Equip Every Client with Wisdom

All the clients you’ve ever had, all the clients you will ever have, have one thing in common. They are uninformed about how to win rewarding careers. If this were not so, why would they seek you out?

Even so, many arrive with a collection of tips & tricks they got from that universal “career coach,” ChatGPT. 

In this article, I’ll help you equip your clients with wisdom they need to succeed in their careers—for life! You, as a career professional, can use the same approach to be exceptionally well prepared to close more sales and serve more clients better…even if you know very little about their fields.

The solution is right before your eyes in LinkedIn’s (LI) groups. But, as so often happens, LI does a poor job of helping its members get the most from that feature. Below, I’ll help you guide your clients to the best groups and use them very well to obtain wisdom, network with the best, and have great jobs seek them. 

A LI group is a collection of members who know and serve the needs of those in a given career field. There at least two million such groups. 

However, not all groups are created equal. Too many are filled with unsupported opinion, off topic content, and dubious, if not toxic, “tips & tricks.” The best groups are vibrant communities of interest, consistently delivering worth that grows in depth and value. 

Groups are a commanding avenue to showcase our clients’ brands. Position your clients as leaders in these groups and the best jobs will find them.

To start, have your clients open LI, place their cursors in the “Start” box, and enter key words relating to their career fields. Here’s an example for someone pursuing a career in marketing.

Have them click “Marketing in Groups” and enter key words related to their career field. They will see a list of groups…some 131,000 of them! 

Sadly, these results cannot be sorted. But here are measures of goodness your clients can use to find the best groups for them.

Bigger is better. 

Older is better. 

Moderated is required.

Since you will guide your clients to be active, respected members of their groups from the very beginning, suggest they join only one or two. Becoming a member in many groups can work against their needs. Your clients would be swamped with notifications and feel pressed to respond to them all. Being in a group must never be compulsive. Later you’ll see how your clients can get great returns on their time by spending about 20 minutes a week supporting group members—the very people who should be in their networks.

Have them click on one of the largest groups. They will see information that will help them enormously. Just below the name of the group will be your clients’ connections who are already members. They can use those connections to ask for opinions about the value of joining.

The description of the group is next. The more a group offers, the better. Of course, your clients should read the next section, the group rules, carefully. Many rules end with this sentence: “We operate a one strike and you’re out rule, we will remove you from the group if you break these rules.”

At the upper right of the page are the Group Admins. Have your clients click on each of them. Are they credible? Are they current? Are any of them in your clients’ networks? 

If the group seems credible, have your clients click on the blue “Request to join” button. Because that sends a “canned request,” they should follow up with an offer of value quickly.

Have them email the group “owner.” They should say if they are accepted, they want to be as useful as possible. Have them ask the leadership which subjects are of greatest interest to the group. That approach will put them head and shoulders above all the rest whose first impression was the “canned” LI message…something about as personal as an invitation from Publishers’ Clearing House!

Your clients should receive a note accepting them into the group and an answer to their inquiry. If no answer is forthcoming, have your clients scan the posts. What seems to be most important? Your client should post on those few subjects.

These guidelines will make it easy for your clients to get the most value from their membership. Have them draft their posts in Word for three reasons. First, it’s a lot easier to proof and edit the drafts. Second, they will also see how close their words are to the approximate 1,300 character limit (including spaces and hashtags) for posts. Third, they will have a ready record of which subjects they posted about recently. Over time, it’s a good idea to update posts from months past. That keeps people current and saves your clients time.

Help them write compelling headlines. As an example, I’ve included part of one from one of my posts: 

“Would you hire my dog? 

I am a hard-working, self-starting, great people person with good communications skills. So is my dog, Archie. (That’s a picture of him.) I’ve seen similar descriptions in hundreds of résumés I’ve reviewed…So why load the top of your résumé with such a mixture of traits and nice-sounding words?…Hiring decision makers…must know how you’ll make their organizations more money than it takes to hire you…in the first line of your résumé. Have it and you go to the top of the stack. Miss it and your document goes into the shredder. Questions? Contact me any hour of any day or night.”

The text should offer what valuable actions members should take but never describe how to take those them for two reasons. First, outlining an important method is giving away value—something you and your clients must never do. Second, it helps keep the post concise. Also, from time to time, they can include a call for action. Clients should add hashtags at the end of each post so their words can be found easily. The characters in the hashtags count against the total number of characters.

Only one step remains. Find a useful graphic or, better yet, a video. They can search Google but take care to observe copyrights. At the top of the search results, your clients should click on the “Tools” button, then “usage rights.” Clients may find more unrestricted images if they add the word “clipart” to their search terms.

Clients can also post on LI in general. Nothing could be easier. If you don’t see a place to start your post after you sign in, click on the “Home” icon at the top of the page. LI also offers the chance to write an article. 

Writing articles is a poor use of your clients’ time. Yes, articles can be longer. But the number of views will be much smaller. The post you saw above generated one hit about every 12 seconds for five days straight—more than 700 views. The last article I uploaded to LI generated 37 views—over three months!

When clients post to LI in general, they will soon see information about the number of comments, “likes”, and views their posts gained. 

These are the keys to great networking. Have your clients click on the comments. They can then respond to keep the conversation going with people who already “know” them. The same is true for the “likes.” 

They should also click on the number of views. That will let them see where the viewers work, what their job titles are, and where they are physically located. This information is good quality control for their posts. Are they reaching those with job titles who might hire them? Is the message seen in the geographic area where your clients want to work?

When they post to a group, they won’t see the number of views and its supporting information. But they will see “likes” and comments which they should treat in precisely the same way. 

There is another little known value to posting to a group. Each LI member is authorized a specific number of emails each month. If they exceed that number, LI charges $10 for each excess InMail! However, there are no limits to the emails your clients send to members of groups to which they belong. 

Emails are the gateway to great networking. Here’s an example I use when someone from the Eagles Transition Assistance Group (which caters to full colonels leaving the service) “likes” one of my posts:

“If it wasn’t for considerate people like you who take time to offer feedback and comments, I’d never know if what I post is of value. Thank you.

May I offer something back? As a senior executive career coach with 30 years’ experience and retired USAF O-6, I was forced to guess at the value you offer in your profile. Most hiring managers can’t, and won’t, do the same. They have never served on active duty.

I would be happy to set aside some uninterrupted time for a transition strategy session. If that appeals to you, please suggest some days and times for us to talk. I observe Central Time.”

Help your clients draft similar “templates” they can modify easily to respond quickly. They will soon find true networking fun and the resulting requests for their résumés rewarding.

Suggest your clients post once a week to each group. LI says that those who do receive four times the responses of those that don’t. It shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to write and post a contribution.

Remember to charge for this service. You are equipping them with wisdom they can use for the rest of their work lives. Therefore, quote the investment wisely.

I don’t use the word “investment” lightly. Consider clients targeting a career field paying about $60K a year. Each week they aren’t earning that salary costs them the $1,150 they didn’t earn. If they invest $850 with you, and you help cut their job search by just four days, they will have made up that amount before their first day on their new jobs. Remind them a job search at the time I wrote this took six to eight months!

We are not in the business of “selling” tips & tricks. Those rank close to posts that promise you’ll lose 20 pounds in four days and warn you to wrap your feet in aluminum foil at bedtime!

We offer opportunity. We offer rewarding careers that enhance the lives of our clients and their families, often for years to come. 

We offer wisdom.