Transcript
Speaker: Hi, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark, the podcast that features conversations with marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches. Joel Lousley is the best recruiter to follow on LinkedIn. Well, that's his LinkedIn profile description. One of the most active and engaged recruiters on LinkedIn, Joel has 73 ,000 followers. And for anyone looking to establish a network and thought leadership on LinkedIn, check out Joel's posts and comments. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Joel.
Speaker: Great to be here, Mark. Appreciate you having me on today. I'd like to begin by talking about your LinkedIn journey. When did you first get on the platform? And as important, when and how did you decide to really jump into the fray? Yeah, so I originally joined the platform back in 2011, which is right around the time that I was finishing up college. I had a friend who was in the recruitment space that
Speaker: ended up actually being a CEO later on in life. But he had advised me, he was like, you've got to get on LinkedIn. And that was before it was really, I think obviously as popular as it is now. But I jumped on there and I remember just doing an internship. It was like a sales and marketing internship. And I just spent a whole summer just connecting with people. I noticed that once you get to those 500 plus connections,
Speaker: then it just says 500 plus. And so that was my goal one summer. So I spent probably from like 2011, 2012, I was building up my network, basically just randomly connecting with people because I didn't really have anybody in my professional network. And then I put it down until 2015 when I jumped into recruitment, that same person who recommended I jumped on a LinkedIn, started a recruitment agency. And at that time I was in banking and he just suggested
Speaker: Like, Hey, you should come work for my startup and my recruitment startup. I didn't have any experience in recruiting at that time. Um, but obviously so much recruitment nowadays is done on LinkedIn. So in 2015, I started again, building up the network, connecting with people. Um, and then this time I had a little bit more purpose with it. Like I was literally connecting with people to recruit them. Um, and then in 2019 or near the end of 2019,
Speaker: Um, I just started getting really interested in this concept of using content to attract candidates and attract clients. And, uh, you know, I was, I was in recruiting. It's like half of it is sales. Half of it is, is recruit recruitment and even recruitment itself is kind of like sales. And I just started seeing lots of messages from people on the newsfeed on LinkedIn saying, Hey, if you create content, if you're showing up, you can start to attract inbound business.
Speaker: And at the time, the agency, the recruitment agency I was with, they're pretty progressive in terms of their recruitment model. But when it came to marketing and branding, uh, like most recruitment agencies, they weren't really doing anything. So I thought, you know what, if I can figure out a way to get myself out there and produce another channel, um, for four K to be able to attract candidates and clients.
Speaker: Um, I want to give it a go. And, and so that was September, 2019. And ever since then, uh, I've been posting at times, three times a day. Uh, but now I'm, I'm showing up about five times a week. Um, I've changed my strategy, you know, as I've kind of learned how the platform works. But yeah, so that, that's kind of my journey and that's taken me to.
Speaker: Obviously, lots of podcasts, lots of connecting with different leaders within the recruitment space. I have my own podcast, which I'm able to set up just through LinkedIn and having a LinkedIn presence. And then I did spend the last nine months coaching recruitment teams across the globe on how they could strategically use the platform, how they could use content, really as a way to
Speaker: kind of bring accountability to the work they're doing as recruiters, but then also getting their name out there more and separating themselves in really what's super competitive.
