The Data Canteen: Episode 13
Al Bellamy: #LinkedInHardMode Challenge
(Apologies all, as there was some degraded audio on my end during this episode. I'll be investigating, perhaps swapping out some equipment, and hope to have this sorted by the time I record next month's episode!)
In this episode, I'm joined by Al Bellamy who tells us about his journey from Marine Corps logistician to his current role as a Senior Marketing Intelligence Analyst! During his military transition, Al became exceptionally proficient with networking and personal branding on LinkedIn. In this episode, Al shares some of the secret sauce and introduces the #LinkedInHardMode Challenge!
FEATURED GUEST:
Name: Al Bellamy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellamy-al/
SUPPORT THE DATA CANTEEN (LIKE PBS, WE'RE LISTENER SUPPORTED!):
Donate: https://vetsindatascience.com/support-join
EPISODE LINKS:
#LinkedInHardMode: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/linkedinhardmode/
Al Bellamy's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiKDz3tYlrudVsgnphSB5PA/videos
Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-data-analytics
USO Pathfinder Transition Program: https://www.uso.org/programs/uso-pathfinder-transition-program
March for the 22: https://www.marchforthe22.us/
The Data Canteen Episode #13 w/ Erick Quintero on PTSD: https://vetsindatascience.com/12-erick-quintero
VDSML Mentorship Program: https://vetsindatascience.com/mentorship
How To Get An Analytics Job (podcast): https://www.silvertoneanalytics.com/how-to-get-an-analytics-job/
Ken's Nearest Neighbors (podcast): https://www.kennethjee.com/podcast
Ken Jee's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiT9RITQ9PW6BhXK0y2jaeg
Luke Barousse's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeBarousse
PODCAST INFO:
Host: Ted Hallum
Website: https://vetsindatascience.com/thedatacanteen
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-data-canteen/id1551751086
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaNx9aLFRy1h9P22hd8ZPyw
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-data-canteen
CONTACT THE DATA CANTEEN:
Voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/datacanteen
VETERANS IN DATA SCIENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING:
Website: https://vetsindatascience.com/
Join the Community: https://vetsindatascience.com/support-join
Mentorship Program: https://vetsindatascience.com/mentorship
OUTLINE:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:07:38 – Al introduces the #LinkedInHardMode Challenge
00:16:49 – Al's background & experience in the Marine Corps
00:25:30 – The #LinkedInHardMode Challenge
00:26:32 – #LinkedInHardMode: Who is this for?
00:31:11 – #LinkedInHardMode: The Ten Content Commitments
00:49:09 – #LinkedInHardMode: The 3 R's of Engagement
00:50:24 - #LinkedInHardMode
00:57:17 – #LinkedInHardMode: The Payoff
01:01:07 – Info about VDSML's mentorship program
01:04:18 – #LinkedInHardMode: BLOB - Bottom Line Out Back
01:12:14 – Tip for getting inspiration for LinkedIn posts
01:13:39 – Info about Al Bellamy's YouTube channel
01:14:28 – How VDSML members can participate in #LinkedInHardMode
01:20:36 – Al's favorite data tools and technologies
01:23:02 – Al's favorite data related podcasts
01:27:27 – Al's preferred means of contact
01:28:03 - March for the 22
01:31:09 – Farewells
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: This is a direct, machine-generated transcript of the podcast audio and may not be grammatically correct.
[00:00:07] Ted Hallum: Welcome back to the data. Canteen, a podcast focused on the care and feeding of data scientists and machine learning engineers who share in the Columbine abuse, military service. I'm your host, Ted Hallam. Today I'm joined by Al Bellamy. Al is a prior service Marine, a senior marketing intelligence analyst and LinkedIn networking.
Today, Alan, I chat about his journey from starting as a Marine Corps logistician to jumping into the civilian end of the data sphere. We also have a conversation about the conventional hiring process and how the LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool. If you use properly, it can radically help you land your dream job.
Finally, we do a deep dive on Al's new LinkedIn hard mode challenge. This challenge is completely free to participate in and we'll teach you what you need to know about using LinkedIn to get seen and noticed by those with hiring. I hope you find the conversation as informative as I did.
Al. Welcome to the data. Canteen. I'm so glad you're here, man. You are, especially in the veteran space. You're like the LinkedIn guru. I feel that we're so fortunate to have you come here on the show because we all know that we love data, but this is really, you know, at the end of the day, no matter how much you love doing something, if it's part of your career, w we're wanting, we want to be gainfully employed.
You need to be able to land a job that you feel challenged, you feel hoarding, and that is financially rewarding as well. I don't think that there's a single tool out there. That's more powerful for that than LinkedIn. I think you've probably found that to be true as well. But there's a secret sauce to it.
You don't just go do a few random posts, like other piece posts, maybe share their posts and enjoy very much success on LinkedIn. So today we're going to kind of map out some of your strategies in conjunction with a challenge that you're running right now called the LinkedIn hard mode challenge. Yeah, I was looking back just to get ready for this episode too.
I was curious how long have I been on LinkedIn? And when I looked back in the settings of my account, I've actually been on LinkedIn since April 25th, 2010 and shamefully I,
[00:02:21] Al Bellamy: what it was at that point, it was well,
[00:02:24] Ted Hallum: well, you know, back then they weren't owned by Microsoft. It was a pretty different platform, but w when I think back on it for the.
Most of the first decade that I was on the platform. I think I used it like most other people and shamefully, it was not very effective. I only really logged in when I was looking for a job. I didn't maintain a presence. I didn't post things that did a good job of showcasing what I knew the contributions I could make.
I mostly just use it to search for jobs and maybe communicate with recruiters. And if you're listening to this episode, you may, you may be thinking what's wrong with that. Why is that a bad approach to using LinkedIn? And just to kind of set the stage here, I would pause it that the problem stems from the fact that when you're in the job market, there's three primary dynamics at play.
The first is do you have the skills required for the. Nobody can really help you with that, that one's on you. You've got to go out and learn what you need to do. Maybe get credentials you need to have for the job that you want to get. Number two is you need to have solid LinkedIn and get hub profile, set up to showcase those skills and credentials.
That one is still, you know, kind of on you. But the third one is a really complicated dynamic and that is you need access to relevant hiring managers for your skills. Now, why do, why do I say that? A lot of people are just accustomed to the conventional process and working through recruiters and your timing of starting this LinkedIn hard mode challenge.
And coming here on the show is perfect because just last week we did a veterans and science machine learning happy hour on the topic of demystifying, the hiring process. And I put forward this idea that If you're going through the conventional process and you're trying to work through recruiters and doing five interviews and all that, you're probably doing it wrong.
And the reason why is because I view LinkedIn as the great playing ground leveler in the sense that if you're out there and you're, even if you're like entry level and you don't have, you know, a lot of career in them, if you're smart, you've got good ideas. You're putting together good projects.
Of course, I'm specifically referencing people in the data sphere. That's going to get the attention of people who have hiring a. And once you can connect directly with those folks, why deal with a recruiter? Who's basically, I love them. They're good people. They serve a function. They're trying to save hiring managers time.
I get it. But they're trying to do a lot of times they're trying to handle hiring for across the entire organization. A lot of times they're not very technical, whereas we, data folks tend to skew pretty technical. And so it's very easy to find yourself being ruled out by someone who's not qualified to rule you out if that makes sense.
So basically a lot of times these hiring managers, they put together kind of a cheat sheet of guidelines to help steer recruiters to the right type of candidate. And it might say things like five years, minimum of
[00:05:33] Al Bellamy: coding language that was invented three years ago. Yeah,
[00:05:37] Ted Hallum: exactly.
Yes. And then the recruiters will take that, especially if they're a third party recruiter, they might even add like a little buffer onto that because they want to establish a reputation as being the type of recruiter that when they bring a candidate, it's a dead ringer. Right. Or they're just
[00:05:53] Al Bellamy: trying to save time.
It's like, Hey, we're going to get a thousand applications for this job. I've only got time to read 50. So if the, you know, if the technical advisor says, we need five years of experience, if I put seven on there, that'll screen that, that pool of candidates even further to only the greatest, you know, the best and brightest.
So
[00:06:11] Ted Hallum: exactly, exactly. But let's say maybe you only have two years of experience, but you can absolutely do that job. The problem is, is a recruiter just has a list of criteria. They've got tick boxes that they're trying to check off. I can't look at you and objectively evaluate. If your two years of intense experience can actually qualify you to do the job.
Typically a good hiring manager at the type of organization where you actually want to work, can make those kinds of evaluations. You know, they can see your work. They can see the things that you're posting on LinkedIn. They can look at your projects on, get hub and say, well, you know, that guy may only have two years or that gal may only have two years, but they've really done something impressive with it.
They can do the job. And so then at that point, you're being evaluated by someone who actually has. The background needed to, to, to know whether or not you can do the job. So I think that LinkedIn is key to get back to our point in LinkedIn hard mode challenge. I think LinkedIn is key to that third dynamic of not letting yourself get ruled out by people who aren't qualified to rule you out and having been getting the ears and the eyeballs of those people with that hiring authority.
So I guess at this point out, I'll just turn it over to you to give us a quick summary of the LinkedIn hard mode challenge, a nutshell what it is and how people can participate.
[00:07:38] Al Bellamy: Yeah. So, I mean, like you said, LinkedIn is a, is an underused tool for veterans. I feel like it's uniquely suited for transitioning veterans just because you don't have the opportunity to to go out there and network and in a real traditional fashion.
So myself as a, as a case in point, but I know that the story is very similar for a lot of people. I decided last October I filed my paperwork to retire and I'm, it was a year out. And so I was still battalion XO, still, you know, changing my desk 12, 14 hours a day sometimes. And so I needed some tool where I could advance my retirement efforts and pave the way for me to to transition to a paying job.
So I'm just going to cover my bills and, and take care of my family. And I, and I'll all I had to spare was gaps in my day, you know, five, 10 minutes here and there between meetings and emails and, you know, going on field operations. What, what can I do with my phone? You know, standing by the hood of my Humvee in the middle of Fort Bragg what, while artillery is firing behind me, well, I can get on social media and meet some people.
I, you know, I can write some content. And so, you know, I took the LinkedIn. And, and really kind of adopted it as my primary tool for transition because it just showed great dividends right off the bat. And the thing that got me started was I started going to USO transitions webinars with a retired army Sergeant major named Mike Quinn.
Some of the viewers might be familiar with them. So he's huge on like then. And he, he had a very difficult transition initially coming out command Sergeant major career Intel guy. And he thought he was just going to be on easy street. Like he was going to write this paper resume and hand it to a bunch of employers and they were going to just shower him with job offers and money.
And it was the polar opposite. He didn't didn't know how to sell himself. Didn't know how to translate his military experience. And so they kind of looked at him and said, well, you're the, you know, the ins Sergeant major or whatever the hell that means you know, responsible for 17,000 soldiers in, in some way, shape or form.
What does that mean to me? My, my company has only a thousand people, you know, I, I don't know what to do with you. And so he learned some very hard lessons right off the bat, and he adopted LinkedIn as a key tool for him. And it wasn't all that long ago. It was like five, six years ago. I want to say that he transitioned.
And so he wound up meeting with tremendous success and, and teaching veterans how to use LinkedIn first in an informal fashion, and then started doing it in a formal fashion. He now has a company that does that. But he's, he still does a free veteran webinars that anybody in the audience can take advantage of.
You just go to USO, transitions and get those. So I started going to a couple of those back back when I actually first started thinking about retiring, like September, October of last year, And at one point, you know, it got to be a very, a sense of community within the people that were attending those webinars.
And so we had a lot of jokes with each other, a lot of, kind of inside jokes. And, you know, I was famous for making up silly hashtags about, you know, dumb stuff we would say to each other. And then at one point Mike had, had issued a challenge to someone that Hey, if you put up content for 30 days and, and prove it to me, like, I'll go back through your profile and check.
But if you put up a piece of content every day for 30 days, I'll give you a free t-shirt. It was a t-shirt from his, his company is hire, hire military which is a transition head hunting enabler company. And so, you know, nice t-shirt and, you know, and everybody was kind of intrigued by the idea and I, you know, I'll do a whole lot of stupid stuff for for a free t-shirt.
So this seems like a valid thing to do for free t-shirts. So I, I took that up and I put a hashtag on it because I tend to do, and I called it the the 30 day Quinn challenge which he thought was funny at first. And then maybe not so funny after a while. Cause it it started costing him a lot of free t-shirts once everybody started doing the challenge.
But I mean, the response was amazing and while doing it, he didn't put any qualifiers on what kind of content. And so before that, you know, I kind of just been, just been trying this and that. And you know, you throw up a meme or something with, with a couple of hashtags on it and nobody responds and, you know, you link to a YouTube video or you, you share somebody else's posts, God forbid and you know, nobody knows why, you know, it works, it doesn't work and you just kind of try it again the next day.
And so during that 30 days, I said, well you know, started listening to a lot of the things that Mike teaches, which is a lot of the basic concepts and the challenge. And I said, well, you know, you keep saying like, you know, original content, this is the thing. And so I said, well, I'm going to do original content for 30 days.
Not all of it was brilliant. Matter of fact, most of it probably wasn't there, there were a couple of things over, you know, I took a funny picture and then, you know, put a little caption on it and send it out. Some of those work pretty well, but it, but it was all original. And I was pretty proud of that.
It was it was a struggle at some points during the month. You definitely hit dry spells and you, you have uncreative days, but the response was amazing. And what I did was if you have the premium LinkedIn, which, you know, veterans get for free, at least for a year you get the the tracker of how many views there are on your profile.
Well, during the course of those webinars where I was making connections and then. Going into that challenge where I started just getting my name out there and establishing that, you know, an audience didn't, wouldn't call it that at the time, but that's what it was. You know, the graph of profile views kind of ticked up, ticked up and then just kind of shut off the charts.
And so being a data visualization guy, I was like, this graph is awesome. Let me let me screenshot this. And and so that became one of my posts towards the end. And I just said, Hey, check this out. You know, you put out original content for 30 days and you know, everybody wants to look at your stuff.
But the funny thing is now the raw numbers are, you know, peanuts. It was like, I think it went up to like, you know, three, 400 profile views at one point which, which at the time, you know, coming from. Five profiles use oh a week. That was incredible numbers. So, but, but, you know, looking back at it and I still have that screenshot of that graph, it's like the gray, the visual is amazing.
The raw numbers are kind of funny at this point. But so that post gained some traction and got a lot of eyeballs and the USO actually featured it to, to promote some of the future events. Mike loved it. Mike featured it and started talking about me. And then that caught the eye of, I was working with how to get an analytics job.
I mean, I was listening to how to get an analytics job, the podcast, and had been talking to John David and the podcaster. And so he saw that graph and he said, Hey, let's have you on the show to talk about this. And that launched me into a whole new sphere where you know, I came on the show that that episode was pretty popular.
I talked about how I was using. And then a month later he said, Hey, would you like to take over our LinkedIn page since he, you seem to kind of know what you're doing with, with content. And and then that, that took off and that's, you know, that's a whole nother story, but that's just you know, created opportunity.
And then I just kind of took those opportunities. That's
[00:15:35] Ted Hallum: awesome. So I really keyed in, at one point on what you said about the, you did this challenge and then you kept track of watching what, what happened with your profile views? Yeah, and I think that's critical because a lot of times I think people get caught up, they do a post and then maybe it's the dopamine or whatever, but they will, they want to see how many views their post was getting.
And that's cool. It's, you know, it's cool in your posts, get a lot of views. But the key is having those post views translate into profile views because that's where you're gonna have these hiring managers actually looking at your LinkedIn profile, looking at your job experience, looking at your feet, Houston projects and your educational credentials and all those things that would actually make a hiring manager say, wow, this is the person I've been looking for for 90 days and can't find so I think that's key, you know, profile posts, views are great.
And you know, they probably are some indicator of how well your overall profile views graph is going to look over time. But the profile views is what you're really, that's what all the work is for. You're trying to boost those profile views. Now, as we go along, we'll keep peeling back the onion on this LinkedIn hard mode challenge.
Exactly what it is, how you can participate. But before we dive into all of the, the nitty-gritty details, I want to take a step back because as you mentioned, you're a Marine Corps veteran and like all of us, you've had an amazing journey, which we've already heard a bit about your journey from the military and getting into data.
And over the last year, some of us like myself, we've been able to kind of keep track of your meteoric rise and your, a recent new position that you've gotten data analytics. But I'd just like to hear more about, and I think our audience would too, about where you're coming from, where you were, you know, what you did before the military w your interests growing up, were you particularly quantitative, were you into stem stuff or is that been an acquired taste over time?
Your progression from college to the military and to where you are now?
[00:17:41] Al Bellamy: Yeah, so yeah, I've always, you know, like my LinkedIn profile says I I've always been into numbers and so, you know, I just love. I always loved sports statistics. I was never particularly good at at sports in general as a participant, but I always loved to, you know, w when I was watching, I was always keeping score the baseball game.
I was always, you know, I would always look at the back of the baseball cards and kind of obsess over the statistics and, you know, what do they mean? What kind of performance does this reflect? And at the time it just, you know, just, just thought I was a nerd, you know, there's nothing, nothing really to it, but you know, anytime and had an, not an obsession, but a, an interest in the military and military history and.
But the thing that I would always look at first and foremost was, you know, what are the numbers, you know, battle of Gettysburg, like how, how many, how many soldiers on either side, like, you know, what kind of weapons did they have and then, you know, go going love going to the history museum and going, you know, you look at a bomber is like, how many machine guns is this thing?
Have you look at you know, a treasure galleon, how many canons are they, are they sporting? And that, that was just the thing that always fascinated me was that sort of thing that, you know, stuff like you used to do, you know, relative, relative combat power analysis and and stuff like that. So, you know, was, oh, that was a little kid.
That was what I was into. So you imagine the kind of geekery that that derives from that. But I think the start in data really as kind of, as an academic study and then as a profession was before I joined the Marine Corps, I, I attempted to go to college. Didn't work out, but I went to Ohio U and from that acronym.
And I went to Ohio U for a couple of years and having to take a class in a product number relations management. And I just remember, I think I was the only student in the class that actually enjoyed it. And it was, you know, this was before the day is like, yeah, we, we probably had Excel and had no idea how to use it.
Had no BI platforms or anything like that. This is like you're talking mid nineties. And so, I mean, it was like hand jammed and we were just like sheets of notebook, paper and drawing a spreadsheet. And we had, I remember we had these like supply chain problems and it was like, well, if you've got a warehouse here and it costs this much to store your goods and you gotta get them to market at this point and just sitting there and going, you know, running solver, analyses, you know, through, through, back of the napkin calculations and just, you know, what grade will, if we do it like this, what works and then erase the number and, and restart.
So And so I just, I harken back to that, that it was like this, I love doing this. And I hated probably 75% of my classes, but, you know, this was one where I was like, I would do this for free. This was just, this was just fun. The fulfill my employer that, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do the full-time job for free, but yeah, so that was kind of the start of it.
And then getting into the Marine Corps. I was a logistician at first. And so we were doing, you know, same thing too in supply chain. I wasn't doing much analysis at first. You're just, you're pulling reports and you're, you know, you're planning, maintenance and supply, but you know, did, did nine years enlisted as a logistician and really enjoyed that was, was good at it, I think.
And then crossed over to the officer side shortly after a few years after nine 11 and decided I'd had enough of you know, pushing paper around a desk. So I, I became an artillery. Which, you know, joke was on me because I was, you know, tell us a lot of administration.
[00:21:29] Ted Hallum: So let's pause right there.
I think you've been a little bit modest because I was looking through some of the bio materials that you sent me to get ready for this episode. And when you say that you transitioned from being enlisted to an officer, it's not like you, you already had college at that point and you put in a packet for OCS or something.
You, you were at there, there was like a meritorious program or something that you were selected to participate in, in that. Right. And they actually sent you to school to get your bachelor's degree.
[00:21:58] Al Bellamy: Yeah, they did. So I had, I definitely had some cried. I didn't fail all my classes at Ohio U I definitely had some credits left over from that.
I had been going on nights and weekends at stationed at Quantico at the time. So I was going to Strayer university. So for-profit school in the DC area. And then and so yeah, put in for this program and it was a it was actually a, a later offshoot of like battlefield promotions which is kind of funny.
But it was, yeah, it was called the meritorious commissioning program and you, they, they would send you that you had to have a few credits under your belt to qualify for it, and they would send you to school to finish your degree and, and earn your commission. It was very interesting program because you had to, you had to go to OCS first.
So I had to go to 10 week officer candidate school, past that, then go back to being. And go finish college. And then once you, once I graduated, that's when I had my commissioning ceremony. So it's odd feeling to certainly to go through officer candidate school for 10 weeks with a, with a platoon of guys.
And then at the end of it, you got to salute them all on their way out the door. And you're the one that has to go back to college. So interesting program.
[00:23:10] Ted Hallum: That's never, I've never heard of a program like that. It's awesome. Yeah.
[00:23:14] Al Bellamy: The Marine Corps has actually since done away with it and it was a little it, didn't not many people qualified for it.
They kept it around you know, during the war on terror. And especially in the surge when they needed a ton of officers and had to generate a lot from inside the Marine Corps. But they, since in an administrative duty move have done away with that program. So but yeah, that was that was interesting.
And I just decided, Hey, there's a, you know, there's a war on, there's a, there's a surge going on. You know, you're, you're hearing stories, you're working at Quantico. Yeah, shuffling papers and and hearing stories of, you know, guys getting shot up in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, and I just said, well, I, I feel like I need to go be a part of that.
And I felt like the best way to do that was go into combat arms. So I went into artillery wound up never, I, I never got shot at personally, not, I don't know that I missed that, but yeah, just I, I wound up deploying multiple times as an artillery officer, but I'm really kind of the life of a Marine officer.
You kind of ping back and forth between your, your primary job and supplemental billets or the B billets as we call them. And so I wound up going to manpower back at Quantico, my favorite place and and doing a lot of like human people, analytics basically and figuring out how to, how to retain Marines and how to move them around the Marines.
And, you know, back to my, my beloved spreadsheets and you know, doing some solver analysis and, and that sort of thing. So, and that was where I qualified for a program to get my master's degree in analytics. And yeah, that kind of propelled me forward from there.
[00:24:55] Ted Hallum: Very cool. So out, that was a fascinating path. I appreciate you taking the time to take us through, but now, as we're about to dive into your LinkedIn hardware challenge I wanted to preface it by letting our listeners know if you're driving down the highway, it might be a good time to hit pause because the rest of the episode is going to, we're going re rely heavily on the visual medium. Al's got some awesome slides break it down and we'll let you know exactly how to participate, how to be successful.
So we'll bring those up now and I'll give it to altitude.
[00:25:30] Al Bellamy: Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, fun fact. I I was tossing around ideas for which what, what to name, the challenge and what would work well as a, you know, a brief, but pithy hashtag. And so I was, I was kind of white boarding it out and one of the possibilities was the hardcore content challenge, but I decided that would probably attract an unsavory element so that that one went around fall.
So it is LinkedIn heart mode. And the, the joke, I suppose, is I love, although I wasn't that big into video games compared to, you know, compared to my kids or some people I know I always liked the idea of difficulty settings. And so looking back on the way that I attacked this challenge, when Mike put it out for us, it was, you know, I, I put it into hard mode, like, like you're playing halo or something.
And took the, the challenge that he set out and said, I think I can do more with this. So, yeah, hence LinkedIn hard mode. And so this is a bit of the whiff from here. The reason I did a content challenge, not only that it worked like crazy for me, but I feel like I do some talks on networking and branding.
And most of it focuses on use of LinkedIn because, you know, that's what I know and that's, what's worked for me. But I give people an acronym that's PNC, PB, and it's stands for a portfolio networking content, I'm sorry, profile networking, content portfolio, and branding. I mixed up the P letters there.
But I feel like. Profile comes first. I mean, you've got to have a complete LinkedIn profile to, to base it from. And like you said, you're, you're looking for profile views. If they come to your profile and it's garbage, then you know, they're just going to move on. So getting their eyeballs on your profile is, is a step.
But having a profile that's attractive for them to look at is, is step one. And that's an ongoing process, but I feel like with content, there's a ton of, there's a ton of content out there about profile. You can go anywhere. YouTube is full of it. LinkedIn learning there's there's classes that have millions of views on how to fix your profile.
And really a profile is kind of a paint by numbers thing. You can, you can go through and, and LinkedIn will kind of take you by the hand and say do a profile picture. Now, write your headline now do your about section. And, and it's easy to sit there and see, okay, I've got gaps on this thing. If you don't have a banner picture of your profile, looks ugly, go put a banner picture on that stuff is relatively easy.
Content is hard and there's not a lot of guidance out there about how to create content or, or where to get ideas or all of these things. And people get very intimidated because you know, grownups don't tend to think they're creative and especially coming out of the military, like creativity is encouraged only in very specific places and, and directions.
Most of your life is, is spent kind of, you know, you take orders, you have some small amount of interpretation, but you execute. And creativity is encouraged to maybe, and attacking a tactical problem in certain forms, but really you're, you're kind of following an order and SOP or something. So most people don't feel like they're creative get very intimidated by creative tasks.
Military people, especially coming straight out of the military before you've, you've got your feet wet outside. It's difficult. It's, it's a daunting challenge. And so I see a lot of people out there that I, I give advice to piecemeal when they ask that just don't know either don't know how to create content or we'll create it 10 of tentatively and it'll fail and they don't know why.
And so I really felt like I was spending a lot of time giving out a lot of these kind of nuggets of wisdom to people one at a time. And I was given the same piece of advice to Tom, Dick and Harry on, on consecutive days. And I, and I just thought, well, what if I could just get all of this out there at once and boil down the things that I know about content to a digestible set of rules.
Let me just give them the most important things that I know and kind of get it out there to everyone at the same time. And so that's why I was like, well, let me let me do a document that I can just direct people to on my LinkedIn profile. And then I said, well, content challenge worked for me.
Let's let's see if people want to do a content challenge. And so who it's for? It's just, just people that are trying some stuff on LinkedIn. Maybe it's maybe it's working. Maybe it's not, you don't know why people coming out of the military, Hey, like I said, we were good at following SLPs. We're good at, at operating within a, you know, a set of rules or guidelines.
Here's, here's a set of rules or guidelines for you. And then just people that don't understand that they know that they need and want a bigger network that don't really know how to go about that. And they don't really know how to go out and go about it. In a, I hesitate to call it passive, but in a, in a receptive way, like, let me put some stuff out there and.
Let people come to me that are interested in me. And you know, we've got plenty of people that just are, are doing some of this stuff anyway. And some people that are succeeding wildly on LinkedIn that are just like, oh yeah, I've, I've let my content go a little bit lately. Let's, let's do this challenge.
So it really it's, it's kind of all things to all people thought about calling these the 10 commandments apparently that's taken. So this is we'll play on that would go with the 10 commitments. And so really this is just the, the 10 things, the 10 most important things about content creation that I feel like people don't know, you know, at least most of them, if not all of them.
So the heart of the challenge is come hell or high water. You're going to put a piece of content, original content out there every day for 30 days. If, if you adhere to nothing else. You got to do that. And this was based on the LinkedIn algorithm, just rewards consistency. And once you, once you are a content creator, you're going to kind of tickle that algorithm to the point where it's going to promote your content.
So you promote, so you create content Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're going to see a cumulative effect after you've done it a few straight days, it's going to start resonating a bit more. Some of that depends on the audience. Some of that's the algorithm, but it definitely rewards consistent creators over sporadic creators that are throwing something out there.
You know, a couple of times a month. The biggest no-no out there is sharing content and it's, you know, it's the big red, easy button you're just, you're clicking share, and you set it and forget it and walk away that fails more than any other, any other move on LinkedIn? Because the LinkedIn algorithm is set up to reward original.
And so it does nothing for LinkedIn or for the audience for you, for me to take that alums post and say, check it out. LinkedIn has gained nothing. The LinkedIn audience has gained nothing. And so the algorithm doesn't reward that. So I think you see a lot of people that that's, all they do is just share content and, and without contributing anything of their own, there's kind of a subtle art to sharing content.
That the way that I recommend is screenshot something that you like, and then write a post of your own and attach that as a picture that's kind of grad level, basically for this challenge, I just said don't share content period. But that's, that's the biggest thing. It's, it's the proverbial tree falling in the forest.
If you do that, nobody sees it. It, it makes no difference. You might as well just not have put anything out at all. Linking to outside sources, opinions very often. But really linking to outside sources is that distribution is depressed by the algorithm. It doesn't get the same kind of circulation has original content.
Like I said, cause the algorithm encourages originality. The picture thing is, is kind of funny. Nothing will turn your audience off more than seeing kind of a confusing jumble of pictures at the bottom of the post. They just keep scrolling. LinkedIn kind of sucks at attaching pictures. You can't edit them.
You can't crop them the way that you want. It's just kind of a weird thing about the number of pictures you attach. One picture gets cropped this way. If you put two, they get mashed side-by-side super slim. So it just doesn't work. So that's why I just told the people in this challenge don't ever attach two pictures, one or three, when you start going more than that, it becomes very difficult that only five will show up even five on, on a phone screen just looks like garbage.
So that's why I said one or three that's. Those are your two options. Video. I feel like if people are attaching video and I answered this question the other day, that that becomes the star of the show. If it's you talking or you creating a video of some sort awesome, that's your original content.
If you're attaching a video, that's not, that's not yours. That video is the star of the show and it doesn't really matter what you write. That's no longer an original post. So that's why I said that now I did, I did change that after the fact, if you make a document or anything like that, you can attach that.
And that to me is original. Tagging people and hashtagging there's, there's kind of differences of opinions there. About how much, if you, if you put 50 hashtags on a post, how much the algorithm penalizes that there's no real debate, that there is a penalty for that. It, it gets marked as spam in some form.
When you tag people more than half of the people that you tag have to respond to your post within a short amount of time, it's about an hour or two hours is kind of the, the prime period for a LinkedIn post. If they don't respond, then again, your post gets tagged as spam and you'll see your engagement go to basically to zero fairly quickly.
So that's why I just limited the challengers. Hey, you can tag three people, but if they don't respond, don't tag them again. Because your post is going to get funded. Three hashtags. Nobody likes to see that mess at the bottom of the post. And it doesn't the way that LinkedIn deals with hashtags, it doesn't get picked up in other people's feed, especially if you put a ton of 'em in there.
And really, I just want to keep it a bit Spartan. You know, the star of the post should be your original content, not 50 hashtags posting in a consistent time that just helps to develop an audience. You gotta, you gotta kind of think of who are you? Who are you targeting? I have a lot of followers from India, just, you know, you know, that data industry is huge there.
They've got to decide whether they want to post for an Indian audience or an American audience. You know, if you're on Pacific time, you got to decide, Hey, do I want to set my post to pop up at at eight o'clock Eastern time before maybe I get out of bed and then kind of get that attention rolling across the United States as the, as the workforce way.
So some decisions there, but I just said, Hey, if you posted a consistent time, your audience is going to see your content at a consistent time. They're going to engage with it. And then the, you know, kind of where you get into the real secret sauce is just reacting to comments. The, that they're kind of agreed upon cutoff line for engaged responses on LinkedIn is eight words.
And again, opinions vary about exactly where that cutoff line is, but responses like great post interested, good job. Congratulations really don't don't do much for the algorithm. Or if you're responding with an emoji or two, not, not impactful. And also they don't spur conversation. If, if you say, Hey, I got a new job and somebody says, congrats.
Does that start a conversation with that person? Probably not. If they say like commenting for greater reach, are you going to start talking to that person? No, they're, they're kind of tickling the algorithm to try and get a few more eyeballs on your posts, much appreciated, but it doesn't start talk.
The thing that takes LinkedIn posts kind of into the stratosphere is that conversation that takes place in the comments. And, and the thing that prompts the algorithm is responses of roughly eight or more words. So that's a full sentence. And I encourage people to, to hit back with a question, because if you, if you put a question in the comments that does prompt additional conversation, and so once you're posting.
Some of the views once it gets some reactions and once it gets a couple of comments, the thing that really takes it off and distributes it further is when you start those conversations going in the comments. So that number nine really is to, is to prompt people, to have conversations in the comments rather than those sort of token set it and forget it, reactions that, that aren't going to do anything for you.
And then number 10. Yeah, I really, I see a lot of people that are just very tentative about networking. This is not a networking challenge, but content creation does give you the opportunity to, to network with people. And it gives you an in with them where if you're commenting on each other's posts reacting and it's creating interest then you have a natural a natural in with them where it's not just.
At a networking event, going up and sliding your business card into someone's suit coat and walking away. You've already started a conversation with them and that's a, that's a natural segue to, to a network into a connection. So really those are are wrestle with this for a bit that there are so many more things that could have put on here, but felt like these were they're digestible.
They're simple. And these are the, the biggest things that I tell people people that are just kind of failing wildly on LinkedIn, or, you know, have no idea what's going wrong. These are the 10 things that I see most of the time. Hey, you're, you're not doing something on here or, or you're doing something that I've, you know, made verboten.
So that's I'll, I'll stop talking there if you want to. Yeah. Questions, comments, concerns on that stuff.
[00:40:18] Ted Hallum: No, I think these are awesome. Of course. For the sake of time, we're you, you know, you're just kind of hitting these, but I will highlight and we'll throw it up later. Once the slides aren't on the screen, a link where you can get to Al's new YouTube channel, which he's launching with a series of videos about the LinkedIn hardware challenge, one of which was his very first video.
He kinda hit on these same 10 commitments and you can even see, he does like a little demo of how to use Hootsuite. And one of these commitments is posting at a consistent time. And I think that's that w that one thing, I mean, that's one thing, but you're getting so much from owl with this content challenge, but one thing, the posting consistently, you know, that's, how do you do that with, with life and all the things that get in the way hoot suite is how you do that to an incredible tip.
And so I will challenge you no pun intended to go out and check out his YouTube channel and get those additional nuggets that are there. I think you're going to be doing videos each day or near every day throughout the challenge in that right. L
[00:41:24] Al Bellamy: so every time I didn't want to keep posting videos as, as post cause it, you know, once a day is, is the big thing.
If you start posting three, five times a day, what you're going to see is your posts all get depressed for distribution. So another mistake, that's some people miss that. It's one post a day, make it a good one. Come back tomorrow and post again. But I, I think it was just talking about HootSweet I always mess up this quote, but I think it was Dr.
Dre that said like the creativity train doesn't pull into the station every day. And so when it does, you gotta take advantage. And so, you know, sometimes you're feeling super creative and you've got 10 ideas. You need to write all 10 of those ideas down and develop one or two of them because tomorrow you might not come up with anything.
And so I really love using Hootsuite. Just every idea I have that has some merit or every response, every conversation that I have that could be a post I'll go in and crank out a draft. Even if it's one or two lines, I'll come back to it later and, and develop that out. But what happens is when you have those great creative periods where you're feeling super motivated, you just came back from a run or what have you.
And you've got three post ID. Get all three of those posts ideas down in some form, whatever your note-taking platform of choices, but you need to keep track of those things because you have 30 days, people are intimidated and there was a lot of response on day one. I'm interested to see how, how long it takes before people start, start crying that they're out of creativity.
So. Yeah, I
[00:43:06] Ted Hallum: think you're absolutely right. I find that what I do, I've got an iPhone and there's apple notes and I'll just use the dictation feature, you know? Cause I'm super busy when I have an idea. I'll, I'll just use the dictation feature dictated into an apple note. And then, like you said usually Saturday, like Saturday afternoons I can find more time than what I can get throughout the week.
And that's a great, that's a great time now that thinks to you, I know about Hootsuite that I can go in and just kind of focus and hammer out and develop those ideas. But then, you know, it does, you know, good on LinkedIn. If you just go in and do all, I've got the time, so I'm going to do four serial posts, just boom, boom, boom, right after another HootSweet gives you a way to cue those up and make sure that they get released at the right time on a consistent basis.
So yeah. Yeah, that's for
[00:43:54] Al Bellamy: sure. And then you can focus on the interaction in the comments rather than, you know, how do I come up with creativity? You know, creative content kind of under the gun. Adults. So the, and then this is just to me, I think people either only do this or they only do creation but, but very few people are out there doing a good job at both.
The way you develop a network and a community is by going on other people's posts and responding to them. So, you know, not only is it required that you respond to all engaged comments on your own posts, but you gotta go out there and find your community and reward them for their content creation efforts.
So three hours of engagement react, respond and request. So every day at a minimum, and these are super easy minimums to hit, but react, just, just give them that little like like support, celebrate emoji, whatever one you choose react to at least five posts in your feed, just scroll through whatever catches your eye, whatever you find.
Interesting. Quick react at least five times respond to at least three and all of those responses need to be engaged. Don't no congrats. No, no great posts. And if you want to do that fine, it adds nothing. But respond with a full sentence and hopefully respond with a question because again, that's the first conversation.
And then everyday requests, three new connections with people that are in your industry and active on LinkedIn was a crucial thing because if they're not active on LinkedIn a they won't see your request you know, maybe for weeks or even months and, and B, are they going to be a productive and useful connection to you if they're not engaging on the platform where your networking and engaging?
So that was a lesson I learned fairly early on was I went for kind of sexy, big names and thought leaders and, oh, there's my best friend from high school. And all of these other people and quickly realized, Hey, this person checks LinkedIn once every six months. Or if, you know, if they did check it, they're not out there doing anything on LinkedIn.
So that, that connection is borderline useless at this point. So yeah, if you're, if you're active on LinkedIn, you're going to use LinkedIn, go find your tribe, find people that are active and engaged on LinkedIn.
[00:46:18] Ted Hallum: Yeah. Real quick for a number one. Do and regardless of your answer, these are absolutely things that listeners should do, but I'm curious one and two, is that just a matter of being like a good LinkedIn citizen or do these things actually impact the algorithm where if you're not reacting and you're not responding to other people that's going to impact what, how your posts your own personal post propagate?
[00:46:43] Al Bellamy: Yeah, so I, I have read a couple of, 'em such a gate there. There's a couple of LinkedIn thought leaders, like thought leaders about LinkedIn. But I read. They believe that engaged, like forward engagement with other people's posts does kind of enhance your LinkedIn wasta to where the algorithm rewards you.
I personally think w whether that's true or not it just enhances your your standing with that person and kind of, you know, makes you a better, a better LinkedIn buddy for them and makes them more likely to come see your content and engage back with you. And there's a million other things that, that can do that.
You know, you go on you, you endorse their skills. If you know them and you, you see that that they're good at something. And you know, how hard is it? If somebody somebody's talking on LinkedIn and they're making good posts, you go in there and they've got communication listed as a skill. Anybody can endorse that.
Clearly they're communicating. Okay. But yeah, there's, there's plenty of, kind of, you know, quid pro quo on, on LinkedIn. If you're, if you're a good friend, they're going to be a good friend back to you. So there's definitely that element to it.
[00:47:56] Ted Hallum: Cool. Now the, the other thing I was thinking about as you mentioned, number three, that's, that's something that I think is obvious, but then it's easy to not keep it in mind.
Like for example, if you have a tree in your front yard that dies and you have a guy that comes out Bob's tree service and he does a great job taking the tree down and grinding the stump and he says or maybe, maybe it doesn't even ask you, you, you just give just business card and his LinkedIn's on there and you think, oh, I did a great job.
I want to support him. I want to go connect with them on LinkedIn. And you just think you're being nice or whatever, but then when you make posts, LinkedIn could choose if Bob's online to show your post to him. And if it's about data science and he's a tree guy and he's not in a data science, then.
Keeps on scrolling. It doesn't click it. Doesn't engage with it at all. And then that will, if I understand it correctly, that will depress the performance of your posts because somebody that they showed it to wasn't interested in it. So it really is important to make sure that your connections, the people that LinkedIn is going to seed your post to are people that are going to find it captivating and interact with it.
Right?
[00:49:05] Al Bellamy: Yeah, absolutely. Now I would never, I would never advise, not connecting with someone that's external to your industry. Cause there's, if you get into the numbers of that, you're not the, the odds that one or two people in your network passing your post by is going to significantly impact you as is pretty slim.
But yeah, that gets into the, you know, the further science of distribution, which I've talked about a little bit and I'm planning to talk about more throughout this month. But yeah, LinkedIn, when, when you post, it shocks your post to a percentage of your connections and if those connections then react or respond, then it gets shops to a wider percentage and it extends it to some of their connections as well that you might have share.
And that's when you get the potential to go viral. But yeah, I would definitely like you want to focus on your tribe because you just want to be effective. And it's to the point now where I, I get quite a few connection requests and usually if I get a connection request where they don't send a message and I look at their profession and it's something that's unrelated to data on, I'm generally ignoring that request just because you're not, not adding much to me.
And I don't see us having a productive connection going forward.
And then. Kind of trying to develop a bit of a sense of community and just so I can gauge how the things going ask everybody that tagged their posts with the hashtag. I've seen a few kind of creative spellings of the hashtag already from, from friends. So I'm sure there's a few more posts out there that I'm not tracking.
We'll get there, we'll fix it. But once that hashtag starts popping up, I mean, once it gets in more use, then when you start typing in LinkedIn, H that's going to be the first one that, that comes up certainly over the course of the month. But yeah, just better tracking and response. I want to be able to, to react and respond in, in some meaningful form to as many people as possible that are engaging in the challenge that helps them helps me, helps the challenge, spreads the word.
So it's just good all around. And then you know, if you're, especially, if you're not doing start on November 1st and November 30th if your number of your posts and you'll keep track of it, and once you're going to find the same thing we found with the USO challenge back in the day is people are going to go six days and then they're going to they're going to have a bad day and they're not going to think of anything.
They're just going to be pissed off. They're going to be super busy at work. They're going to forget. And, and they're going to go six days and they're going to bust the streak and they're going to say, you know, what do I do now? Start over. So the, the challenge that we did was start whenever I book ended this thing in November, just to kind of get a big group on that.
And it seemed to make sense. I was organizing it in half hazard fashion, like three days before November started it's a 30 day, month easy. But, but people keep asking me, well, what happens if I didn't start on one November? And, and you're going to see people fail and that's fine, you know, you fail, you just start over again.
And it's, to me it's a bit like a much smaller scale, but it's a bit like Kenji's 66 days of data. People just start whenever they like, and there are some big groups that start together and try and finish together and have some sort of supportive connection. But you know, it's, it's on you that in many ways, the challenges which are make of it and the challenge is its own reward.
Although there is a reward, if, if you choose to take it which we'll get into in the next slide. But yeah, I really want to stress that this, this is something that's going to benefit you and I am not out there being an ombudsman and you know, until people have violated the guidelines. You know, the punishment is its is its own punishment too.
If you, if you start sharing posts and saying, look, I did 30 days at the end, I'm going to look at it and say, Hey, your results. Aren't what they would have been if if you'd done what I told you. So anyway, that's if people keep asking about the rules and I I've kept with the pirates of the Caribbean joke, that that we thought they were more like guidelines.
The only thing is, yeah, if I see you sharing posts, that that's not what you're supposed to be doing out there, but yeah, definitely some people that have had some files already and you know, I kind of jokingly point them out, but it's like, Hey, do you, you know, like get out of it, what you get.
[00:53:42] Ted Hallum: Now as you mentioned you, this was a great idea that you had, that was kind of spontaneous.
It was just a couple of days before November started. I guess the broader cohort of your followership that was interested in kind of, most of them started Mr. Dale, November 1st. Once I heard about it, we put this episode of the data contained together as quickly as you and I could give our schedules.
It's going to go out on November the fourth, and I'm going to do a couple of posts from, from the data canteens account to kind of prime the pump and get people to watch out that this episode's coming down the pipe. Now, hopefully there'll be ready. They'll listen to this episode on the fourth, and then actually do their first posts as part of the LinkedIn hard mode challenge on November 4th.
So hopefully we can have our own out of veterans, datasets, machine learning, subset mini cohort of your. I'm writing on the 4th of November for
[00:54:41] Al Bellamy: sure. And, and you know, that kind of calls to mind and something just on day one. It, it was kind of dizzying all of the things that I learned. There, there were a lot of people that kind of did a, you know, I'm doing this new challenge post, which is great.
You know, that that's original. They wrote in their own words, happy with it. There were a lot of people that wrote like professionals stuff. I learned stuff about like the legal system. I learned stuff about astronomy. Like people were, were posting some heady stuff yesterday and I already learned a ton and I really can't wait until the VDS ML types start cranking out, you know, mass posts and and coding and yeah, I'm going to be learning as a, as I read through those.
So yeah, I hope it, I hope it doesn't. Now, since
[00:55:33] Ted Hallum: I heard about this early on, I did actually start yesterday with my first post and I'm trying to do a, an okay job with it. I trust that you'll set me straight if I run a foul of anything. But for, for veteran's day sites of machine learning members who want to kick this off on the fourth, by the time you hear this episode, I should have three or four posts out.
So feel free to come look at mine, if you want some examples or things to kind of get the creative juices flowing. And then of course you can always look at Al's account and see his posts each day as well.
[00:56:08] Al Bellamy: Yeah. And, and so on that, and then you know, if we can push off of this, but I did a post a few days ago that I really wanted to get people, some ideas of what they can how they can launch this challenge.
And so post was people constantly asked, like, where do you get ideas for content? I don't, I don't know what to write. And I, I did a post it's like, Hey, here's the, here's the top 10. Ways that I get ideas for content or kind of themes that I write about. It was a bit of a disorganized post, but it was a list of 10 things.
But some of it was just wherever you get, wherever, whenever you get inspiration. Whether that's for me the, the two big times or after running or while driving. And so I don't, you know, I generally don't write while I'm driving, but I will definitely pull over into a parking lot and write down ideas, you know, listen to a podcast or something like that.
So yeah, if you go back to that post from late last week, I think it was Friday that, that was, I'm pretty proud of that one. So and I think that helps some people, so,
all right. So the payoff Mike gave out t-shirts and it wound up costing him and his company a chunk of change because he gave out quite a few t-shirts and eventually had to quit doing that. But I don't have t-shirts to give you, I don't make any emerge. And so, you know, but one thing that I've been doing recently in conjunction actually based on a challenge from Mike a couple of weeks ago was informational interviews with transitioning veterans.
And that was tremendously rewarding. They were just asking me about my transition. I can't tell them too much about, about data. Having only been a professional for a couple of months now, but really loved just, just pushing my Calendly link out there to transitioning veterans, people that are just now coming into the, the EAs zone or or putting in for retirement and just telling them what I can.
I used Vetter RT when I was coming out. Not probably not as extensively as I should. I'm considering. You know, given some time to vet her out, especially once this finishes, but that gave me an idea of that. You know, I can do some things well, I can definitely tell people how to use their LinkedIn better.
And if you know, if at the end of this, they want their payoff to be me reviewing their LinkedIn profile. I'm pretty good at that. I I'll call the baby ugly. I do a good job of reviewing resumes and yeah, I've, I, I tend to be a bit more diplomatic than I used to be have definitely made some people angry by reviewing their resumes before.
So I'm, I'm good at reviewing writing if you want me to review academic paper or something like that. And, and then getting into kind of the more strategic aspects of LinkedIn networking and branding as far as designing content themes and stuff like that can do I don't know how long this, this payoff is going to last.
I will say at least until if, if anyone from this group completes the challenge in a timely fashion, I promise you that I will still do it for veterans, but with the numbers of people that are, that are doing the challenge right now, and if they all completed, which they won't, but you know, if a large number of them complete it and then a large number of that number also wants this payoff.
Which many of them have told me, they've already figured out what they want me to do for, for my time with them. I am offering this for now and definitely for VDSL members. If you need me to review something, or if you just want to kinda, you know, shoot the, shoot the breeze for, for an hour and talk about, you know, the good old days.
I'm good for that too, but it may take a while for me to get to. If there's a lot of people, I honestly have no gauge on like how much time I'm actually offering here. But yeah, th the payoff is you know, you get to, you get to hang out with me for an hour and, and use my brain for whatever you need.
So like I said, not that great.
[01:00:20] Ted Hallum: Well, that's an incredibly generous incentive because anybody who's kept an eye on your posts, the number of reactions, they get the number of followers that you now have. Anybody who's kept a pulse on that knows that you've been be successful on LinkedIn. You've done a great job with getting people to see what you're doing, the career momentum that you're gaining.
As you said, views on your profile. And so if they can get an hour of your time, it's worth the work. I mean, it's worth the work inherently just for the benefit that they're going to get, but it's worth the work to get that hour of your time so that they can figure out how to, you know, additional secret sauce to take their LinkedIn networking game to the next level.
Real quick, you mentioned mentorships. I will I will take a moment for a shameless plug just to make sure that everybody who's listening to the podcast knows that VML has its own organic mentorship program. Right now we've got over 20 active mentorships. We have another, like 12 or 15 people in the hopper that would like a mentor.
We're trying to find a appropriate mentors for them. And I w I would also say that I think a lot of times people have a misconception, they think, oh, well, I haven't, you know, Had a professional like data job for five years, or I don't have a PhD or whatever. So I couldn't be a mentor for veteran's day insights, machine learning that I could.
I think that you, you couldn't be further off the mark in that regard. So I have a philosophy that unless you're at the very, very beginning, like you're in week one of trying to do something that you should both be a mentor and have a mentor. Because if you're five years in, guess what? There's somebody who's 25 years in and they can help you.
But if you're five years in, you can help. A lot of people. Five years is a lot of experience. And when it comes to data science, To know, and so much to figure out, you know, what should I upskill? Should I go to grad school? If I want to go to grad school, how do I apply? I mean, the questions can just go on forever.
So if you've got six months or, or a year's worth of experience you can be an incredible mentor to somebody who's at day one of their journey in the data sphere. So definitely don't underestimate yourself. Don't underestimate the impact that you could have on a fellow data science and machine learning member who desperately would like to tap into the six months or one year or three years worth of experience that you have.
So if you, if that sounds like you and you haven't sent it to be a man yet, definitely consider that think about the people that have helped you along the way. None of us get where we are without some of them taking the time to be generous and help us out much as Al is doing here with this challenge.
And just, you know, think about, is this a way that you could pay it forward by being a mentor? So.
[01:03:20] Al Bellamy: Yeah, that's it. That's a great initiative you guys got going. So and it's always surprising to me just on LinkedIn, not, not as much in the veteran space, but just in general, in the data space, you know, people that will send you one message and connect with you and then be like, will you be my mentor?
And you're like, have you looked at my profile, man, I've been in this industry for like, literally less than 10 weeks now. Like you sure you want that? And I don't think you know what you're asking for, but anyway. Yeah, I absolutely love veterans mentoring veterans you know, in the industry for sure.
Like I said, on veterans day, I went and found the handful of before I knew about, VDSL before it got big, I, you know, went on veterinarian from like the two or three data scientists that, that are on there and talked to all of them. So yeah, I mean, that's a huge, a huge offer. so, and this was me trying to be amusing again.
So instead of, since I didn't do a bluff, this is a blob bottom line Outback. Yeah, so, like I said, please, please start and finish wherever you like. And, and I'm not going to be the you know, th the hard mode, challenge police going out there and correcting people day after, day after day. You know what, once you come to me and say, I'm done, and I'd like my reward, I would definitely go back through your profile, search your posts.
And it's like, okay, you've, you've done what I asked. Let's talk. So just like a beer and animal house, you know, don't cost nothing. I'm not trying to sell anything. I don't have business plans in the works. I currently have two paying jobs and that's probably one more than I can have. So yeah, absolutely not, not planning to monetize my, my YouTube account such as it is.
So anyway that there was, there was an allegation that I, I sounded like a hustler that I was starting a business, like you know, like some data professionals do on LinkedIn. That is absolutely. If that's a thing that's years down the road for me. Yeah, you're going to get out of it, what you put in.
And this continues to reframe that I did some reviews of the Google data analytics cert, and constantly what I kept hammering to people was you are going to learn whatever you're learning is going to be a function of your effort. There's no, there's no real check function other than, you know, if you want my help at the end, I'm going to go check and make sure you did 30 days consecutive, but.
If you want to change, if you want to skimp on some of the guidelines, if you want to, if you want to miss a day and say that you didn't, Hey, awesome, whatever you're the one that got to look yourself in the mirror, but whatever amount of effort you put in is the amount of payoff that you're going to get out.
And, you know, I've, I've tried and true all of these 13 total guidelines. And, and they work. So yeah, if you want to do something different, do something different like so many things in life, the challenge is its own reward. You know, I, I I did my 30 days a year ago and I got my free t-shirt and it's a nice t-shirt and I appreciate Mike for sending it to me, but the reward was the learning and the gains that I made in those 30 days you know, the t-shirt was kind of the carrot at the end, but Hey, starting friction is greater than sliding friction.
So one of my favorites You know that first day is going to be the toughest, as far as just getting it out there and kind of screwing up your courage and saying, you know, here here's me in a public forum. That, that the strange thing for me is that most of the people doing this challenge have no problem doing that on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter you know, throwing out obnoxious political comments and, you know, calling each other idiots in, you know, in whatever social media comments section there on yelling at newspaper writers or, or posting pictures that have dinner, they got no problem with that, but you put them on the LinkedIn and suddenly they're just like, I don't know what to say.
Just, just, just talk, talk, talk about professional things. Don't post pictures of your margarita, but you know, talk about your job. So but, but once you get going, I mean, it's, it's. Like social media is designed to be, that's how they keep us on it. It's a it's addictive, but you know, the, the creation is addictive.
The, the feedback is addictive. And so once, once you start, you're not gonna want to stop. Throughout the month, I'm putting out consistent content creation, themed posts. I can't promise that it'll be every day. Right now I probably have about 15 good ideas in the hopper. So we've got 29 days left.
So we'll, we'll see if I can stretch that out. But like I said, the questions that come up, if I feel like they're, they're common questions, I'm going to try and answer those on YouTube and then link them back into comment sections or back on. Profile. So if you go join my currently 19 followers on my YouTube channel then you will see the, the answers to all of those questions.
So I I'm having fun with that. You know, I just drive around in my car and somebody asks a question and I just kind of pull over record the video upload and, and keep driving. So that's kind of a blast. People have dubbed my, my 2011 Camry, the the mobile analytics unit or mouse for short. So that, that came from the podcast a while back.
That's all,
[01:08:56] Ted Hallum: I didn't know. You had a 2000, I have a 2012 Camry. Yes. Great, great minds, super, super reliable car. Anyway, before we squirrel
[01:09:08] Al Bellamy: around to get it to stop running. I mean,
[01:09:10] Ted Hallum: exactly before we move off this slide, I wanted to underscore what you said about you'll get out of this challenge. What did you put into it?
And that's true across the board. That's not just this challenge. And the veterans day science machine learning community, we push heavily taking advantage of all the different non-traditional learning opportunities that are out there now. Because if you're going to be successful in the data sphere, you have to be learning all the time.
Things are constantly changing. And I remember one time I recommended data camp and the person I was talking to was like, wow, there's so many, you can just go out and, you know, Google any of the questions and, you know, people won't learn anything. I'm like, well, if you are taking the time, am I spending your money to do data camp and then Googling the answers instead of actually paying attention to the lessons and learning you know, the Python coding or whatever that whatever data camp course you're doing well, that's the choice you're making.
And the second, you know, the same thing is true. Like you said, with the Google data analytics certificate or Coursera courses for virtually anything out there, there is a way that. But you're cheating yourself. No one else is going to feel the negative ramifications of that, but you, so you'll get out of it, what you put into it.
And then the second thing, I was just going to clarify for the audience. So if life gets hectic, they miss a day, they start over at one. Or is that where you're saying, that's the point of numbering, the posts where it's like, okay, you missed a day and you just pick up with the next one, start
[01:10:40] Al Bellamy: over at one.
Yep. You'll get one out of it. Trust me. Yup.
[01:10:44] Ted Hallum: Okay. All right. So you'll get out of it. What you put into it. No shortcuts,
[01:10:48] Al Bellamy: no. You were alluding to with, with learning. You know, as opposed to looking up the answer where true learning occurs is that point at which you're, you're slamming your forehead against the desk.
Probably why both of us are bald. But you're, you know, you're beating your brains out, trying to find that answer that just eludes you. And that's where you actually gain something. So yeah, if you're, if you're clicking straight to Google you're not learning squat, honestly, if you, you know, if you get to the end of the second week and you're out of creativity, that's where you're going to find out kind of what you're made of and you know, what, what do you generate?
Like any physical challenge? What, you know, what, what part of you comes out where you're at mile 20 of the marathon and you don't think you can go any further, but you do. Yeah. What w what do you come up with when you're out of creative juices or when it's, you know, when it's night and you just want to go to bed and you're like, oh, crap.
And for break my streak you know, that, that's where it gets real interesting. So, yeah, I would encourage people to just Yeah, that there's something to to, to kind of hitting the bare minimum on the day when you don't think you can get there and, and, and just move on to the next day and attack again.
So
[01:12:14] Ted Hallum: On that, I would say as a tip to listeners, if you're struggling with inspiration for content, there's two things that routinely helped me. First, what have I been reading recently? Or, or have you been reading some of this? Maybe that's the right question. Because I often find that there's great things to expound on.
Great things to share with the broader LinkedIn community, from the books that I'm consuming, being all data-related O'Reilly type books. The second thing is what challenges have I been fighting through in that are related to data, whether it's work or personal project or whatever, because usually if it's something that.
I'm struggling with, that's an indicator that I'm probably not the only one. And those are the things that interesting posts are made of when, when you find that perfect little three-line algorithm or Python package or our library or whatever the case may be, that solves something for you.
And you're like, oh, this is awesome. You know, I'm going to get so much mileage out of this. Well, guess what it is very unlikely. You are the only person in the data sphere. That's going to get mileage out of that thing. Yeah. So and with that, I would also, you know, we've, we've mentioned a couple of times Al's new YouTube channel.
He's going to be adding tips and tricks and short videos to help you with the LinkedIn Harbo challenge throughout the month of November. If you look at the bottom of the screen, we've got a QR code there. So you can just snap that with your phone. If you're looking at it on your desktop computer or whatever, and go to.
To his channel to be able to see those videos. You'll notice when you get there, there's a button that says, subscribe, click that. Then there's a little bell looking icon also hit that, that will make sure that not only are you subscribed to Al, but you'll get notifications immediately. Every time he uploads a new video.
[01:14:14] Al Bellamy: That's a great picture too. That was after I finished a Ragnar run one year, I used to do the Richmond Ragnar runs when I lived in Virginia. One of those things, yeah. I looked like absolute crap in that picture.
[01:14:28] Ted Hallum: Well, so I can't stress how supportive I am of this challenge that you're doing. I think it's incredibly generous.
Again, what you're offering is an incentive for people that complete the challenge to get an hour of your time. Although I think just doing the challenge, people are going to find that that should be incentive enough. They're going to get a lot out of it. As far as increasing awareness of them establishing their personal brand and all of these things are so important to be successful when you find yourself in the job market of course the, the best time to be a job hunting is when you don't need a job.
So I think you should be preparing all the time, which is why even if you, even, if you love where you're at, the LinkedIn hard mode challenge is still for you. And you know, as a final incentive for specifically for veterans in data science and machine learning members I'm curious out, would you with everything else that's on your plate, would you be willing to try and keep an eye out for veterans and data science and machine learning members?
And let me know. If there is a member who just does a standout, awesome job with the challenge, is that within the realm of possibility? Absolutely. Okay, cool. Now is it, should they add like an extra hashtag or something to let you know
[01:15:42] Al Bellamy: if they want to hashtag VDMS sorry. VDS ML, along with the LinkedIn goes
[01:15:48] Ted Hallum: in order along with LinkedIn hard mode hashtag.
Yup. Yeah. Okay. All right. So do that when you do your post, that will signal to Al that you're not just doing the challenge, but you're also a vena VDSL member. And then once he comes back to me and says, Hey, you know, Joe or Jill or whoever was the stand out, they just did an awesome job, blew me away. Then what I'll do is.
I'll contact you to find out what size shirt you wear and we'll hook you up with a VDS Mel hoodie and Avita VDS milk, coffee mug. So hopefully, hopefully between the professional benefits the potential to get an hour with you and to be in the running for a video smell hoodie and coffee cup.
Hopefully that'll be enough to get people to say, Hey, I'm going to pull the trigger
[01:16:33] Al Bellamy: on this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for thanks for up in the anti that's awesome.
[01:16:38] Ted Hallum: Oh no, no, no. I think this is, this is incredible. This is what people need to do in 2021 to get hired. I have people in the veterans day, science and machine learning community who routinely tell me I've applied to 150 jobs.
I've gone to company websites and just repeatedly gone through the horror horrific process of dumbing my information. And then from that hundred and 50 applications, submissions, maybe 15 informational interviews with a recruiter and then maybe one call back to do. Something beyond the initial phone screen and my heart just go, my heart just breaks because I hear that.
And like, I understand that is what people typically think they should do. But in 2021, it's my truth. It's my conviction. You know, maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I'm wrong. You're doing it wrong if you're doing it that way. You're doing it wrong.
[01:17:33] Al Bellamy: LinkedIn. Yeah, I will say this. I've, I've heard that from a T probably not quite as many as you because you're, I mean, you're set up in the space to be receptive to that.
I've heard that from a ton of people, veterans non-veterans, here's what I've never found because the first thing I do is go look at their, what they're doing on LinkedIn. Usually I hear from them on LinkedIn, the first. When I go to their profile, I have never once found one of these people that can't get a job that has a fully filled out LinkedIn profile.
I'm not even talking about like, you know, top notch, like glowing LinkedIn profile. I'm just talking about all the gaps filled in. I've never found fully filled out LinkedIn profile, plus a portfolio linked to that. Even if it's bad, just like mine might get hubs garbage. If you've got your get hub on there, and you've got a project that you've done featured, never found it that, and you know, 500 or more connections on LinkedIn don't even have to be good connections just you're you're in the 500 club that fricking LinkedIn cool guy club or Dell.
If you've got those three things, I've never seen it, that a person with those characteristics cannot get work. I agree that it's just kind of the Venn diagram just aligns. If you've put that, that level of detail into, you know, getting your work out there and your proof of value you know, it's just, it's almost a perfect formula to getting a job in data.
If you're missing one of those elements, it doesn't matter what your resume looks like. You know, unless you've got a Harvard degree or something like that, you know, or William and Mary
[01:19:22] Ted Hallum: If you're on the moderate crops there yeah, so I think the bottom line is you can go through that commitment process.
I, I don't know why you'd want to sign up for that kind of pain because LinkedIn gives you the opportunity if you do it well, if you do it according to the commitments that are vague, that you baked into the LinkedIn hard mode challenge You can short circuit, all that. You can go through, go. In most cases, you can go around the recruiter, go around the five interviews and get your stuff in front of somebody who has hiring authority, impress them.
And yeah, they're going to do an interview with you a lot of times, maybe it just as a formality because that's true and they have to do an interview, but they've already decided I'm seeing is believing, right. They've already decided based on what they've seen about you, that you're the person they want.
You're going to go into what might only be one interview directly with them, skip past the phone screen in a lot of cases. And it'll essentially be your job to lose. You'll have to go into that interview and mess it up for that hiring manager to not
[01:20:32] Al Bellamy: the first and second round by in the playoffs, you know, you're going straight to the championship game.
Yeah,
[01:20:36] Ted Hallum: yeah, exactly. And if you can do that, why wouldn't you, right. I think that's the main. So, all right, well, as we wrap up owl, I never want to let anybody that comes to the show, get away without telling us a few key things that will help help us as a community with our collective learning. So the first one is when it comes to data tools and technologies, what gets you excited?
What should we go look into?
[01:21:03] Al Bellamy: Yeah, so my new job I'm using, Ultrix a ton. I'm very lucky that they Ultrix is not cheap. So I'm, I'm very lucky that they've footed the bill for four licenses really for my whole team. But yeah I'm taken to that like crazy. So just the, I haven't even got into the Uber nerd, like the auto ML functions and integrating and, and all of that sort of sexy stuff.
I'm just using it now to kind of circumvent the. Hours of awful Excel mashing. But, but yeah, fantastic tool. If you can learn it. Absolutely. Just what I'm seeing out there in the job space. Th that's one that's on the rise. Yeah, still, still studying are still again, not cheap. I'm using Matt Dan chose business science, not a sponsor it's he hasn't offered me squat hasn't even sent me a free t-shirt, but yeah, I really love his courses.
And you know, if you're, if you're willing to pay some money you're going to get what it's worth out of that. I did use data, camp myself enjoy using data camp. So, but yeah, Altryx is kind of my jam now.
[01:22:13] Ted Hallum: Awesome. Yeah, I've used Alteryx in the past. I used it mostly in a data engineering type capacity for extract transform load.
I haven't used its auto ML capabilities. In fact, when I use them not, I think that might be like a newer addition to their capability. I was blown away. It's very powerful tool. You can do a lot with it, so yeah, if your organization can afford, Ultrix like you mentioned it is expensive, but if they, if they've got it and you're not using it, you should definitely look into it.
Altrix is awesome. For sure. As far as data related podcasts and books I know you consume a tremendous amount of content, particularly podcasts. You've been on a lot of podcasts. W w what would you recommend to us?
[01:23:02] Al Bellamy: I love, obviously I gotta give props to 'em to how to get an analytics job. I worked on the podcast for for about six months ran their LinkedIn page for quite some time.
So I still love those guys are still doing great work. They're doing two videos a month or a month, two videos a week now. The, the kind of the standard that everybody knows is their interview videos are are on Fridays, still have great, great guests on there. And but on Tuesdays now they're doing John.
David's actually a teacher at Greensboro college. And so he's doing some of his classes on, on the podcast. So that's really valuable fate. He brings kind of thought leaders and industry leaders from data analytics on that to kind of evaluate his students on their Tableau dashboards and, you know, just various things they're doing for his class.
So super informative on that. I was recently a guest on Ken's nearest neighbors. I love Ken's nearest neighbors and, and also Kenji's YouTube channel that they're just awesome. And I was recently an unwilling guest on Luke Bruce's YouTube channel, which I love it did, he did a very funny, a takeoff of some, some jokes I made at the expense of the Python, fanboy community on analytics jobs.
So Luke is awesome. He's a friend, he's a and fellow veteran. I think he's, is he in a video CML or if not,
[01:24:37] Ted Hallum: He he is we haven't had him on the podcast or anything yet. You'll have to maybe give him a nudge. Yeah. I'll
[01:24:44] Al Bellamy: get them on. But he's hilarious. Just, just a super funny guy and tons of, tons of fun to have to, to chat with.
And so there I was, I was kind of honored. He he took a run at me. It was all very good nature, but you mentioned that you were
[01:25:01] Ted Hallum: willing, even, she knew you were an unwilling guest. What is that?
[01:25:05] Al Bellamy: So he took a bunch of when we were doing, when I was reviewing the Google data analytics cert there's, you know, there's one whole chapter on AR and I like love R I'll also love Python that they have their individual uses, but I, I do love to take jabs at the, you know, the Python fan community that, that just has to constantly tell you how our sucks in Python is better.
And so. Yeah, I, I cracked a few jokes on, on our episode where I reviewed our and Google actually discusses why they chose our over Python for that course. And so in talking about that, yeah, I, I took some jabs at the Python fanboy community. I think I called Luke out by name. And so, yeah, so I started it, but yeah, he did a YouTube video where there was a bunch of clips of, of the jokes that I made and, you know, he, he kind of fame's personal offense and then goes and you know, and did some actual analysis of job postings and what they're asking for between Python and R so informative video as most of Luke's videos are very informative.
Very funny. Just definitely. And I'm taking personal pride in the amount of views. It's got like 50,000 views, I think. And I probably got like 500 connections on LinkedIn off of that video. Cause at the end he says, Hey, you should go follow Alan. Like, you know, he's, he's a good dude.
[01:26:29] Ted Hallum: Yeah. Yeah. Very cool.
Well on that topic, I think I help the perspective for our community is to realize, you know, we all have our preferred tools, technologies, programming languages, but the reality, if you step back and take whatever emotion you may have out of it is that they're all, they're all tools in a toolbox and you can have a toolbox with just a hammer in it if you want.
And you can try to make everything look like a nail, but you're probably not going to have great results with that. So it's better to have a robust toolbox with many tools and then try to assess the right tool for the job, whether that's R or Excel or Python, brawl tricks or whatever the case may be.
You can try to hammer on a nail with a screwdriver. Hopefully it's a small nail going to painful. Yeah, exactly. All right. So out, we've got your LinkedIn name here under your video feed on the screen.
Obviously you're very active on LinkedIn. That's probably how you prefer to be contacted, but as there any other means that you like for communication. Okay.
[01:27:36] Al Bellamy: No, that's that's pretty much it. I, I even I I've been known to ghost my own email for several days. So if the only reason I checked it yesterday was because you sent me stuff.
So.
[01:27:47] Ted Hallum: All right. Well, I think that's it. I think everybody has a great base for what they need to know to get started with LinkedIn hard mode challenge. Again, there's going to be additional tips, tricks information put out at Al's YouTube channel. Got the QR code on the screen again.
[01:28:03] Al Bellamy: Hey, so it's I know this is going to air on November 4th. Veteran's day is coming up on veteran's day, I'm a member of the American Legion, highly recommend the American Legion to, to any veterans out there.
If you're, if you're looking for a sense of community, obviously you're in VTS ML. So you really want to keep that, that connection to the veteran community recommend you look up your local American Legion. A large percentage of our members in new Bern, North Carolina are post nine 11 vets contrary to kind of the popular image of American Legion.
So really loved that organization. We started this tradition last year where we hiked 22 kilometers on veteran's day for to benefit programs aimed at decreasing veterans suicide. In honor, of the average of 22 veterans a day that commit suicide this year where we're up in the Annie.
So there is an option for those of us that choose to do so. We going to launch. 0 4 30 on a 22 mile hike which will then at the 22 K point where we started last year, pick up some, some kind of less less vigorous folks hiking, 22 K. And then we're going to end in the city of Newburn, the historic city.
It's beautiful. If you've never been there, I recommend it. But downtown's, it's super veteran friendly town and there's a bunch of bars and we're going to do a two K bar crawl to the finish. So anyway, I, I personally was, was touched by two Marines that, that wound up taking their lives in, in conjunction with with some PTSD and veteran related things.
And so that's something that, that kind of touches me personally and yeah, it's just, it's just a great cause. And the, the proceeds from it you can go and donate if you want to give, you know, five, 10 bucks or anything like that. You can see on the website that we'll post the programs that we do, they're all local, they're all aimed at veteran connection in the local community because like, like anything else of a problem of this magnitude, you can wind up kind of just chucking money at it.
And you don't know if it makes a difference or not. But you do know that, you know, when you have a dinner or you sponsor a fellowship event with local veterans, you can see in the eyes of people there that that may be suffering, that they're finding a true connection. So that's, that's something that means a lot to me.
I will be posting about that on LinkedIn. So if you're following the challenge, I'll, I'll be tagging it with the hashtag.
[01:30:38] Ted Hallum: Yeah, outstanding. We'll make sure that there's links to that in the show notes. Also on the topic of PTSD, if you're struggling with that, if you know, people are struggling with that we had an awesome episode, episode 12, the day to canteen.
It was actually the episode right before this one with Eric Quintero on the topic of PTSD. So check that out. I'll make sure to link to that's in the show. And then as I go through post production, edit all the other resources that Alice mentioned throughout the episode, I'll make sure that we get links to all those for you where they're readily available out.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on the show so early in the morning I hope that you'll come back on the data canteen very soon.
[01:31:17] Al Bellamy: Yeah, absolutely love it, man. Appreciate the invite.
[01:31:20] Ted Hallum: Awesome. Until next time.
Thank you for joining you on this conversation without Bellamy, before I sign it off, let me give you a few reminders first VDSL and for mentors is once again, outstripping supply. So please thoughtfully consider paying it forward by volunteering to be a mentor on our way. It's been a number two. Don't forget to check the show notes of this episode.
You'll find a link to our mentorship page and many other great resources in there. Third, wherever you listen to the data canteen, if you're getting good mileage out of the content, please consider leaving the show. A positive review. It motivates platforms like apple podcast to feature us more prominently making it that much easier for transitioning military veterans to learn both about the data team and our broader VDSL.
With that until the next episode, the bids, you cleaned data, low P values and Godspeed on your data journey.