#46 Are you ready to take the leap? Part 1: Social proof
Prepare your sledges in summer as they say it in Russia
During the past few weeks, I was contacted by several people for transition advice. In all cases, people were still planning on staying in a full-time job, and their question was: what do I need to do now to be able to make such a leap in the future?
Amazing question, and I decided to write a series of articles about it.
When it comes to an independent career, your credibility is based on many factors, and social proof is one of them. If you want to make sure that people are ready to pay for your services, you need to prepare for the moment when they start doing their due diligence about you.
So the first step would be to Google yourself
The first page of search results is how people who do not know will perceive you. Great if it is full of links about your professional activities linked to your core expertise. Not so much if your social media prevails, and that old post of yours on Facebook keeps popping up.
There are multiple ways of preparing the social proof while you are still having a full-time job, that will help people make an informed opinion about your level of expertise.
You need to convince people even before they have met you
Participate in public engagements of your company
This is the easiest part, and works super well for people who have external facing roles.
Volunteer to speak at conferences
Make friends with your PR department and learn how they select speakers for interviews and other media engagements. When you have a full-time job, your media presence has to be vetted by your comms team, so make sure you do not create them an extra headache.
Join industry associations and speak there
Initiate round tables / panel discussions at industry events
Organize free webinars / speaker series independently of big events
All of these will fill in the search results with evidence of your activity and your area of expertise.
What if your job is internal facing or confidential?
Well, the previous one was a low-hanging fruit for the lucky ones who had jobs that required public speaking. The vast majority of people are not in this category. Still, a lot is possible.
There are still associations of professionals like yours. A friend of mine was a consultant for many years, but she was also a president and a board member of the CFA society in France. IAB is a good example for advertising people. Check out your colleagues and see who is visible through which type of activity to get some food for inspiration.
Went to a good university? Alumni associations organize events, although this applies mostly to top schools, so cannot be used by everyone.
Work in tech? Pick up a topic and focus on innovation. In this industry, it is a no-brainer.
Women specifically can pay attention to various leadership or career organizations. There are plenty of those, and you can find the one aligned with your values.
Have some perspective on what is happening in your industry in general? Keep in mind, that articles on LinkedIn are indexed by search engines as good as any other. So if you have yet to convince HBR to publish your writing, it can be a good start.
Substack is also indexed well, but not the individual articles, though.
Monitor podcasters, Substack writers, and other influencers. Chances are you will find someone who is relevant to what you want to share with the world.
Here are some interesting examples of people building their public profile through an independent activity not linked to their core job. The examples are from the tech world, as I have better knowledge of this industry, so please send me suggestions from other fields.
Jenny Wood is a Google executive that has a classic internal facing role. She built her following through career advice.
Ethan Evans was a VP at Amazon, and based on his LinkedIn, he started sharing career advice before he quit.
Tom Alder worked for Atlassian in strategy until recently, but has been writing his strategy breakdowns for almost a year.
On top of securing your online media coverage, do not forget about the content you would like to remove.
Check the privacy settings of your social media accounts
It might seem obvious, but not to everyone.
Do not forget about the data protection law in Europe
If you see the results that are inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive, you have the right to ask Google to remove those links from their search results. You need to fill in the form, and the support team will look at whether the results include outdated information about your private life.
To remind you, those things make sense for people who want to lay the ground for a future move. If you are already running a side hustle, the principles will be a bit different.
Next week we will talk about evaluating your network.
Until next time!
nat