How to Maximize LinkedIn for Growth as an Accounting & Finance Professional
If you are not on LinkedIn, you are holding back your finance and accounting career.
By being actively engaged on LinkedIn, your influence reaches much farther than the physical boundaries of your office, and your ability to grow your network and connect takes a whole new stride. You’ll find that the speed of your career growth goes from a light jog to a full-on sprint.
Speaking from my personal experiences, in approximately six months, I have been able to create a network within the accounting and finance community that spans the entire globe which features the following types of professionals:
- Financial Leadership Coaches focused on turning finance teams into influential partners.
- Accountants Hell-bent on automation and deploying technology for efficiencies.
- Power BI Experts out to show the world how easy and accessible data visualization and management can be.
- Finance & Accounting Pros dedicated to building forums and communities to share knowledge.
These connections are fantastic for a comprehensive set of reasons beyond just helping you get a job. While many professionals may still see LinkedIn as only a place to go when they need a new job, the real value of the platform is the ability to develop relationships that vary in depth and breadth. The opportunity to openly interact with others who have both similar and opposite views leads to immense learning and growth through participating in quality conversations, content creation, and content distribution.
Allow me to take a step back for a moment and explain my personal journey in more detail. While studying in business school, I learned very quickly that the material that forms the backbone of the MBA curriculum could be found in an endless number of books and websites for just a fraction of the cost I had paid. I truly valued the entire MBA experience for what it was, and I wouldn’t take it back for anything, but the humbling and straightforward fact is that you can find the 100% of MBA curriculum online at a much more cost-effective rate. Educational on-demand platforms like Udemy and Coursera offer most things I learned for just a few dollars.
In another light, I have also found that certifications are a great way to obtain the necessary knowledge and show expertise. What I learned in my MBA program though, was something that I could not learn through taking an online course or certification. The real value, what I actually paid for, was this lesson; I learned that we all grow as professionals best by working with others and sharing experiences and stories.
What I took away from my educational experience was that engaging with other talented, bright individuals was the most critical thing I could do for my finance and accounting career. Being in a classroom with 50+ other gifted people made you smarter. Sharing experiences, failures, and wins made for better learning than reading a book. For example, expressing your opinions to someone on an open platform around how to create efficiency and have them share with you that they had already been there, tried that, and figured out that the idea did not work, was immensely valuable. I have learned that I needed others to help me conclude that my initial idea and assumptions were terrible. Doing this required vulnerability and humility, but I have learned that through collaboration and their experience that we can all learn from each other and that by putting two conflicting ideas together, a better idea was going to form that was going to meet the needs of a bigger market or solve a common pain point.
LinkedIn actually provides this same platform though. You can openly share your ideas in your feed for the entire public to see or you can share them in niche groups. Your posts will receive comments and feedback from other professionals. Many might agree with you, but several might think that your idea is terrible. You will network, but more importantly through the sharing of ideas, you will grow. You will gain new insights and be able to implement these into your work with ease.
In my own experience of engaging on LinkedIn, I embraced the concepts behind business partnering that I learned on this platform and then began to implement a transformation in my own company’s Finance & Supply Chain Department. In another example, I have learned from several other professionals that their experience in performing more efficient financial closings was light years ahead of where I was at at the beginning of this process. I then listened and worked with them collaboratively on an article to share our ideas with the rest of LinkedIn.
Stemming from that experience, I’d like to add that one of the coolest experiences I have encountered yet is that through LinkedIn, I have been able to find a real-world business partner. Even though we are physically thousands of miles apart, we have been able to build a working relationship that mirrors my beliefs and mission and has also functioned to complement my strengths and weaknesses. In this partnership, we have been able to quickly develop a platform that will facilitate a big step forward in promoting the necessary growth and learning that finance and accounting. Moreover, our site and model is built to be fully collaborative. Our tagline is “Competition Through Collaboration.” Instead of shielding others from our ideas, we have been instead inviting other unique and passionate professionals to join us. After all, the most important lesson from my experiences building my education is that sharing ideas and perspectives in a group context makes for amplified impact and execution.
After recognizing that we have an opportunity to take collaboration to another dimension and build a team alongside my partner, we decided to launch.
If you haven’t already guessed, my story explains the build-up that has now turned into The-Numbers-Guys.com. Be sure to check it out and come along for the ride with us as we do our part to advance the mission to grow stronger as accounting and finance professionals together.
LinkedIn is a truly powerful tool for finance and accounting professionals. Don’t just think of it as another meaningless connection tool but instead encourage others to also join into the conversation. Engage, learn, and grow, then take that knowledge and build something.
Written by: Mason Brady
Reviewed and Edited by: Ben Wann
