This LinkedIn Post Got Me 12 Job Offers
Keep the good side out even if you're not feeling well.
Dean Drobot | Canva It was a cool and breezy morning in Turkiye as I checked my bank account. I had just forked over an excessive amount of money for rent and was running low on cash and coffee.
The life of a solopreneur is filled with glorious peaks and terrifyingly low valleys of doom and anxiety, but I am very much on top of things.
My life as a writer and online educator has afforded me an unreliable income stream and a snazzy LinkedIn profile, which I have since updated since my traditional teaching days.
LinkedIn is a job posting website where desperate college graduates with no work experience go to search for work in a terrifying economy. It is also a place for those who are employed to tell those who are not employed that they are employed and a conduit for rich employers to post motivational garbage that is of no use to anyone but their egos as the mass doomed of the virtual rat race ‘comment for reach’ and to be ‘seen’ by the blind, not realizing that every HR department now uses AI to harshly filter their CVs into the dumpster in the name of fairness.
How do I know this? Well, I’m a LinkedIn teaching God in the ESL world and have done so by doing nothing.
Alex Photo Stock / Shutterstock
It all started when I was at home during the pandemic and read this post by a top voice on the platform as I was doom scrolling for work opportunities that would fix my life. It read;
“If you did not get a new skill during this pandemic, you don’t lack time; you lack conviction!”
Or something stupid like that. The post went mini-viral and made him look smart.
I quickly checked his background and soon realized that this joker was full of it. He was some principal in Adana, Turkiye, who had stolen the slogan from a CEO in London who had stolen it from Pinterest. I chuckled to myself in my sweaty boxers, but soon, my brain was on fire.
I had realized something,
‘Everyone is full of garbage, but I think I can be fuller of garbage and actually hide the smell.’
After all, I had been a teacher for over 10 years and had 1,500 followers on LinkedIn. I got to work and wrote a post I had stolen from some female CEO with a black and white profile photo but changed the wording to make it about Teaching.
The post
“My three-year-old God Daughter Facetimed me last night and said that she didn’t want to communicate with me via Facetime anymore and would much prefer for us to create avatars on Minecraft and Roblox so that she could not only communicate with her favorite Godfather but also enhance her gamification skills and become financially literate before her holy communion so she could save appropriately in case of emergency. — As an online educator, it was a proud godfather moment. — Please note that I am culturally Catholic, and any references to God does not mean I am not inclusive. I support all people.”
The post took off and garnered over 45,000 impressions in 24 hours. The comments were filled with job hunters assuming I was LinkedIn Jesus and that I must have access to jobs through my new 45,000 impressions. I even got some Top Voices tagging other educational Top Voices saying, “Hey, [insert name], you should read this. It reminds me of you.”
“If you talk like a thought leader, then you are a thought leader.” — Thought leader
LinkedIn Jesus
As I sat there in my one-bedroom studio apartment in the foothills of the Anatolian mountains, I began to get an idea, a motivational one. An idea filled with ambition and devilment.
I decided it was time to rebrand myself. I quickly uploaded a black-and-white profile and used AI to create my description.
“Connecting the world through communication skills through dynamic plans tailored to your needs.”
I was an entrepreneur (unemployed), so to spruce myself up before the hounds of LinkedIn doom could figure me out, I created a job. I called it, “ExoEduPlan” or “Executive Educational Plans.”
Which was basically me just putting a fancy name to what I had already been doing; Teaching and stuff and trying to pay rent.
The job offers
I shared my new job announcement.
“I am happy to share that I am now the founding member of ExoEduPlan. I look forward to helping the leading market leaders enhance their staff’s communication skills in this dynamic and fast-paced environment.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but it blew up, so I lit another cigarette and watched a movie to gather my thoughts.
New Africa / Shutterstock
When I finished, I noticed my inbox was full of job offers from other companies in the made-up market I had created for my virtual self and even had pathetic unemployed people like me asking for work.
Pretty soon, I landed a role that allowed me to keep my unemployed/solopreneur lifestyle alive which made me look even better on LinkedIn and would send me some dosh (money) anytime I delivered them a client.
Hacking the system and what I have learned
LinkedIn is not for finding a job. If you put one of those ‘Open for work’ stickers on your profile that makes you look like an Irish immigrant getting off the boat at Ellis Island, you won't be selected by the liars and fart sniffers of LinkedIn. Trust me, I know; I’m now one of them, so listen up, you toothless, overeducated humanities graduate.
If you want to get a job on LinkedIn, you need to pretend that you have a job and reject everyone until the right offer comes along. In fact, I would suggest not replying to the scum until after a week with something like,
“Just back from Dubai Grand Prix. This sounds promising, but I would need more details if I am to commit.”
Never send a CV. CVs are for losers, and HR doesn’t read them. AI just filters it out based on some calculation. Seriously, it’s truly terrifying.
No, the real way to get a job on LinkedIn is to do what our glorious forebearers did in the past or, as my late Grandfather used to say: “Keep the good side out even if you're not feeling well.”
You need to cultivate an image as we did at Sunday Mass when our mothers would dress us up in suits and ties and shake hands with the rich guy's daughter during communion just so you could feel her sweet, moisturized skin before your father sent you back to the all-boys monastery.
You need to stop and realize that no one wants to date the dude who can’t land a date. They want the dude who always looks busy and treats you like garbage. Head hunters are a lot like women, even male head hunters.
Peter William Murphy is a writer, teacher, musician, and content creator. He has published over 250 articles on Medium and has been selected for curation on 26 occasions. His work explores society, culture, politics, and mental health.