Naomi Birman, a career Assistant, explains the secret to shouting about yourself
I’m a career Assistant, a proponent of the administrative career path, a LinkedIn advocate, and an extroverted introvert. What does that mean? I can happily emcee a day-long in-person meeting for 200 people, give a LinkedIn 101 webinar to 30 people on the job market, and lead my Leader Assistant Zoom call Nerding Out with Naomi. I can do all the things I want to do, but my extrovert battery gets depleted and requires a recharge. Particularly after that all-day meeting.
Because of this, it took me a while to get comfortable celebrating my wins and to post about it on LinkedIn. It felt like I was wearing a very loud, very bright extrovert shirt screaming “Look at me!”
My LinkedIn goals have always been basic: develop a personal brand, network, knowledge sharing, and future-proof myself for future job hunting. But it’s been a journey to get comfortable posting, and I was a LinkedIn lurker for a long time.
I now celebrate my wins and toot my horn. I post about process hiccups and learning curves. I share which tools and software I’m using and ask others what they do to achieve the same goals. I share my unique voice, and I want every administrative professional to get comfortable doing the same.
When we toot our own horns on LinkedIn, we’re showcasing the extraordinary range of work we as administrative professionals do, memorializing the win, and creating visibility for our leaders (hopefully, you’re connected to your leaders on LinkedIn!).
Visibility Is Important
We cannot assume that others know what we do or what it took to achieve it. I’ll be honest, it took me a while to start owning my own wins in this way. It started after I saw my leader (a company VP) claim my solo project as their win. Which yes, in a way it was, but it was mine first. It was that day that I not only added it to my resume, but I realized I needed to start tooting my horn to get the recognition I deserved.
Recently, I realized that there’s still many of us who need to learn this lesson as well. There are many Assistants out there who are doing wonderful work and who go far above and beyond what is asked, but they keep it quiet and assume their leaders know what they did. They also get disappointed when they don’t receive the recognition they deserve. These individuals don’t send a quick email with the win, don’t have a 1:1 where they speak to it, and don’t post on LinkedIn celebrating it. Because of this, they’re getting overlooked by well-meaning managers who genuinely don’t know, and at times, by managers who assume it’s all part of the job and simply brush it off.
I believe that when we publicly celebrate our wins, we don’t just raise ourselves up, we raise the whole administrative community. We need more than just a brag sheet we save for annual reviews. When you celebrate a win, you deconstruct some of the words that are often used to define our work. It’s why there’s phrases tied like where the magic happens, that we’re wizards, or ninjas. That it took a sprinkle of fairy dust to get something done. I’ve even used them myself.
The Assistant experience is so much more than that. We work hard. There’s no magic. No fairy dust. No wizardry. It’s tenure and experience, connections and network, creative problem-solving, complex project management, deep research, and extensive communication that makes our hard work come to life. For a while, I wasn’t sure what was the best way to showcase this, nor was I comfortable posting on LinkedIn. Yet I knew LinkedIn was where I wanted to toot that horn. If I celebrated my wins publicly, it became documented in a way others could see. I wouldn’t be dependent on one leader acknowledging it, and I could create a portfolio of my work rather than have it live in an old performance review.
In part, I’ve refocused my LinkedIn activity. I want to celebrate all the things that high-level Assistants do, showcase the diversity of skills we bring to the role, and start changing some people’s narrative of the administrative career path. And I share my unique voice and toot my horn while doing so.
Here’s how:
Step 1: It Starts with a Post
When I post on LinkedIn about a win, I think of it as “bullet point expansion.” It may end up as a bullet point on a resume, or a part of one, but when I post about it I can explain my thought process. The actual work behind the win. Sometimes, I even have a picture to attach as well. Think about it this way: many of us manage big events or meetings. Your resume line item for a specific role might say: Meeting and event management for groups of 2–300, remote, hybrid, and in-person; with contract negotiation, complete catering, AV, agenda management, and deck creation; event budgets up to 50k often with 10% or more negotiated savings. But if you make a post about one event, you can highlight so much more.
Example:
When working for a C-Suite leader, we had an annual week that was event management at its finest: a two-day meeting for 20+ directors, senior directors, and VPs in the organization (plus catering, an evening activity, and dinners), and a third day where the entire 200+ team met at an offsite venue for a day-long meeting, followed by dinner, drinks, and activities. I wrote a post about it. The contract negotiation. Finding an activity the leadership team could enjoy. Sourcing the external guest speaker. The catering. All the things. That post had team members who had attended commenting on the post, talking about how great it was, and other administrative professionals commented about how yes, it takes this level of work to organize and execute a multi-day event.
Step 2: Then You Favorite It
Did you know you can create a favorite post section on your LinkedIn profile? It becomes a beautiful, curated selection of your posts that make it easy for colleagues (and recruiters) to flip through. It’s another way to tell your story, and it appears just below your about section. Add section. Star your post.
Visibility? Big check.
Step 3: Bonus: Add It as Media
Recently, I’ve started adding these posts as “Media” to my experience section, tying them directly to the work that I did to various leaders throughout my career. This is where the real portfolio comes in. I’ve gone back through those favorites and other posts, and when appropriate, added them as media. This makes it easy to showcase what I’ve done in each role in a new way. It adds additional value to my LinkedIn experience section and turns it into a true portfolio of my work. I wish I had started doing this earlier in my career, but moving forward, I’m taking a new lens to how I approach my own career documentation. Yes, I speak to my leader and let them know the high-level points of the win. Yes, I put it on my end-of-year review. And yes, I’m publicly tooting my horn. I’m creating that career portfolio that all can see.
I’d like to challenge all administrative professionals to do this: We need to publicly celebrate the wins, the big projects we tackled, the creative solutions we found, and the big events we managed (while keeping privacy/company secrets as needed, of course). We need to stop waiting to be noticed, quietly celebrating our wins on our annual review, and/or assuming that our leader knows what we do.
We need to future-proof ourselves as much as possible, and one of the ways we can do that is through documentation that we can take with us into new companies and roles. LinkedIn can be a great way to build the story of what we do and how we do it. It makes it a very public brag list. It adds context to a bullet point.
And for me, it goes back to my own LinkedIn goals: it helps with personal branding, it’s helped with networking and knowledge sharing, and it’s also part of future-proofing myself in case I’m job hunting again.
My portfolio is ready. How are you going to #ShareYourUniqueVoice and #TootYourHorn today?
