“LinkedIn is ‘where the magic is happening,’ because you can start to become known more widely and also get in contact with a lot of people you might never meet in real life.”
– Elena Hoffer: Co-Founder and CEO of Alma.Me
**This post is a follow up to the June 2023 post focusing specifically on using LinkedIn to explore career options beyond academia**
My first chat with Elena Hoffer was late on a Friday afternoon. It had been a long week, I was tired, and I could almost smell the espresso martini* that was going to welcome me into the weekend (*other drinks are available). Five minutes into our conversation, however, my tiredness was all but forgotten. Elena and I had already talked about wanting to live in Copenhagen, the Eurovision Song Contest, and the power of LinkedIn in bringing people together. I knew then that I had to convince her to feature on this blog.
It was, indeed, LinkedIn that brought Elena and I together. In the latter half of 2023, I noticed a new voice on the post-PhD careers scene. With her fun, on-point infographics emphasising the transferability of a PhD beyond academia, enter Elena Hoffer. Her post ‘PhD Student: What the World Thinks We Are vs. What We Actually Are’ went on to receive over 25,000 reactions and 1.7 million impressions on LinkedIn. Wowzers.
Elena’s content got me thinking hard about the concept of online presence and ‘content creation,’ especially for researchers looking to transition out of academia. So, I decided to reach out to Elena to see if she could help me put together some top tips for researchers looking to use online presence (especially on LinkedIn) to their advantage.
And I’m so glad I did.
In short, Elena completed a PhD in Medical Sciences at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden in November 2023. During her PhD, she organised a range of careers seminars for PhD researchers focused on careers beyond academia. This is where I realised this was something I’m really passionate about, and I love helping others she explained. Since then, Elena has co-founded Alma.me: a platform to empower PhDs to make the leap from academia to industry with confidence.
So go on Elena, sell it to us. Why can creating a strong presence on LinkedIn be useful for researchers exploring their next steps?
Firstly, an online presence can just make the world a bit smaller, Elena explained. But specifically, if you are a PhD that wants to leave academia, LinkedIn can really help to expose you to that world that you otherwise might not have access to. For example, if you’re looking for a job, you can be discovered by recruiters on LinkedIn. But also, if you apply for a job outside of academia, then your LinkedIn presence can help to give people a bit of an impression of who you are. In a lot of cases then, I’d say LinkedIn is ‘where the magic is happening,’ because you can start to become known more widely and also get in contact with a lot of people you might never meet in real life.
I especially liked Elena’s point about how establishing an online presence on LinkedIn and starting to ‘put feelers out’ through this can actually help researchers to give themselves a bit of a ‘soft exit’ from academia to wide world beyond. But how can you activate this as a researcher? What can help you to take the leap and establish a robust and meaningful online presence for yourself, using LinkedIn? Here are Elena’s top tips.
1) Work on your headline
Your headline on LinkedIn is really important, Elena emphasises. I would recommend using something that really describes who you are in a way of most interest to your desired audience. Be especially aware of the first few words of your headline, because when you comment on someone’s post, those first words show up on your comment. That’s what people will see, and if those few words suggest that you’re relevant to them, then they might be interested in connecting with you or finding out more about you.
Not only was this true, it was also the very way in which I became connected with Elena in the first place. I remember seeing a comment from her on a post made by a colleague: there, under her name on the comment, were the words ‘Helping PhDs to kick-start careers in industry.’ Straight away, that made her stand out as someone with the same interest as me… someone I wanted to know more about! The rest is history.
So there you have it: don’t just let LinkedIn auto-populate your headline with your latest job title or degree. Create a headline that is going to grab the attention of the people you want to engage with, whether that’s people in your research area, people working and/or hiring in the sector you’d like to work in, potential clients or audiences for a venture you want to launch… whoever you want your audience to be.
2) Start small
When you’ve narrowed down your intended audience, then start to look up relevant people. Read their posts and make thoughtful comments.
Elena admits to being nervous about putting herself out there on LinkedIn to begin with: a sentiment to which both I and many of the PhDs and postdocs I work with can relate. So, she took her time. It took me six months until I actually started creating content. I worried about how people would perceive me, so, I just interacted with other people’s posts for half a year. Through that, people became aware of me and what I stood for. Then, when I finally did start posting, those people already wanted to support me because I had supported them and helped to share their content already.
If you consistently make thoughtful, valuable contributions to other people’s posts, at some point people will think ‘ah, who is X? Maybe I’ll shoot them a message, find out more about them.’ Remember that people are on this platform to identify relevant and interesting people who share content that resonates with them.
3. Be intentional
Elena explained that having some idea of what you want to achieve with your LinkedIn presence is extremely helpful in leveraging it to the max:
Think about what you want to use your presence for. For example, if you are looking for a job in a specific field, then you could create some content related to this field to show your interest and motivation, and to increase your visibility to people who may be looking for people with expertise in that field. Or, if you want to be a medical scientist or work on a specific disease for example, then you can talk about that disease to establish some credibility.
I thought this point was especially useful. I often find that having spent so long dedicated to researching one specific field, researchers tend to ‘pitch themselves backwards’ – i.e., put themselves across according to what they’ve DONE and where they’re coming FROM, rather than according to where they want to move TO. For example, I see many PhD graduates with LinkedIn profiles that focus very heavily on the research they have recently completed. Instead, what Elena seemed to be suggesting here (especially for researchers looking to move beyond academia) was that in order to be ‘discovered’ by your next potential employer, you instead need to ‘pitch yourself forwards’ to where you WANT to go.
4. Trust yourself
Before I started this blog, I fretted about it for months. Back then, I wish I’d had Elena’s voice over my shoulder giving her next tip: Just start, she insisted. You don’t have to have everything figured out before you start sharing or creating content on LinkedIn. You will find your voice. My first post was very different in tone to what I do now, but over time you develop and you get a feeling of who you are. So I think the important thing is, don’t try to figure everything out first. Just start. Great things happen outside of your comfort zone. That’s maybe not exactly what people want to hear, but in my experience it is true: there comes a time when you just need to trust yourself and go for it.
5. Don’t let the haters bring you down
Building an online presence is all well and good, but increasing your visibility can feel vulnerable and carry the risk of attracting unwelcome attention. Finally, I wanted Elena’s advice on managing this.
I remember one particular hateful comment I had says Elena. Overall, people on LinkedIn tend to be quite respectful. But one time, an academic who attacked me. I made a post about leaving academia, and he commented saying that I shouldn’t talk about these things because I was portraying the academic community in a bad light. He didn’t stop there… he went on to say that my post proved that I ‘lacked the scientific method’, as if to say I was critiquing academic culture because I couldn’t measure up to it.
WOW.
So how did Elena navigate this?
My first thought was ‘Thanks for proving why what I’m doing is needed’ and for helping me to make my point, because these attitudes are part of the reason why people want to get away from academia in the first place…! Also I thought well, people can read what you wrote, and this looks worse on you than on me.
Also… thank you for increasing my reach…!
Remember, it’s easy for people to sit behind a computer and judge you and what you do. But, what I took away from my chat with Elena was that if you approach creating, sharing, and engaging with content on LinkedIn in a way that is generous, open-minded, and well-intentioned, then your authenticity and integrity will stand out far more than the nonconstructive grumblings of an errant few.