LinkedIn Strategies that helped me land a job at AWS

Hey everyone, it's Lucy here. In this video I'm going to be talking about something I'm super passionate about, which is how you can use LinkedIn to find your job in 2021. I have my LinkedIn logo here, I have my nano leaf set to blue, so everything is good for the video and I'm going to be sharing everything I wish I had known in my first three years of university because I really believe that these tips will help anyone in uni, anyone looking for a job in tech, and anyone who's already in tech but looking towards progressing their career in the future. So let's jump straight into it. Alright, so before you do anything on LinkedIn, before you start connecting with people, before you start applying to jobs, what you want to do is you want to be optimising your LinkedIn profile. When you start off on LinkedIn, when you create an account, you have essentially a blank canvas and it's up to you to fill it in. You fill in your profile photo, your header, and also all of your experiences as well as some background information about you. So there's so much for you to fill in and you really have to be strategic about, first of all, making sure that you have something for all of those key fields, but also being intentional about how you phrase all your experiences. So now that you have your LinkedIn profile all set up, ready to go, what you want to do is look for jobs. And I know LinkedIn has the classic job tab on the side for you to search for all the jobs out there and it's definitely something very powerful because the filtering system is just amazing. You can filter by company, you can filter by if it's a full-time employment, part-time employment. What you want to do though is not just apply directly through LinkedIn jobs. You want to be strategic about this because when you look at these jobs, a lot of them have, you know, over 100 people have applied to this job. And if you just submit an application there, it's very easy for that to be just be lost in the amount of applications that already have been submitted. So what you do next, which brings me on to the next tip, is to connect with people in companies and roles that you're interested in. And let's say, for example, you're interested in becoming a solutions architect at Amazon Web Services. You search up the title solutions architect manager or you search up recruiter and then you filter by Amazon Web Services. And then what you do is you can start by following them. Once you follow them on LinkedIn, you'll be able to see all the activity. If they comment on a recent job sharing, you'll be able to see that directly on your feed. And that way you can see the top jobs that they're recruiting for in the company. Now you might be wondering, well, that's good and all. I know now what top jobs people are looking for. I mean, do I just apply to the job? What do I do next, right? So next, what you do is you send the recruiter or hiring manager a message letting them know that you're interested in the company. You can send the resume through LinkedIn as well, through LinkedIn messages. And I would say typically you don't really get a reply. Half the time you do, half the time you don't, just because a lot of other students are implementing the same strategies as well. But it's definitely good to put something in so that they would know that you're interested in the job and you have applied. So last year, I saw on my LinkedIn feed that a manager at AWS was looking for an intern, someone who was able to work part time for six months. And at that time, it sounded like a really good opportunity for me to start my career in the tech industry. So I applied to the role. I messaged the manager asking for a half an hour coffee chat. He didn't end up directly replying to me, but he forwarded my details to the early careers program manager who set up a conversation with me and we were able to start the interview process basically the day after. So that was just an example of how I was able to use LinkedIn to land my first internship and I ended up getting that internship. So that was the internship I ended up doing last year at AWS. So hopefully that gave you a bit of an insight into what strategy you can use on LinkedIn to try and stand out in the application process. But something else you can do alongside this is to search for other people working in the company who you can ask to get a filter by the company and then you'll be able to see all the solutions architects working at Amazon Web Services. You can send them a personalized message asking for a one-on-one chat, maybe a half an hour virtual coffee catch up. Again, maybe half of them will reply, half of them will just ignore your message because we get a lot of messages on LinkedIn. So for the ones that do reply, set up the coffee chat with them, ask about what they do on a day-to-day basis and ask for some tips on how you can land a job at AWS. You can send them your resume as well as the job link that you're interested in and then asking them for a referral. And a lot of the time, most of the time, people are very willing and happy to help you out by suggesting you for the role because, you know, you've had that coffee chat, they know that you're someone who is interested in the role and someone who is suitable for the role as well based on your discussions and then they're happy to refer you as well because there's a referral bonus that employees typically get if the candidate successfully joins the company. Now you might be asking me, well Lucy, I've applied to all these jobs and I've used your strategies already about just messaging people directly about the job and also trying to get a referral, but what if we're at a period right now where there's no jobs out there or at least no jobs that interest me? Which I totally understand because for internships and grad roles, they typically recruit during a specific period in the year, let's say early on from February to May and right now it's August, right? There might not be any job listings that interest you and there might not be anything that you want to really apply for and do as a role. What you can do during this period is to slowly build up your personal brand and also stay engaged with other people's posts. So the first one might be a bit more trickier and you might have to leave your comfort zone more, so let's start off with the second. So the second one is to stay engaged with other people's posts. So what you do is, since you've already connected with all these people who are in companies you're interested in, keep liking their posts, leave meaningful comments and if you see a job that you might not be interested in and you know a friend who might be interested, tag them below in the comments and that way you slowly build up a presence on LinkedIn because 99% of people on LinkedIn don't make posts. Not many people like and comment other people's posts on a regular basis, so even just by doing that it really helps you stand out. Okay so the final tip is to start posting on LinkedIn and there are so many reasons why and there are so many reasons you might not want to post on LinkedIn. So let's start off with the benefits of posting on LinkedIn because honestly you probably know most of the benefits already. It reinforces your personal brand, it helps keep a repository of things that you've done, cool things you've worked with in the past that you want to share with your network, it helps you get visibility in front of recruiters, hiring managers or just people in your target industry in general. But then there's a few things that might be stopping you. You might be scared what other people might think, you might be worried about public judgment, you might also be not really sure what sort of posts you want to make yet, but the reason you're watching this video is because you want to get a job in tech right? And making LinkedIn posts is one of the best ways to go about this. So back in May last year I made my first ever LinkedIn post and I was shaking, shivering, I swear I had so much anxiety just thinking about it. But the reason I decided to make that LinkedIn post was because I had a mentor who really encouraged me. What he said was as long as your post does two things, so first of all as long as it adds value to your LinkedIn network and secondly it reinforces your personal brand, then that post is worth posting. And that really helped shift my mindset because before I was always thinking well what are other people going to think of me? Instead of thinking what value I can bring from all the experiences I've had in university if I was to share that on LinkedIn and help other people out along the way. Of course there are going to be people who judge you, people are going to be thinking well why is she always on LinkedIn? Doesn't she have a life outside of LinkedIn? I don't know, I think those are the people who are on the extremes. There might be people who just don't really care when they see your post, they're like oh it doesn't really apply to me which is fine but what you want to be targeting is that 10% or 20% of people who are following you for your content and who are actually gaining value from it. For example when I made a post about six lessons I learned from my first six months of being an Amazon intern, I had a lot of people commenting down below on how the article has really helped them with their own internship and a lot of messages as well from people who are thanking me for actually creating an article. And looking back I think that article probably took around three hours to make but it was really worth it because it ended up helping out a lot of people along the way. And so I guess the main point of this is to not be afraid of starting to post on LinkedIn and also realizing that there are so many benefits that will come out of it. Alright so just to wrap up, if you were to remember one thing from this video it's to start posting on LinkedIn because LinkedIn will help you not just find a job in tech but also be something that would help you build up a personal brand in the long run. I really hope this video was insightful to some of you who are looking for a job in tech. This is just a lot of things that I wish I had known in my first couple of years when I was looking for jobs and if you have any questions or comments please leave it down below. If you found this video helpful in any way leave it a like and subscribe to this channel to stay updated with more tech career and student advice. Bye for now!