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Dec 13, 2025
Are you growing on LinkedIn the WRONG way?
Are you growing on LinkedIn the WRONG way?
00:00
32:36
Transcript
0:00
LinkedIn is no longer a job seeker, no longer a billboard. I started this journey where I can help people. I was not looking forward anything as a give. For me, it was giving back to community.
0:17
I would not say as a content creator, but my first post as a recruiter, I was reluctant, hesitant, and just didn't want to hit that post button.
0:25
And I hit that post just hoping that nobody reads it and nobody judges me for that. Being in corporate does not give you so much of space to explore. And LinkedIn is talking about personal brand and personal voice.
0:37
What has worked for me is not my personal brand. It's not my voice. It my audience's voice. I think then LinkedIn should change the word from followers to community, right? AI is a disaster. It is killing creativity.
0:56
Content creators are tricking you to read your post with the pod. Hey, folks. Welcome to the first episode of Becoming Creator, where we uncover how creators are made, not born, one struggle at a time.
1:11
Today's guest is someone who proves that you don't need a decade to build a personal brand. You just need courage, clarity, and consistency.
1:22
Akshata went from full-time recruiter to a LinkedIn's most trusted voice in career storytelling.
1:31
She has grown a community of 26,000 followers and 5,000 newsletter readers by showing up with honesty, insight, and distinctive writing style that actually makes people stop and read.
1:45
Recently, she started CyOps Path, where she is helping cybersecurity professional to stand out in this most competitive industry today. Please welcome Akshata. Hi. Thank you so much for having me on this call.
1:59
It's a pleasure talking to you. It's my pleasure to host you here. For our listeners meeting you for the first time, how do you introduce yourself today? I'm a decade of experience into recruitment.
2:11
I work for a nonprofit. I'm a content creator. I, I want to reach out to-- I want to make voice, create voices where people will actually stop. I started this journey where I can help people.
2:26
I was not looking forward anything as a give, uh, that I can take away. For me, it was giving back to community. And today, here I am, doing something different, trying everything every day differently. [chuckles] Great.
2:40
So I think this is your way of giving back to community, right? Absolutely. That's what it has been for me. Being a recruiter, I figured that out. My passion is with the job seekers.
2:52
Being into executive recruitment, my passion is to connect with leaders and figure out build their personal brand.
2:59
And my journey of decade being a recruiter, that what, you know, just swung by and gave me a platform as a LinkedIn where I can use it to build my personal brand and also elevate others along with it.
3:12
So that's my passion. That's what I do. So do you remember your first post as a content creator? What did hitting that first publish button felt like?
3:22
I would not say as a content creator, but my first post as a recruiter, I was reluctant, hesitant, and just didn't want to hit that post button.
3:32
And I was just thinking I did that first post because my employer wanted me to, and I hit that post just hoping that nobody reads it and nobody judges me for that. [chuckles] What changed after that, right?
3:47
Now, if someone looks at your LinkedIn, you post almost every day. So what changed from hesitating to click on that publish button and now posting every day? I would like to add a story to this, Pankaj.
4:02
So I was in India for, you know, all my life. I was, been a recruiter, groomed as a recruiter by great leaders. I have worked across different industries, IT, non-IT, banking sector, education sector.
4:17
Life happened, and we had to relocate to US. And between me picking up from a full-time job, uh, being a jobless, and then looking into something, you know, picking up on one more job, I had six months with me.
4:30
And that six month, I was trying to figure out, "Can I do something of my own? Can I do some?"
4:36
Because being in corporate does not give you so much of space to explore because you're busy, and you're just doing your shift and day after day, meeting after meeting.
4:46
But I didn't have a chance to explore myself and see what, what am I strong at, what can I do better, what can I do differently. That's when first my LinkedIn was to find job.
4:59
First, my LinkedIn post would be just to have recruiters look at me and say anybody could notice me and get me a job in US.
5:08
But what happened is, eventually, when I started conversations, I started building posts, then I realized there are so many people out there who need a voice, who are job seekers, who are technology leaders, and they actually relate to what I say, and that sparked my interest.
5:28
And when I did my self-studies, I did content studies, I did Coursera courses, I'm on YouTube, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on pretty much every platform, just trying to see how can a content make difference in people.
5:43
And that's the journey when I started. And from in that, that two years from then to now, this has been a great, great learning place for me. And that's when the con-content creation started.
5:56
[chuckles] That's really great. So let's deep dive into that, right? So today, there are a lot of professional who have spent decades into their careers, right?
6:06
They, they are a great-- They have a really great expertise on something, but- Usually they struggle to build their personal brand on any of the social media, you can say, or even in their industry, right?
6:20
Because personal brand is not just about posting content on social media, it is more about becoming a thought leader in that particular industry. So
6:31
you spent last two years into finding your voice, and now you have become one of the premier voice in, uh, personal branding on LinkedIn, right?
6:42
How does these professionals can build their voice and become a thought leader on any of the social channel? Okay, this is a very interesting, uh, view of mine that I'm gonna share.
6:57
Everybody on LinkedIn is talking about personal brand and personal voice. What has worked for me is not my personal brand. It's not my voice, it my audience's voice. For me, that has been the great.
7:11
Now, I'm not a company. I'm not a company where I have a brand, I have a logo, I have a color palette where I will stick onto it, right?
7:20
For anyone who is starting out on LinkedIn, the most important part is what is your end goal and what is that you are looking forward from that platform.
7:30
LinkedIn is no longer a job seeker, no longer a billboard, LinkedIn is a community now, right? You give back to community, you receive back from community.
7:41
You'll be amazed to see that as long as you can make, create those voices, what people want to hear. If you are a job seeker, and if I write my success stories at workplace, it has nothing to do with you.
7:54
You are not looking at it. But as soon as I post something like, "How can you get a job in next 90 days?" The job seeker will pause and read it.
8:05
It's important for a creator or somebody who's starting absolutely new on LinkedIn to understand what is your outcome, what are you looking forward to, and build a voice around your audience.
8:17
It's your audience, it's your community. And consistently working and experimenting and being the voice of people who trust you, that gets, gives a great, you know, swing for your content. That's my personal opinion.
8:34
[laughs] Great. So I think then LinkedIn should change the word from followers to community, right? I have 5,000 peoples community, not a follower. Absolutely. It's a community base.
8:48
So I post something, you relate to it, you like, you read, sometime you just pass on, right? Now, when you say followers, followers are... I see most of them want to get out of that something. Are you selling a product?
9:03
Are you, do you have a brand partnership? You know, most of them are... Or are you coaching? Are you building something out of it?
9:10
But when you say it's a community, you'll be amazed to see how many people are willing to hold your hand and grow together, and I have found that community within whatever I want to do, so it has worked great.
9:25
You have been on, um, both side of the table, right? You have been on the hiring side for lot of years. You have done hiring from maybe intern to a leadership, right?
9:38
So what did you realize that all these people gets wrong about presenting themselves? Everyone is looking for some kind of an engagement.
9:51
Everybody wants to have a perfect post that can get them viral.
9:57
They do so much of research, they do so much of copy-pasting everywhere using ChatGPT, using everything, and they want to replicate what others are doing just to get that perfect voice.
10:11
What has worked for me, it is randomness. As long as you're able to experiment, as long as you're able to put authentic content out there, what everybody's not doing.
10:22
Today morning you open LinkedIn, you saw how to write a resume, and it's exactly, you will be amazed, Pankit, LinkedIn actually works like Instagram. You read a post about a resume, you just keep getting feeds on resume.
10:38
That's what pushes and what is that algorithm does to you, right? I have seen people don't want to experiment. They just want to get it right on the first time, so they don't hit that post button.
10:50
No, they don't want people to judge. Or they say that, "I post something and nobody reacted. I don't have like, I don't have, you know, people supporting. There is no repost. It's a total failure." It's not.
11:02
Experimenting, putting yourself out there authentically is something I think most of them are missing right now. So let's deep down on these experiments, right?
11:12
Can you share maybe two, three experiments which you ran, and what was the outcome of that?
11:19
As I said, my community, my followers are there are either the tech leaders, tech job seekers, and human resources, because I come from that background. That is my community, right?
11:33
When I was studying LinkedIn, I started doing lot of image posting, infographics thing, because everybody is doing it. I just thought that works best.
11:43
You put a infographics, you tell what is mental health, you talk about, you know, personal branding, and people would just crazily follow you. And surprisingly, everything fell off. I don't see anything.
11:55
I don't see engagement, I don't see impressions, and I, I was wondering, how come others are doing it so well and I'm not able to do it? The problem was replicating it. Problem was not finding a right voice.
12:11
I would get... You know, go back to that personal brand, get, finding that voice. Finding that audience's voice.
12:19
And there is something, Pankaj, you'll be surprised to know, people don't want to engage with you because they think there is a brand associated and people will judge you. If I put a post of AI...
12:32
I'm making this up, okay? If I put a post saying, "AI is a disaster, it is, it is killing everything, it is killing creativity," when you read my post, you know it, you believe it.
12:45
You know that's what is happening right now, but you are hesitant and reluctant to just click that Like button because you think now people will judge you for liking the controversial content, right?
12:58
Everybody's talking about general post, how to write a resume. I did my one post of how to write a resume for project managers. I posted it. I didn't get anything. I was like, "How is that nobody's looking at this?
13:14
This is such a great content, very specific to project manager." Next day, I took that content and I put it on project management group, and boom,
13:25
there was this huge ripple effect, and I started receiving comments, like, repost, and people actually started DM me saying that, "Such a great content. I love this."
13:37
That's when I realized, if you want to create something, target people, target your audience, target the community that you want to give back.
13:47
That one learning, you just need one post that make you people see as a thought leader. So relevance is something which, uh, everyone should focus on, right?
14:00
If you have to find your community, and then you have to create, uh, content which is relevant to that community. Yes. Experiment. I say experiment every day.
14:13
Even now, even if I have 26,000 followers, I experiment on my content every day. There are days and weeks I don't post because I'm not finding something solid and relevant where my audiences will like.
14:27
I experiment every day with different content because somebody who followed me five years back, because they were looking for a job, now they already secure a job. They are at a leadership level now.
14:39
They don't want to read something that I am posting anymore. Now, how do I connect with them? So that brings your part of experimenting. Continuous experimenting and reading, and see your...
14:52
LinkedIn has a great way of showing your impressions, your algorithms, your analytics. Just read LinkedIn. It will exactly tell you, you know, some post Bangalore. Bangalore just gives me a huge audience.
15:07
Some post is only for US. Then I have my Excel sheet, right? Putting all together, like what post actually hit Indian audience, what post actually hit US audience. Experiment. That's what works for me.
15:20
That's a great resource to share that, okay,
15:24
e- even though LinkedIn show you those information in the dashboard, but you should create your Excel sheet so that you can analyze those, uh, and then probably create content based on geographical engagement as well, no?
15:39
Absolutely, Pankaj. That's, that's what has worked. It's, it's never the same post. It's never the same content. It's always the experiment. Great.
15:48
So what have you learned about vulnerability and authenticity by showing up online every day? The learning for me was just to show up. Just to show up.
16:02
On that busy day when you're doing your nine to five shift, opening that LinkedIn without an expectation and posting consistently. It takes a motivation.
16:14
It definitely takes a motivation because life gets busy, and you know, and once you have a community, they are looking forward to something that you put in, and you are just failing that community if you're not out there.
16:27
So for me, when you say vulnerability, it's more to say initially it was a huge adrenal kick that I was looking at, my like, comment, reposts, but now it's no longer that.
16:41
For me, it's that showing up every day, creating a content. If out of that content I have at least 10 people who will stop and read and follow, I'm good with that. That bu- brings up, right?
16:56
Just showing up and not wanting to people to judge you, and do what you like to do, follow your passion, it works great. So let's go a little bit, uh, on a personal side.
17:10
So when you post something on any of the social media, and when you make that as a consistency, and you do it for two years or more than that, then that changes you as well, right?
17:24
So I want to know how creating content or becoming content, uh, changed you personally as well as professionally. This is, this is a great question, Pankaj.
17:36
If you see five years, 10 years older Akshata, she didn't even want to come on screen. She didn't wanted to put her photographs on her, you know, LinkedIn profile picture.
17:47
She didn't wanted people to stop by and look at her. I was one of those introvert. I s- I am, still I am. I'm not saying I'm an extrovert, I can go and do a public speaking. No, I cannot.
18:00
I have that nervousness and imposter syndrome kicking in every time. But personally, that six month where I spent on my own self-growth and finding my passion, you know, it just gave me cert- It's...
18:16
There's a spark in it. I don't know from where that spark clicked.
18:21
From a person who didn't want to sh- be seen, now I'm the person not just wanting to be seen, heard, now my passion is to hold on to people who cannot do it and build their personal brand.
18:35
Now it's no longer about what I create content, it's more about now how I can help others to build their own personal brand, hold them, and uplift them, and it has to do something with my current role as well.
18:47
Now I work at a nonprofit where I coach people, I help them find right jobs, and I figured that out that so many people on LinkedIn don't know how to use it the right way to reach their end goal.
19:01
So if you ask me, older me, absolutely, I would love to just take that picture off, remove that banner. Recruiter, hiring, technology, that's it. I didn't wanted people to look at me at all, right?
19:14
That's me personally, and huge learning growth. Learning growth is because now you want to... You want people to see you, people want... You want to be the thought leader.
19:23
Now, y- and you want to be unique and authentic, then you study, you spend hours in reading content, you spend hours in reading news, current trends, and pick up cues from there, and that builds a personality of knowledge, that gives you a certain perspective, and personally you grow as a person, right?
19:46
You become a knowledgeable, sensible person. That's me personally. Professionally, you would be amazed, Pankay, that now that I have 26,000 followers, unimaginable amount of brands would like to partner with you.
20:02
It has opened a huge platform for me where brands would like to say, "Can-- would you, you know, come and work as a collaboration?" So that's been my professional takeaway. Would I want to do that? I'm not sure yet.
20:17
I'm not picking up on brands for a specific reason because my, my LinkedIn authenticity is due to help job seekers. It's not to sell a product.
20:28
So right now I'm not engaging with the brands because it's not helping my voice, my audience. My audience are not buyers. My audiences are, you know, tech leaders who want to grow.
20:39
My audiences are job seekers who want to find a right job. My audiences are who want to build their LinkedIn brand. As long as I am able to keep that authentic community alive,
20:52
I'm not looking at pa-pa- brand partnerships that take me away from my, you know, personal goals. But yeah, professionally it can open it.
21:01
If you want to be a creator and then build a community, hit 25, look for brand partnerships, and you can make so much out of it. So yeah, that's been my journey.
21:11
So I want to go in depth about the content, reading of the content, right? So can you list down what are your top five source where you get your daily dose of content? LinkedIn is the one.
21:27
LinkedIn exactly tells you what people want to read. If you LinkedIn, Reddit is a great, and Twitter. Twitter would be my next go-to place just to see what is viral and trending, but right now it's...
21:43
Reddit is something because you have so many, uh, job communities out there, and you see those questions they put out, you know, "I'm doing this, I'm not able to find help. Can anybody help me?"
21:54
I go to those posts and see, okay, I have 10 people looking for similar kind of content. I would replicate that and bring it on as an answer. LinkedIn exactly will show you.
22:05
I don't look at other creators, what they are posting. I don't. I look at people who are asking questions on LinkedIn. "Does anybody know how to write this resume? Does anybody know what influencer does?"
22:21
I look for questions and communities asking for help, who's asking for an input. I take those as a cues and then create a content around it.
22:32
Well, I saw a post saying that, "How do you even know if, if you're a job seeker, how do you research on companies? There are so many resources out there." Somebody just randomly put it on the group,
22:42
and I thought, "Yeah, this is interesting. Why not let me do my research and create a content?" I just created a post, a carousel say that how to research a company if you're a job seeker. Boom. It's just, it went viral.
22:58
So that's what it is for me. [chuckles] That's a really great insight. So just find the questions either on LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, anywhere, and then create content around that. Absolutely. Absolutely.
23:12
Again, I'll go back to the first question, it's the voice. Who is your audience? Become the audience voice. Let's say if someone wants to grow their LinkedIn from zero to X, right? It can be 10,000, 20,000,
23:27
m-more than that. What are the three things they should focus on according to you? First and foremost, I know for the sure, which is voice, right? Find the voice of your audience. What are the other two?
23:39
Second is experiment. I always say experiment with your content, and just don't keep posting without studying your content. I have seen people posting 10 posts at, in a day.
23:52
I've seen people doing e-every day, every morning, same thing over and over again, but failing to go back and check your analytics. Is it even performing? Is it...? And it's not about today.
24:05
I post something today that can go viral after three months. It has happened to me. Are you keeping a track? Go back to your every post and analytics to see what is it. And last and very important thing is,
24:20
don't fall for the trap of engagement. Where the post that you see, the heart, the support, the smileys, the repost, this is something I learnt maybe an year back, and I didn't know.
24:36
I knew this works for Instagram, but I didn't know it works for LinkedIn. Audience, this is for the audience to know that 90% content creators are tricking you to read your post with the pod.
24:51
Now, there is a LinkedIn pod. They have a closed group of people. When you post something, the AI bot automatically like, share, comment.
25:01
When you read that post, then you think, "Oh my goodness, those are the influencers. Those are the people I want to be one." No, it's not. 90% is done by bots. There are AI doing it, right?
25:14
So I would say don't fall for that. And one advice that I would give is look for impressions and not the engagement. Uh, AI, now LinkedIn has its great algorithm that keep changing. Now, the clickbait has gone.
25:32
If you say, "Like my post, share it with someone you like," LinkedIn takes it down immediately. It just, the feed just goes away. Authentic posting and impression.
25:45
What impression is, how many people are actually stopping and reading your content? They may not engage. It's not necessary they engage. But are they stopping and reading?
25:55
I have few of my post viral even till date, which has a million impressions and zero engagement. What that means are people are stopping, they are reading, right? They are consuming information, but they're not engaging.
26:11
We are not a YouTube channel where we say, "Hit the like button, subscribe button, follow button." No. If you have good impressions, that means people are stopping by and reading, right?
26:23
Don't fall for those engagement bots. So that, that's what I would have to say.
26:27
[chuckles] That's a really great insight that look at the impressions in your analytics and not just the like, comments or, uh, just the reactions in general, right?
26:38
Recently, you started psyopspath.com, which is a, a platform dedicated to cybersecurity professional to find the relevant job in, in that particular domain.
26:51
So what inspired you to start this next chapter of your journey? As I told, being a content creator and having certain audience that I want to, I was looking... And this has happened to me accidentally.
27:07
I was browsing through, I was looking through every platform to see how a content creator can become something else.
27:16
Can they start off something else by their own without a brand partnership, without a affiliate marketing? I don't want to do affiliate marketing where I put in links and I want people to go through that.
27:27
That's something I didn't wanted to do, right? And I wanted to look at brands that can relate with me, that can relate with my audience.
27:37
And accidentally, I bumped into something called Artha Job Board, and this was total accident.
27:42
Where it says that you can create your job board and you can help job seekers, I was like, "Okay, I am not a technical person. I do- I know my audience, but how do I do it?"
27:56
I did my research, I went through and s- I saw there is a huge gap of talent supply in the cybersecurity space. That's when I registered myself.
28:07
I even paid for the monthly subscription on that platform, but I was very hesitant. I didn't use it for a month before I was sure it actually works, right? And the platform helped me.
28:21
It not just helping me, it's helping my audience. And the best part is I am not asking my community to buy something from me. I always wanted to give back and help. That's the way for me to help.
28:35
What I make a use of that platform is totally different. Is there a cost to my audience? No. Are they paying anything to me? No. Are they benefited out of it? Absolutely. Thousand of ghost jobs out there,
28:49
application after applications, and they don't know where they are going. Few people are just building database. I wanted a platform where they get real hiring jobs. They click, they apply.
29:02
And the job is ghosted, it is out of the platform. 24 hours, I clo-- That automated system removes it from the, you know, feed. It's a great platform, so that's what sparked me, you know, getting into PsyOps.
29:17
[laughs] That's a really great chapter. So what is the next, let's say, two years you see, uh, for the PsyOps path? One, definitely bringing in more jobs, authentic jobs where job seekers just go g- be a go-to place.
29:33
But I am trying to build a platform, a community which I've started working on I feel that is personal branding. Everybody needs a place to shine, spotlight, you know. Most-- I can relate to this.
29:49
Five years back when I saw that LinkedIn post and say, I could have been there, I could have had a video about me. I have the talent, but I just don't know, I don't know how to showcase that talent.
30:02
A entry level or a mid-senior level thinks that LinkedIn is nothing to do with your personal brand. Only the top leaders in technology are out there building their personal brand.
30:15
I want to use PsyOps, a place where I can build those personal brands, right? I can showcase industry talent irrespective of their job level.
30:28
Plus they have a place where they can apply and bring in more employers where they don't have to source. They have to just come in onto the website and look.
30:40
If I say I have top five, you know, cybersecurity specialist entry-level, they have to just come and go pick those talent. So I am building a platform around that.
30:51
So I'm, I'm looking for a great, you know, outcome out of it.
30:55
That's a really great, amazing, uh, goal to have, that, okay, you want to help job seekers to find the right employer without charging anything, and the job has to be really authentic, right?
31:10
Which brings me to my last question. If you could talk to your younger self, the recruiters who is just starting out, right, what would you tell her? Put yourself out there. Just put yourself out there. Find your voice.
31:26
Ju- Until you don't experiment, you will not know if it works for you or not. It's okay if LinkedIn doesn't work for you. It's okay Instagram doesn't work for you. It isn't made for you.
31:38
But don't start off with the thought it's not made for you. Try. Just go out there, put yourself out there, and experiment and do a research and study every day. If you fail, that's fine.
31:52
You'll find something else, but LinkedIn is a great platform, not for jobs, not just for... It's just a community that you build in, that you grow along with. Just find your voice. It can take you a long way.
32:06
Just if you start now, consistently do it for next two years, without noticing, you become a voice. Without noticing, you become a brand. Just work towards it. So that's a wrap for the first episode of Becoming Creator.
32:21
Thank you, Akshita, for joining us, uh, in the first episode. Thank you so much, Pankaj. It was a pleasure talking to you. I look forward for more. You have a great day. [outro music]
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