‘It’s gotten me every job I’ve had’: The growing value of a strong LinkedIn presence
LinkedIn has evolved from a formal professional networking site to one of the top social media platforms today where people share both job and life updates, stories and other content to rapidly growing audiences.
Accordingly, influencers, or “top voices,” and others looking to earn the title are taking over the platform, saturating it with content for people to engage with and raking in hundreds or even thousands of comments.
Prolific users who frequently share expertise and unique and original information on LinkedIn that is valuable to other members, get selected (and vetted) by the platform to receive a “top voices” badge (rebranded from LinkedIn influencers program in 2022.)
For both top voices and regular users, being able to showcase their expertise, personalities and size of their network is sure to impress recruiters and others on the talent side, ultimately widening their connections and bringing them more opportunities.
But similar to other social media sites, crafting the perfect presence on the platform is an art, one that LinkedIn influencers have worked to both inform and master themselves. It’s not a skill everyone has yet managed to nail, with some struggling to balance between professionalism and personal updates.
Here’s how two top voices got their titles, how they’re using the platform today to drive topical conversations, the opportunities it’s gotten them and the potential it has for others.
Elfried Samba
Elfried Samba has 190,000 followers on LinkedIn and became a top voice about a year ago. He has actively posted on the platform for nearly a decade, and “It’s gotten me every job I’ve had since,” he said.
Originally, his posting was designed to showcase his marketing expertise with others in his field, getting him the attention of someone on the hiring side at the first agency he worked for out of college, then Gymshark, an athletic apparel retailer, to eventually serve as global head of social content. Now his content gets noticed by investors for the social media agency he founded, Butterfly 3ffect, which has created campaigns for major brands like McDonalds, Netflix and Meta.
Today his LinkedIn posting is less about marketing more relatable career advice around leadership styles, happiness at work and maintaining a high-performance mindset, to name a few.
“I’ll only talk about things that I believe that I have credibility talking about, because I think that a lot of the times when you think about what’s the current state of influencers – people talk about whatever is the trend. People have to believe that you have the credibility to have that conversation so I didn’t really want to speak about leadership and starting a business until I actually did,” said Samba.
Those looking to elevate their LinkedIn presence for better job opportunities should employ the same mindset, and use it to post content that shows their own expertise in their fields, but also their unique and valuable insights on hot topics.
“Right now employers are looking for people that demonstrate they can actually execute,” he said. “If you’re able to use LinkedIn as a canvas to demonstrate what you can actually do, what you know, who you are as an individual, that will just shorten the lead time it takes for you to have conversations around working for the brands that you love.”
“By using that metric or mindset of sharing things that are useful for people and add value to their lives, that has helped me grow my page and then all the accolades and everything else.”
Khyati Sundaram
Khyati Sundaram is the CEO of Applied, a hiring software aimed at reducing bias, and didn’t even know what a top voice was until she got the badge this January.
“I woke up one fine morning and I had this blue badge on LinkedIn and I had no idea what this was,” she said. She had posted on the platform for a few years but started to do so more frequently within the past year, and today has about 5,000 followers.
Her content focuses on her area of expertise — the ethical use of AI tools in hiring practices, which is a hot topic for others in the space. In a recent Linkedin post, she shared a recap from Google’s AI European conference she attended and the two top-of-mind questions she gauged from panels and conversations: will AI mean hiring talent is better / faster or both? And will changes to productivity mean smaller teams and more stable hiring plans?
She goes on to discuss the risks of using ChatGPT to sift through resumes and pick out the top 10% of applicants. “Your results will be the same had you shown the resumes to monkeys in a lab,” she wrote in the post. “We’re mostly agreed that AI in hiring is here to stay. But please use ethical AI for your hiring problems, one that is trained and fine tuned for the purpose of shortlisting the best candidates. Not biased non-deterministic AI models.”
While her LinkedIn presence didn’t land her the job she currently holds, her top voice badge has led to a significant boost in interest from investors for Applied’s product. Almost all her inbound investor leads are coming from there today, she said. “It’s also just brought in many more industry connections,” she said.
She leans heavily into posting about AI and hiring, giving her unique thoughts and perspectives to give actionable insights for her audience. She rarely posts personal content, but did post something after becoming a new parent. “I have strong feelings about people who use LinkedIn as Facebook,” she said.
“When I do share the personal information, it is a lot about the challenges of navigating work as a new mother, the challenges of running a startup, and I think there are personal elements in that because it shows your vulnerabilities, it shares your personality and that I’m not a robot,” she said.
And that’s especially important today with more candidates using AI to craft application material. “I think it’s important to have a LinkedIn presence, even as candidates looking for jobs. It’s important to show your voice, it’s important to talk about your philosophies and expertise that you have, I think that’s really valuable to an HR manager or HR professional who can hire ethically and reliably on the basis of that,” she said.