Happy Monday 🌞

The last few weeks at work have been pretty focused on hiring for me. I’m bringing on a Content Writer to my team, and we started out with over 1,500 applications before narrowing it down to a smaller group to move through the interview rounds. (You can read about what we looked for in Content Writer applications here.)

I’ve always been very career focused — I had a LinkedIn profile for the longest time and have worked on career growth in various ways. But it is extra insightful to be on the other side of things. Hiring and making the decisions that come with filling a role lends a whole new perspective to career progress.

It has helped me crystalize some career advice I was given early on. I remember being told, “You only have 10 seconds to catch attention with your resume.” And I thought it must be an exaggeration, especially after I’d spent hours tweaking words and sentences on my resume or LinkedIn profile.

But being on the other side and sifting through hundreds of applications made it clear — you only have a short amount of time to stand out, and putting time and attention into an application and a resume can go a very long way.

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about career advice and LinkedIn profiles, and I wanted to share them all in one place since these topics have been quite top of mind for me recently. Let’s dive in.

To start, have a solid LinkedIn presence

I’ve been a fan of LinkedIn for years. It has long been one of the best ways to showcase your professional experience. It has also turned into a social network peppered with helpful advice and the opportunity to connect with a range of people.

If you haven’t already, my first advice is to always set up your LinkedIn profile fully. I used to freelance and edit LinkedIn profiles, and I wrote up a whole piece going step-by-step through how I edit a LinkedIn profile.

Once you have your profile set up, make sure you’ve taken some of the extra steps with your profile, like grabbing your custom URL or adding media to your experience.

And finally, having an optimized LinkedIn profile is not only for when you’re job hunting.

I’ve been at the same company for seven and a half years, and I still keep my LinkedIn profile up to date. Why? Because it’s worthwhile to keep using LinkedIn for networking because opportunities that aren’t other jobs can also come your way on LinkedIn and because it’s part of a strong personal brand.

Systems that have served my career progress

Over the years, I’ve also experimented with and built out several systems to help in my career growth efforts. The three that are the most tried and tested are:

1. Keeping career lists.

I keep lists of all sorts of things that have been very helpful over the years. Lists of job descriptions for roles more senior than mine that I can build on (more on that later), lists of people whose careers I admire, and companies I want to follow along with. It’s beyond this newsletter to list all of the ways those lists have been helpful to me, but my advice still is to keep lists of the things that spark your interest in your career so you can follow along more closely.

2. Writing a future job description.

This is where saving all of those job descriptions comes into play. You can use them for inspiration to write the job description that you see for yourself in the future. This simple exercise has helped me many times refocus on what I want to be working towards in my career — and I’m pleased to say I’m in a job that is super close to something I wrote down several years ago. Additional clarity is never a bad thing.

3. Tracking performance and performance reviews.

One of the career lists I keep is my career accomplishments. Coupled with saving my performance review notes, this note becomes a very helpful resource for where I can improve over the next season at work. I use the topics in that note to set specific career goals for myself year after year.

One more that isn’t a system, I combined a few pieces of advice into one post on six things that have had a huge impact on my career, some of which we’ve already covered but a good list nonetheless.

Phew, that’s a lot of career-related things.

I’d love to hear from you! Hit reply and let me know what most resonates or what else you’d want me to write about on this subject.

Warmly,

Hailley

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