326: Making LinkedIn Work for You with Brenda Bernstein

Pete Mockaitis
Brenda, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Brenda Bernstein
Thank you Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to start at the beginning in terms of maybe your early childhood not to enter therapy, but you were in Sesame Street when you were a child. What is the story here?

Brenda Bernstein
Yes, and I really need therapy after that. Well, the story is my sister grew up in New York City. My mom just thought, “Hey, I’ll take them to interview.” We passed whatever test and the next thing you knew they were calling us in to be on Sesame Street. We did a few shows. I learned – I met Big Bird and Oscar. Not everyone knows this, but it’s the same actor in Big Bird and Oscar.

Pete Mockaitis
How about that?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah. I remember seeing Snuffleupagus like hanging from the ceiling. I always loved Snuffleupagus. Sat in Big Bird’s nest.

One of the episodes I was on I was doing tongue twisters with Bob. We were sitting on the stoop and saying, “Rubber baby buggy bumpers,” and I said “Rubber baby buggy bumpers, rubber baby buggy bumpers,” many, many, many times. That was the beginning of my speaking career right there.

Pete Mockaitis
An auspicious beginning.

Brenda Bernstein
Yes. Give me any tongue twister.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, they must have liked you because if you kept coming back, that’s great.

Brenda Bernstein
I kept coming back. The last time that they invited me, they asked me to do a voice over. They show the animals and you’re supposed to say what the animals were doing and I completely failed on that. It was not a good match for me. I just hadn’t – I didn’t even know what to say. That was my last time on Sesame Street.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you had to create the script. It wasn’t just read it. It’s like what is this animal thinking, feeling, trying to convey right now.

Brenda Bernstein
Yes, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s challenging for anybody.

Brenda Bernstein
Well, for some kids it’s like they naturally do that. I did not. Maybe I was too old and jaded already. I couldn’t be like, “Look, he’s eating.” It just wasn’t me.

Pete Mockaitis
Jaded at an early age.

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to talk to you all about LinkedIn profiles. You wrote the book, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile. I love a direct title that’s very clear, like How to Be Awesome at Your Job, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile. I’ll let you kick it off. There’s probably many ways we could approach this question, but how does one write a killer LinkedIn profile?

Brenda Bernstein
I thought you were going to say, “How does one write such a great book about writing killer LinkedIn profiles?” but how does one write a killer LinkedIn profile.

Well, there are quite a few aspects to it. Part of it is how you write it and what words you put down into the profile and then part of it is how you use it once you’ve got it.

My book goes over 18 common mistakes that people make in writing their LinkedIn profiles. It tells you how to avoid them and also has some bonus tips at the end. Really it ends up being 25 – at least 25 tips with many sub-tips in between. It takes a lot to write a killer LinkedIn profile if you’re really going to get the results that are possible out of LinkedIn. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Let’s orient there to results and the why behind this thing maybe before going into as much of the how.

It’s funny I had a listener who mentioned that she – I said, “Oh hey, could I use your image and quote just from your LinkedIn profile as a testimonial since you like this stuff?” She’s like, “Oh yeah, I don’t have a LinkedIn profile. I know I should.”

But if there’s listeners in that boat, who’s like, “Oh yeah, I probably should,” could you unpack what’s behind the should and the results and the benefits associated with putting in this investment of effort?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, in one sense it does depend. Everything depends. I don’t have too many hard and fast rules that I would tell every person on the planet that they need to have a LinkedIn profile. Do you happen to know what that person’s career – what industry she was in, what kind of job she did?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. She was working in sort of pharmaceuticals/medical devices, that space.

Brenda Bernstein
Oh, then she definitely needs to have a LinkedIn profile. I was going to say if she were a social worker, an elementary school teacher, some people like that it’s really not that important to have a LinkedIn profile other than for networking.

But if you’re in pharmaceutical/medical device the recruiters are out there looking for you. They’re on LinkedIn. Not to be on LinkedIn is a big mistake if you’re in a field like that, like any of those professional fields.

If you’re in IT, if you’re in any type of big level manager, if you’re in – if you’re like consumer packaged goods, any of those types of industries and type – if you’re a project manager of any kind, any kind of technology, IT, the recruiters are on LinkedIn. They’re looking for you.

The jobs are being posted on LinkedIn, so it’s a really good place to look for a job and hopefully you’ll always have a little bit of an eye out for what might be the next best thing for yourself.

If you don’t care about meeting other professionals in your industry, and you don’t care about being recruited for a bigger and better job, and you just want to stay exactly where you are and maybe not have your customers be able to find out anything about you, then don’t have a LinkedIn profile.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. There you have it. It’s like, “I am completely content where I am and I would like an extra measure of privacy,” that would be the segment of person or people that ought not to have a LinkedIn profile or would not really benefit I guess in the sense of recruiters and jobs are living on LinkedIn and you’re missing out. That might not matter so much.

But for the healthy majority, it sure sounds like yes, you want. I hear it said well. It might have been Mac Prichard who said – or maybe it was you – I don’t know where this came from but I thought it was a great turn of a phrase, it was, “Oh, you’re not on LinkedIn, you must be retired.”

Brenda Bernstein
Uh huh.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, oh boy, that really puts a point on it.

Brenda Bernstein
Plenty of retired people are on LinkedIn as well because you get to be in groups and keep learning and growing. There’s usefulness even when you are retired to be on LinkedIn. Or to be a mentor for someone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Right or sort of nonprofit, volunteering, board recruitment and membership, certainly. Okay, we’re not here to put any guilt or shame on anybody if you happen to not yet have a LinkedIn profile or if it’s embarrassingly old or out of date. No judgment. We’re just looking to make the most of this asset should you choose to take advantage of it.

Boy, you said there’s 18 or 25 mistakes folks make, could you unpack a little bit in terms of what are some of the most dangerous and most widespread of these mistakes that we should rectify right away?

Brenda Bernstein
Sure. Well, I’ll talk about a few of them. One, and it’s the thing that happens before anyone finds you on LinkedIn at all is to not be found. If you have a LinkedIn profile and no one finds you, it has – there’s still a little benefit because if you give people your LinkedIn profile address, then they can still look at your profile. But it’s important to be locatable on LinkedIn.

Really to do that you need to have keywords in the right places. You also need to have a very robust network, at a minimum 500 connections on LinkedIn. The combination of that keyword placement and keyword density, I think people generally know what that … of, but … just be the words that people are going to be using when they put them into the search box. You want to come up for those words.

The more times those words show up in the key places, which are your headline and your job titles and then after that some other places in your profile, the more likely you are to come up in people’s searches. That’s really important to be findable, locatable on LinkedIn.

Then you want to look good once people find you. One of the first things that people see when they look at your LinkedIn profile is of course your photo. A big mistake the people make on LinkedIn, not having a photo at all, having a photo on there with their dog or their cat. Let’s get serious here. We’re not talking about Facebook.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Got you.

Brenda Bernstein
This is LinkedIn. This is your professional presence. You want to have a professional headshot on LinkedIn. You want to have a light background usually works a lot better on LinkedIn and just have it be you, your head and your shoulders, maybe up to your shoulders. That’s mostly what people want to see.

Now, if you’re in real estate and you want to have a sign or a house along with you, there’s certain professions where it’s okay to have something else in the background, but for most of us, it’s going to be – I want to be just me and the background. That makes a difference.

We are human beings and we are attracted by something that looks professional. A recruiter who looks at a profile, one of them has a picture and another one doesn’t have a picture, they’re going to be more interested in talking to the person with the picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, got you.

Brenda Bernstein
Then the other part of likeability I would say on LinkedIn – and you’re starting to get a little hint at my formula. We have locatability, likeability. I’m getting the L’s going here.

Likeability, in addition to the photo, you might want to have a nice background to your photo. That’s where you can get a little bit creative. Again, you want to keep it professional and don’t have any – … too many words in there because depending on what interface it’s showing on, that photo will be located in different places on the background and you don’t want it to cover up something important and just not look right.

You also want to use an image that it’s okay if your photo is in different places along that spectrum. LinkedIn has a default, sort of a constellation that they have back there. That’s boring. If you do have a background that shows anyone who looks that you’ve taken an extra care and creativity to put into your profile, says something about you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you mean background, not the background in your photo, but a separate feature in LinkedIn, which is the background image.

Brenda Bernstein
Yes, the background image.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. All right.

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, thanks for that clarification. Then we have the headline. In the headline you want to make sure you say who you are. One big mistake is people let their job title automatically populate the headline.

You have control over that. You can override it and you can say your job title, but then follow it up with some other things. You want to use keywords in there to go back to the locatability and maybe even have a little bit of your unique selling proposition if you can fit it in and not – I wouldn’t … at the expense of keywords, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little bit of a tagline up there as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us a few examples there of sort of headlines that are missing an opportunity versus oh yeah, just perfect?

Now I can give you the example of my own, which when I first wrote my headline it said ‘Founder and senior editor at the Essay Expert.’ Now that doesn’t help anyone find a resume writer. It doesn’t help anyone find a LinkedIn expert. That’s just one example.

Now once I myself learned about headlines and keywords, my headline now says, ‘Resume and LinkedIn profile writer, author, speaker, executive resumes, C-level resumes, executive LinkedIn profiles, college essays, law school admission essays, MBA admission essays.’ You see the difference.

Pete Mockaitis
You put all that in the headline, so then I’m thinking about as you see the search results of person’s name and then headline, will you get to read all of that or will it get clipped off in search results or as folks are browsing?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, you won’t be able to see all of it necessarily, but on desktop version if someone looks they’ll be able to see that whole thing once they look at your profile.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, so then your emphasis there was really all about the keywords such that when people are searching that, they find just that and that’s sorts of the main thing as opposed to like a branding thing of ‘A data-driven professional passionate about the future of the automotive industry.’

Brenda Bernstein
Right, those words aren’t going to get you a lot of mileage in your headline. Here’s another example, someone who wrote, ‘Quality assurance analyst,’ in their headline.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Brenda Bernstein
So that’s okay because if someone is looking for a quality assurance analyst, that’s going to help them out, but if you have quality assurance analyst and then you have a little divider, say, ‘… development, client communication, automation engineer,’ then you give yourself more chances to be found.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. I’m with you there. You want to be findable with a good headline and you can override from just your position to what’s there. You want to look good with a good photo, light background and then using the LinkedIn background extra feature there. What else?

Brenda Bernstein
The next thing really is your summary. That’s your opportunity. You’ve got 2,000 characters. A lot of people – a big mistake that people make is to take their resume summary, which isn’t always the greatest in the first place, and then they copy and paste it.

It’s this paragraph that says, ‘Results oriented, proven track record,’ in my words, blah, blah, blah, and they just copy and paste it into their LinkedIn profile. They’re not taking advantage of the entire 2,000 characters that are available, not that you have to use all the 2,000, but you have some room here to get creative.

You actually have an opportunity to show a little bit of your personality, so maybe some of your accomplishments, all in your LinkedIn summary.

I have an example of a marketing person who wrote in her LinkedIn summary all about how she wanted to be a football player when she grew up. Actually she says when she was little she boldly claimed to anyone who would listen, “I wanted to drive a garbage truck.” Then she moved to Wisconsin and declared she’d be the next Green Bay Packers quarterback after Brett Favre retired.

She really is bringing herself to this LinkedIn summary. It’s kind of fun. It grabs some attention. Now the one thing to keep in mind with the LinkedIn summary is that this is one where you don’t see the whole thing when you first look at it. You’ve got to click on ‘Show more.’

Think about maybe the first three or four lines to make sure that you’re communicating who you are in those first few lines or grabbing some attention enough to make people want to click on ‘Show more.’ When I write LinkedIn profiles for people, I definitely use those first few lines to hit them with the most important things and make no mistake about who I am or what I offer. Then you can talk more.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. That’s interesting there because it seems like there’s maybe multiple approaches with that summary because with that fun ”I want to be a garbage truck driver,” I guess if you think about the person on the other side of that, it might kind of catch their attention like, “Hm, okay, that’s a little different. What’s her story? I want to learn more.” It might intrigue them or they be like, “I don’t care.” It’s sort of a turn off.
How do you think about what style or tone is best for what context?

Brenda Bernstein
Well, there’s a way you could do both I would say for one is that maybe you start out really telling them who you are and then you can tell a little bit of your story and show your personality. That would be one.

Then the other is who are you and what is your personality. If your personality is to talk about how you wanted to drive a garbage truck when you grew up, then maybe you start that way. If your personality is a lot more straightforward, business oriented, then you’re going to start that way.

The other good news is that you can always change your LinkedIn profile anytime you want. You can save what you had there before. You can try something else. You can’t have two LinkedIn profiles. You can get in trouble for that. But you can try different things at different times.

Make sure you save anything that you decide to change. Save the old one. If you don’t like how something is performing, you can always do something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so then what are some other key components and how should we make sure we’re not making mistakes there?

Brenda Bernstein
Well, you do want to make sure to have, as I said, a robust network. I didn’t talk – go into much detail about that, but 500 connections is really a minimum. If you don’t have that number of connections, you probably are going to have a hard time finding people when you search because the search results come up based on how a close connection you are to them.

You want to be close to a lot of people so that when you search for automation engineer in Chicago, you’re really going to get good results because you’re connected with a lot of people.

In order to build that network – a lot of people are like, “Oh my God, 500, that seems like such a big number.” It’s probably not as big as you think it is. Once you start to look and there are ways that you can look at your alumni from any schools that you’ve gone to and start connecting with alumni.

Other people are like, “Oh 500, well, I only want quality connections.” Well, don’t you think that a lot of the people you went to school with, especially if it’s a top-level college or any kind of graduate school, are going to be high quality connections? I would hope so. Even if you don’t know them personally, most people who went to a school with you are going to be open to connecting.

If you joined groups, then you also have a really great source of connections. You were going to say something?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I found that LinkedIn is just very, almost creepily wise when it comes to suggesting people I may know. It’s like how do you even know that I know that person? I can’t even see what you’re seeing about knowledge. I’m sure they’re in deep with some big data things that make it super smart.

But that’s kind of what I found when I was trying to – way back in the day when I was below 500, I’d say, “Oh, I do know a lot of those people,” so I’d connect, connect, connect, connect, connect the ones they suggested. Then sure enough, a week later, many of those people had already accepted and so LinkedIn had new wisdom from which to draw and suggest even more people that I might know. I’d say, “Oh, sure,” connect, connect, connect.

In a way it did it for me. I just had to sit down with a little bit of space in between and review the people they thought I knew.

Brenda Bernstein
Yup, yeah. Most people know a lot more people than they realize or are interested in knowing more people than they realize.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Are there some sort of slick moves to get all of your Facebook connections to become LinkedIn connections? Is that possible?

Brenda Bernstein
I don’t know of anything like that. There could be some interface app somewhere that does that, but I don’t know. There is a way to get anyone in your address book, but I wouldn’t do that because sometimes your address book has a bunch of junk in it and you don’t want to just blindly, blithely send out connection request to everyone in your email address book because you’ll get rejections and it will be kind of messy.

If you get too many people saying they don’t know you, then they can stop you from sending out more requests, so I wouldn’t go that route. I wouldn’t do anything actually automated in terms of building your network. I’d reach out to people one-on-one.

Especially if you do anything automated, then the best that any program could do would be to send out a generic message. I’m really a proponent of customizing every invitation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I like that a lot. I want to go there in a second. With the address book stuff though, it is possible right, to sort of deselect all and then get choosy like, “Okay, LinkedIn you can take a look at my Gmail, but from there I’m going to be – I’m going to pick and choose who I’m actually requesting to connect with.”

Brenda Bernstein
I think you can, but so many people – it’s very tricky and not intuitive. A lot of people send out invitations to their entire address book by accident when they’re maybe trying to do that, so I just don’t recommend it.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you, so risk.

Brenda Bernstein
In addition to the issue of it’s just going to be the generic invitation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, let’s talk about inviting people well and customizing each.

Lately, it’s funny, way back, not too far back, I had an episode with Steve Sims and he mentioned he liked to do events with a password. It’s like if you said the password at the door, then it meant that you knew whatever the right people to be invited and it showed that you were up for some fun because the password was silly like, “Name the Teletubbies.”

I asked some time ago and I’ve gotten a lot of these requests, so send some more please, listeners, I’d say, “Hey, go ahead and ask me to connect on LinkedIn and the password is a lyric from a boy band song.” I would get in all of these fun connection requests like, “Pete, it’s tearing up my heart when I …” It makes it a lot of fun to go to LinkedIn and connect with listeners and such.

But then it kind of became clear how I was also getting so many poor messages. Some have no message or ‘I’d like to add you as a connection on LinkedIn.’

I think the worst I’ve seen – I won’t say his name – but it said something like, “Hi Pete, in an effort to build my financial services connections I am reaching out to you.” It’s like, well, that’s sort of all about you and not all about sort of what we have in common or others would say, “It appears that we have similar interests.” It’s like, I think you say that to everybody.

On my own experience, I’m looking for a touch of personalization, customization, there’s something that connects us. “I listen to your podcast.” “Awesome, that’s great. Cool, thank you.” Anyway, that’s been my experience, but let’s get your expert take. What makes a bad versus a good invitation request messaging?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, I agree with everything you said, Pete. Anything that’s generic is not the best. There are people – I really love your little game that you played with send me some boy band lyrics. That’s really great. I know someone who will always require a new connection to have a conversation with him on the phone before he’ll accept the invitation. That’s a strategy people have used.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, so he just sends an email back like, “Hey, thanks for reaching out. We can schedule a time to chat if you want to be connected.”

Brenda Bernstein
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Then there you go. Okay.

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly. Of course, there’s some people I’m sure he just rejects, but if it’s someone who looks like that he would be interested in connecting, then he’ll have that conversation.

One way to do it let’s say you’re – if you’re reaching out to alumni, it might be enough just to say, “Hey, we’re both alumni of this school. I’d love to connect with you. How’s life after Kalamazoo University,” whatever it is.

When you’re connecting with people in groups, you generally have some common interest I should hope. Maybe it’s someone who posted something in a group, so you can refer to what they posted and say that you found it interesting.

You might connect with someone who posted an article in LinkedIn Publisher and you read the article and you liked it. You can tell them how much you enjoyed their article, “and especially this part.” Prove to them that you read it.

I have been reaching out to coaches. I reach out to a lot of people on the Forbes Coaches Council. I’ve written to people saying, “Hi, I see you’re a member of the Forbes Coaching Council. I’m an executive resume writer. I think we could be valuable connections for each other. I look forward to having you in my network.” Just that. It’s very simple, but pretty much everyone accepts my invitation when I write stuff like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. There you go. It doesn’t need to be elaborate or detailed. It’s just sort of like, “Oh, okay.” It just sort of is even almost like a surface or summary answer, like, “Who are you and why should we connect?” “Oh, okay. That’s you and that makes sense.” Okay, that’s it. Done.

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly. Yes. Just for the record, no I do not recommend connecting with every single person from Pakistan and India who says they want connect with you. I think it’s fine to reject some connections, which basically means just don’t respond to them and then the person doesn’t get – they don’t get something that says you rejected them. They just never get connected with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, if I click ignore, are they told that I clicked ignore?

Brenda Bernstein
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I didn’t think so because no one’s told me, “You have been ignored.”

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve never seen that. My thing is I accept most, even if it’s sort of light on the details because I sort of assume with thousands of listeners, oh, you’re probably a podcast listener. You heard the episode about the password, so it’s all good.

But maybe – I don’t know fair or unfair, folks who are doing sort of investment/advisory things and marketing sounding things, I usually say no because it’s often the beginning of a sales funnel. If any listeners try to connect with me and you happen to be in those industries, I probably ignored you and it’s not personal. But you can – I think you can try again. Is that true, Brenda? Is that possible?

Brenda Bernstein
You can. You might need to-

Pete Mockaitis
Get a message.

Brenda Bernstein
To withdraw your request and then reinstate it. There is a way to do that.

You can actually like if you send one of those generic messages by accident, which sometimes happens, because it’s not necessarily easy to send a customized message. If you click on ‘Connect’ from a list, from a search that came up, that automatic message is going out and you can’t stop it.

If you connect from your phone, if you hit ‘Connect,’ it’s going to send a generic message. On your phone what you need to do, and a lot of people don’t realize this, but you can send a customized message. But you need to click on – I think they just changed it. It says ‘More.’ When you hit on ‘More’ then you get a personalize invite option in the dropdown. But most people don’t know that.

If you do get a generic message, maybe someone just connected with you from their phone and they didn’t even know. I wouldn’t be offended either, but if you’re a really savvy LinkedIn user, you’re going to know how to send a customized message from anywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well that’s helpful to know right there. It’s like, oops, you might accidently do that. But you can withdraw it and then do it with more customization if you accidently hit that.

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly. As long as they haven’t accepted it yet, you can actually go into your LinkedIn interface and find all the connection requests that you made and you can manage those requests and you can undo one of them if you want to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is really useful stuff. Brenda tell me, any other sort of top do’s and don’ts that you want to make sure we get out there when it comes to LinkedIn?

Brenda Bernstein
Those are really my top, top ones. I would say the other things to consider are giving and getting recommendations. It’s always a really good thing to do. If you haven’t given a recommendation in four years on LinkedIn, think about whether it might be time to do that. If you haven’t given any, maybe it’s time to start requesting those because those are really great to have to show off who you are on your LinkedIn profile.

You get to show off by getting them and by giving them. If there are any recruiters out there who might be looking for you, they do look at recommendations that you’ve given, so keep that in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that just to evaluate, “Hey, is this a generous person who knows LinkedIn or can they write well,” or kind of what are they looking at when they – to see about the recommendations you’re giving?

Brenda Bernstein
I think it’s mostly to say, “Oh, this is a person who supports their colleagues, who cares to take the time to do something nice for another person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And it is so nice in terms of you can just surprise and delight someone by pulling up their profile, writing them a recommendation. Maybe you worked with them years ago. Then – and they love it. It’s a fun moment like, “Hey Pete, how are you doing? That was so nice. Thank you.” It just puts everyone in a good mood. Who doesn’t love to get a compliment or a thank you?

Brenda Bernstein
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
In a public way that helps them out too.

Brenda Bernstein
Absolutely. Then the final thing, which probably one of the biggest mistakes that anyone makes on LinkedIn is they write their LinkedIn profile and it’s like the gym membership. You buy the gym membership and then you never got to the gym. It’s a similar principle with LinkedIn.

You can have a great LinkedIn profile and then if you just sit there and you don’t check your LinkedIn messages or you do, but you only ever have conversations on LinkedIn about anything and you never actually have a call, phone call with anyone, and you never actually go out and meet for coffee with someone that you met on LinkedIn, you’re not going to get results from your LinkedIn profile.

It actually does require being active, going back, updating things when it’s ready to update them, reaching out to people and having conversations. That’s how to really get value out of LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, any final thoughts before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Brenda Bernstein
I think that’s good. We can move on. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Brenda Bernstein
Wow, it’s like my favorite quote changes on a daily basis. Yesterday I saw this video talking about bamboo trees and how bamboo trees take five years to grow but the majority of that time, they’re under the soil and they have to be tended to and watered. Then all of the sudden within five weeks, the bamboo tree grows to 90 feet.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool.

Brenda Bernstein
That’s amazing, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Brenda Bernstein
It was such a great metaphor for so many things in life, how you really need to put time in and you might not see the results. People might be telling you, “I don’t see any results. It’s not working.”

[36:00]

But if you have that confidence and you’re nurturing and watering something, then when it’s ready to bust out of the ground, it’s going to do that. It can move really fast. I think there’s something about trusting the process and keeping on keeping on and nurturing your dream.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Brenda Bernstein
Here is a bit of research that I think is really cool.

This is one where a bunch of students were told before they were going to go into a lecture they were told – half the students were told that the lecturer was very warm and the other half of the students were told, “Oh, this lecturer is kind of cold. He’s kind of a cold person.”

Then all of the students went into to see the lecture and what do you know? It was the same lecture. Everyone saw the same thing. But the ones who had been told that the professor was warm, came out talking about how warm the professor was. The ones who went in being told the professor was kind of cold, came out saying, “Well, yeah, that was a good lecture, but the professor was kind of cold.”

What strikes me about this for LinkedIn is that how we write our LinkedIn profile informs how people expect us to be when we meet them. If you write something on LinkedIn that’s very business focused, people are going to expect you, if they meet you in person, for you to be business focused. If you write something that’s a little more creative and playful, they’re going to expect you to be more creative and playful.

You actually get to inform how people experience you in real life or in an interview based on what you write in your LinkedIn profile. I think that’s pretty cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Brenda Bernstein
Besides How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Brenda Bernstein
That’s a hard one. One – I read this such a long time ago, but it’s the first one that just popped into my head. It’s called The Time Traveler’s Wife. I know they made a movie of it. The movie wasn’t very good, but the book was so good.

Pete Mockaitis
What spoke to you about The Time Traveler’s Wife?

Brenda Bernstein
Well, it was – it’s clearly about time travel, of course. I think it’s – there’s something about loyalty, like this person keeps coming back to the same – it’s a man who kind of comes in and out of time travel and keeps coming back to the same person over and over again as she grows. It’s just a beautiful story of loyalty and connection and longing.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Brenda Bernstein
Does a kitchen appliance count?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Brenda Bernstein
All right, yeah. My blender is definitely my favorite. That’s my favorite tool of all time. I use it every day. I make smoothies in it. I make salad dressing in it. I make blended soups in it. I make pesto in it. I don’t know how I’d live without it.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it a Vitamix, Blendtec or just sort of commonplace?

Brenda Bernstein
It’s a Blendtec.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Brenda Bernstein
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
High end.

Brenda Bernstein
Oh yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Brenda Bernstein
My favorite habit, well, making smoothies. That’s probably one of my favorite books too is Zero Belly Smoothies. I swear I’ve gotten the best smoothie recipes. They’re so delicious from that book. I often when I’m like, “Oh, what am I going to do with all this stuff in my house,” and I go to that book and I discover a smoothie. That’s probably my favorite book right now.

My favorite other habit, oh, I’m a devoted yoga practitioner. I love yoga. I love going upside down. What I didn’t talk about is one of my childhood successes was I was a New Jersey state champion in one of the lower levels of competition in gymnastics. That was when I was 12. I actually won the New Jersey state championship.

Pete Mockaitis
Congratulations.

Brenda Bernstein
That was pretty cool. I love being upside down. I can’t do all of the things that I could when I was 12 by any means, but I’m – I love going into yoga and going into a handstand and just de-stressing and breathing and sometimes dancing. I go to yoga class at least four times a week. It’s – yeah, it’s just part of my life. It’s never going to go away that I can tell.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks as you’re teaching them your wisdom?

Brenda Bernstein
I don’t know if this is a nugget, but I think something people notice about me is how much I go for – well, okay, here’s how it can be a nugget. I tend to – when I decide that I’m going to go for something and achieve something, I tend to be pretty tenacious and pretty persistent. I like to say – and overcome some struggles and hardships and pain sometimes to get to where I want to go.

I like to say that, “There’s one guaranteed way to achieve any goal and that is to keep taking action toward the goal and never stop.” Maybe that’s it. If you just keep going for it, that’s the guaranteed way to get it until you’re dead. Either you meet your goal or you’re dead.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Brenda Bernstein
I would point them to my website, which is – it’s a little hard to hear spoken, but I’ll do my best here. It’s www.TheEssayExpert.com, so that’s spelled T-H-E-E-S-S-A-Y-E-X-P-E-R-T – TheEssayExpert.com.

You can also find my book, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile, on Amazon. I also have How to Write a Winning Resume and How to Write a Stellar Executive Resume, so all those are available on Amazon. If you do come to my website, you’ll have an opportunity to sign up for my blog.

You can also find me on LinkedIn. I’m Brenda Bernstein on LinkedIn, so please feel free to connect with me there and write me a nice customized message and I will respond back and send you links to all those goodies that you might want. I’d love to have you reading my weekly blog. I post things about life and leadership and LinkedIn and resumes and all kinds of things that probably of interest to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Brenda Bernstein
Yeah, I would say on your LinkedIn profile, say something great about your job because your employers will like to see that and the recruiters will like to see that. Talk about some really positive aspect of what you’re doing in your job right now and that will look good for your company and it will look good for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank out. Well, Brenda, this has been so helpful. Thank you for setting the record straight on LinkedIn. I wish you lots of luck in all you’re up to.

Brenda Bernstein
Thank you so much. Likewise Pete.