really important piece of the puzzle, which is SEO. So SEO, if you're not familiar, stands for search engine optimization. And it's the process of optimizing your, your [00:14:00] profile, or it could be a webpage, but in this case, we're talking about your LinkedIn profile so that recruiters and hiring managers can easily find you when they search for candidates.

So So LinkedIn functions as this big search engine. And if your profile is super optimized with the right keywords, you're more likely to show up in searches for the roles that you actually want and are qualified for. So how do we maximize our profile SEO first? And one of the biggest is keyword placement.

So using role specific Industry keywords everywhere in your profile, obviously context is important. So we're not going to just put like agile everywhere. We want to construct sentences that connect back to that brand. But when we're speaking specifically about SEO, making sure that you have keywords.

One or two in your headline, a bunch, maybe like 10 to 15 year about section, a ton in your skills section, both top [00:15:00] skills and the main skill section on the bottom. Your experience should have keywords for sprinkled throughout. And again, we want to be niche. We want to be very specific. So we stand out.

and still making sure we're telling a story with those keywords. Another important SEO hack is completing every section on your profile. Please do not leave sections on your profile blank, especially your about section profiles with fully completed sections rank higher in LinkedIn search algorithm. And then we have metadata.

So this is Kind of a secret trick that not a lot of people know when you upload a photo to your page, whether it's your banner or your profile photo or a post that you're creating, save the file name of that file to your device with keywords. So for your profile photo, save that to your computer as agile project manager.[00:16:00]

Emotionally intelligent, agile project manager dot PNG, and then upload it into your LinkedIn and LinkedIn can pick up on that metadata, which is that file name. So that's another like secret way to optimize your SEO. And then another important SEO hack is to regularly optimize. regularly update your profile.

So LinkedIn favors profiles with recent updates and engagement.

Another way to boost your SEO is posting content. Um, this, I know a lot of people feel a little worried to do. It doesn't have to be thought leadership content content. It could be celebrating career milestones. It could be sharing about a new hobby. It could be sharing about like personal insights on a project that you worked on, really anything, or it could be engaging with content, commenting on the digital project manager's posts, following and commenting and liking and reposting.

Things like that are also really great for SEO. So the recipe for a winning [00:17:00] LinkedIn page is both illustrating your brand throughout your. your profile and doing that in a way that's like optimizing your SEO and then also making sure that you, yeah, so professional brands and optimizing your SEO. So those are the two things, the two pieces of a recipe to a winning LinkedIn page.

So let's, so let's go through. optimizing each profile section, and I'm going to, um, I'm going to go through these just kind of one by one. Um, in a, uh, in order. I think we're getting close to time. So I'm going to just kind of go through these quickly. So the first one is your profile photo and your banner.

Obviously, like these are probably the most important, obvious and important things. You want to make sure these really reflect you who you are. Your profile photo should be Face the camera if you can. It's okay if you're a little bit turned, but we want to see your face. We want to make sure the photo is crisp.

It's good lighting. [00:18:00] Selfies are okay. If we can't tell it's an obvious selfie, but make sure it we're kind of seeing, you know, not just like your head. And most importantly, we want to see your personality. Who are we hiring to join our team? That is what hiring managers are going to ask. And then your banner.

A lot of people make the mistake of not utilizing this space to showcase their brand and their unique selling point. So this is free real estate. to show off who you are and what you bring to the table. So these are two very important pieces of your profile. And then the open to work. So most of us know how to,

um, I think we're coming up to that. Okay. So open to work. Most of us know how to use this, but make sure you're open to work is on. If you are in the job market, I actually keep mine on all the time, just so I can stay relevant with the types of opportunities that I qualify for. What people are being offered [00:19:00] salary wise for roles similar to mine, things like that.

And then make sure you customize your URL. So once you land on the main page on your LinkedIn to your profile view on the right hand. corner. There is an option to change your public profile and URL. So I like to change this to make a cleaner look, just put like your first and last name, first, last name, PMP, whatever it is.

That is like not the standard numerical string that they usually have after your URL. This helps your SEO as well.

Okay. Headline. This is hugely important for optimizing your LinkedIn profile. And a simple formula you can use is here on this slide. So your role plus your unique value plus. the outcome you deliver. So I've got some examples here for you. Maybe you [00:20:00] are a process optimization project manager. You're a systems thinker and you're streamlining operations for sustainable growth.

Chef's kiss. So good. Maybe you are a project manager for creative teams and you're orchestrating strategies, increasing ROI with impactful campaigns. Again, so good. Maybe you're a project manager. This is close to what I do. A project manager in healthcare tech implementing scalable solutions and enhancing patient care through innovation.

Or maybe you're a change management project manager, people centered strategist, and you're writing seamless transitions that deliver value. So if you use that formula, Uh, this formula right here, you should be able to create a headline that really illustrates your professional brand, your, and your unique value and is SEO optimized.

Let's move on to our about section. So this is [00:21:00] another place where there is just so much free real estate for you to show your brand and to optimize your page. So the formula here. is that I, I recommend, but again, like make this your own. This is your chance to tell your story to show your impact. But if a quick formula you can use is hook.

So start with a compelling statement about your unique value. And then you have. your structure. So like highlighting key projects and accomplishments and tying them back to your career goal. And then this should be like three to four paragraphs long and you should have lots of keywords in here. So like for me, my hook was a quote about execution.

And then I say like, I'm the person you want to hire if you're looking to execute on strategy. So it's kind of like my hook. I love using quotes that relate to values or things that are important to you.

Moving on to [00:22:00] some of the sections that many people forget about. So there is a project section on LinkedIn. If you don't have a project section on your profile, you can click there's like a, on your main profile landing page, there's a pencil button and you can click like, add profile section and you can add a project section.

Make sure you list out what were those like big wins that you were able to deliver during that project. Like you could also list multiple projects. If you volunteer, which I think you should, if you have the time, it's important to give back when we give the universe gives us even more, but there is also a section to add that volunteer experience.

So I have like my vice president of marketing for PMI Tampa Bay in there. I've got like, when I was a marketing coordinator, I also volunteer for the humane society. So I should probably add that in there. And this is another place where SEO will. And then we have our skills section. So make sure your skills align [00:23:00] with exactly the types of roles that you're targeting.

What I like to do is choose 10 to 15 open positions and check the job descriptions for the skills or requirements that are on those job descriptions and pull the keywords from there. That is going to optimize your profile for those types of roles. And I do have a tool that can help you do this. that we'll share.

You should also try to get endorsements from colleagues or friends or family for your top skills. So if you really want to work in an agile environment in a health tech company, make sure the skills that are related to that role are endorsed.

Okay. And then And moving on to recommendation, publications and honors and awards. Just remember, if you have these things, if these things relate to you, make sure that you add them in. I love asking colleagues to write recommendations for me, or even just [00:24:00] going, go ahead and like go to there. Anyone you worked on a successful project with, I would say at the end.

Go write them a recommendation on their LinkedIn and then ask them if they would mind writing a recommendation on you. If you've had any publications, you can add those there. If you have any honors and awards, even if it's like an award that you got a company Christmas party, you should add that there as well.

Moving on to more additional sections that people forget about your work samples can be pinned to both your featured section and in your experience. So like, let's say you were a Creative project manager at a marketing company. You make sure you have that experience listed there and then make sure you add the media.

Like, so when I say media, it could be, maybe you, you created a pitch deck for a marketing campaign and it was really successful. You could add the pitch deck there. You can redact any confidential information. I always do that, especially working in [00:25:00] healthcare and then add those work samples. And that's really going to give hiring managers, uh, uh, a look into your work, which is what increase your odds of getting more interviews.

And, but increase your negotiating power when it comes to salary. So this basically can serve as like your project portfolio, your LinkedIn page in multiple capacities, whether you decide to pin. work samples to featured or in your experience section.

Okay. And then let's talk a little bit more about like posting content and a little bit more about the, um, featured section on your LinkedIn profile. So your featured section on your LinkedIn profile shows up pretty high up. It is right under, if I'm remembering correctly, it's either right below or above your about section.

So it's, it's one of the, like the top. Third of your LinkedIn profile. [00:26:00] And so you want to make sure there's something in your featured section. I have like a recap of PMI global summit and the lessons I learned. I have like some positive feedback I've got for some of my students. This could be when I was in the job market, this was positive feedback.

I've gotten from clients on my projects. And don't be afraid to ask people for feedback on these things. It's totally okay to ask for recommendations, ask for feedback on your projects, because this is what you can use the content you can use on your profile and on your portfolio. So you can pin things like maybe there's like a current event that really sparked your interest that aligns with your values.

Maybe there's a project you just worked on. Maybe there's a post from the digital project manager that was like really insightful and you really agreed with it. You can pin that to your featured with your thoughts.

And then, so I don't have this on the slide, but I just want to mention [00:27:00] groups. So like when you join a group on LinkedIn, there are so many amazing, amazing professionals that you can meet and network with. And if you don't have LinkedIn premium and you want to send people messages to You know, uh, network and ask about job opportunities.

You can actually do that for free if you're in a group with someone. So typically you can't send, uh, messages if you're not like connected or if you don't have premium to certain people, but if you are in a group with them, you can message them. So the last super secret hack I'll give you today. And so that, so in general, just to kind of like.

Wrap us up and, and, and talk about in summary what we just discussed, because that was a lot of information. What you really should be focusing on. When you are optimizing your LinkedIn page is bringing in the things that make you truly unique, your professional brand, what [00:28:00] you bring to the table and your, your career story, your superpowers, and making sure you're doing that, taking all of that content and using it in a way that is optimizing Each like piece of your ICO and each part of your LinkedIn profile.

So all of those sections we just talked about making sure each of them have a little bit of that career story, that brand sprinkled.

So today we've covered how to transform your LinkedIn profile into a really powerful tool that attracts the roles, the connections and the opportunities you deserve. We've, we've covered how to incorporate really strong branding, how to effectively use SEO and how in doing so it's setting yourself up to stand out from the crowd and make it easier to have the confidence to put yourself out there.

And I want to end with [00:29:00] reminding you that knowing what to do is only the first step. Execution is what makes the difference. And as we know, as project leaders, but very small steps, so this is not going to, you're not going to be able to, to Like log out and go home and optimize your entire linkedin profile today.

Small steps is going to lead to the most impactful updates and impactful revision. So maybe today your homework is just revise your headline. or update your about section or starting to engage more actively on the platform. Take what you learned today and start making those very small changes. Now, even small updates can lead to start to lead to momentum and bigger opportunities.

[00:29:49] Michael Mordak: Amazing. That was, that was incredible. And so thanks so much for sharing all this. Um, I realized we're just past that, the End of the session here. So [00:30:00] I want to appreciate our sorry. Thank everybody for staying on for a few extra minutes here. I've just got a last couple of notes and bonus resources that are being made available here.

So I've, uh, pasted a big, you know, group of of links there and I'll just explain them really briefly here. So, um In terms of these bonus resources here. So Melissa's as she mentioned, created a free LinkedIn keyword optimization tool that she wanted to share with everybody today. So that link is in that message there.

Feel free to check that out and you can download it for free. Um, if you haven't already feel free to connect with Melissa on LinkedIn and on Instagram, her links are in that message there. Um, Maybe just copy that message and post it into a note or a doc somewhere so that you don't lose it when we end the call here today.

Um, next up, we're also hosting another session next week through the DPM. This one's going to be a panel on data driven AI enabled resource management, where a few of our experts are going to be showcasing their approaches to how they have used [00:31:00] data and AI. In their approach to resourcing. So the link to that one is in the chat as well.

You can also find it on our website. Um, and if you loved this session and found that helpful and want to join a future workshop or want to know more about DPM membership and everything else that's, uh, that's available, then check us out at the digital project manager. com slash membership link is in the message and last, but certainly not least.

We love feedback. So please take a second to click the feedback link there. Let us know what you thought of today's event and also submit a topic that you'd like us to, sorry, that you'd like to see us cover in a future session. Um, so we can, we can prioritize those as well, because we'd love to hear what you folks would like to see us covering.

All those links are available in the chat. Um, and for everybody who. Join us today. I just want to thank you again. Thank you, Melissa, for all of that incredible information. Um, we really appreciate it.

[00:31:57] Melissa Khan-Blackmore: Yeah. Thanks everyone. I'm, I'm reading the chat now and I'm [00:32:00] like, so amazing. Thank you so much.