Show Resources

Enter the Contest! bit.ly/linkedinadscontest

LinkedIn fixing false metrics

Writeup of the GenZ research

Free chapter of Instabrain: bixaresearch.com/freechapter

LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox: LinkedIn Advertising Course

Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you’d like AJ to cover.

Show Transcript:

Generation Z is coming into the workforce in droves. How are they using LinkedIn? And how will you market to them? Stay tuned, we’ll find out. This is the LinkedIn Ads Show.

Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here’s your host, AJ Wilcox.

Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics, as many of you may know, Generation Z is the massive and up and coming generation. They’re shaping popular culture. And they’re beginning to graduate out of school and into the workforce. We here at B2inked really wanted to know how the coming generation both thought about and uses LinkedIn so we can see what the future of LinkedIn ads platform might look like. So we’ve partnered with a good friend of mine, Sarah Weise, who happens to be the CEO of the market research firm, Bixa research. I’m not sure how much I’m able to disclose. But let’s just say that her firm is amazing at research. Since she gets to work with brands like a search engine that starts with the letter G, and a payment processor that rhymes with Hey Pal, we went out and interviewed a bunch of Gen Z members. And the results were pretty surprising. We’ll dig into our findings, as well as ideas on how you can better relate to them. In the news, the big thing this week was the announcement that LinkedIn was misreporting some of their metrics. And they’re going to be issuing some refunds out to their clients. In the article that LinkedIn shared on their marketing solutions blog by someone amazing that I have a lot of respect for Gyanda Sachdeva, we discovered two measurement issues. Here’s how we’re making it right. And you may have received some emails this week, or maybe it’s an email, I don’t know, where they’re letting you know that some of the accounts that you’re on may have had misrepresented impressions or video stats. In the article Gyanda mentions that in August, their engineering team found and then fixed two measurement issues that were causing to over report impressions and video views. She says that these issues potentially impacted about 418,000 customers over a two plus year period. So this sounds pretty serious. But then she goes on to say that more than 90% of the customers who had an impact equated to less than $25 US. So they said that they’re committed to making it right, which is awesome. And I remember the same thing happened with Facebook a few years ago, when they were miscalculating video impressions. And I just kept thinking it would have been so easy for LinkedIn to just brush this under the rug and move on. And I absolutely admire the LinkedIn leadership so much for deciding to make this announcement public. If you’re anything like me, you read the emails and went, huh. So I’m still waiting to understand more of what they mean and what the process for reimbursement is going to be like. Because I received several emails the first week that said that we need to contact support for the ad credits for every account. And then I got another email this week that was a little bit different, and made it seem a bit more like the credits would be given automatically. And I sure hope so because I have no desire to go and file like 100 different support tickets with LinkedIn just to get less than $25 back. Of course, if you manage a large spending account, the sum could be significantly more. And it could be worth filing a ticket if that’s what we need to do. So I’ll let you know as I find out. And then if you’ve been listening to the last few episodes, our contest, our ad performance contest is in full swing. If you go to bit.ly/linkedinadscontest, you’ll see the link down below in the show notes. And from now until December 11 at midnight Pacific time US, you can go on and submit a screenshot of an ad, or a campaign, or a campaign group that has really good performance. We’re looking for either a ridiculously high click through rate, or a super high conversion rate, or a really low cost per click. And heck, you could submit for all three categories. The winner in each category, though, is going to win something that is absolutely amazing. And I can’t tell you what it is yet, but I’m going to tell you all about it when I announced the winners. And if you’re a LinkedIn advertiser, be aware that this is something that no other advertiser has, this is going to give you a serious leg up on competition. So if you’re looking for ammo to bust ahead of your competition, definitely find a way to submit and win this contest. So go jump into your account now and look for those high click through rates, high conversion rates, and low costs per click. So get it submitted now and I’ll help to have your prize given out by Christmas or New Year’s, and I can’t wait to reveal to you what you’re going to be winning. So highlighting a review. Jose Bormey, who’s a marketing manager, he said, “I love this podcast. There’s an extremely helpful tip on the most recent podcast episode to avoid high cost per click in Q4 and instead use the budget for a big bang to kick off the new year. Cybersecurity in itself is extremely competitive, and these podcasts have helped save me a fortune. Looking forward to 2021 inbound spotlight once again.” Thanks, Jose. I speak at the inbound conference every year, and I speak on advanced LinkedIn Ads. And Jose, it sounds like you’ve gotten to attend one or more of those presentations. So if it’s going to be in person in 2021, I’d absolutely love to get to meet you in real life. So thanks so much for the kind words, and I’m so glad that we’ve helped you save some cash in such a competitive industry. And you, yes, you! I want to feature you. So go and leave a review. Let us know what you like, what’s helped you in your jobs or ads management? I’d love to give you a shout out here. Okay, with that being said, let’s hit it.

Well, everyone, my name is AJ Wilcox, I run B2Linked.com. We’re an ad agency that literally LinkedIn Ads is all we do. Obviously, a huge fan of LinkedIn. And I’m super excited to be with Sarah Weise today who has a great friend. And she is the author of Instabrain, which is the predominant So this is the predominant book for learning about how Gen Z interacts with social media, and how their purchasing which is obviously going to be really important for you. If it’s not already, it will be in the in the coming years. Sara, like I said, longtime friend, we speak in a lot of the same conferences, and we actually got together in person before the COVID thing happened, we got a chance to do a lot of like original research, interviewing students, members of the Gen Z community live. And I am so excited to be here today. Sarah, take us away, tell us about the study, and kind of lead us into the discussion.

So I think the study started because as I was going to conferences, and I was presenting about all the social media that Gen Z uses, there was always a question after the conference, like, Hey, I noticed you didn’t talk about LinkedIn. Why didn’t you talk about LinkedIn? And I would always say things like, Well, it’s because it just didn’t come up when we were talking to Gen Z. I mean, we did almost two years of research on Gen Z, before I started speaking about it, and I mean, it was all sorts of research, qualitative research and quantitative research and in home ethnography pre COVID, where we would actually go into people’s homes and, and hang out with teenagers, they literally spent a year and a half hanging out with teenagers. And I mean, that was fun. And what’s really interesting was that it just the topic of LinkedIn never came up. And most of these interviews were fairly open ended, like, show me how you use technology. How are you using technology to do your homework today? Walk me through it. Or like, what are you researching right now? Like, oh, you you’re into guitar, and you’re into rock music, like, tell me about that. And show me what you’re doing and how you’re doing that? Oh, you’re into this video game? Tell me about it. You know, where do you go to find information on this and watching them switch between devices and between social media apps and diving deep into topics and things like that. But LinkedIn never came up. And even with the kind of older Gen Z’s who are now entering the workforce, they would say things like, Oh, I’m looking for a job. And we’d be like, oh, show me how you do that. And they would go to indeed, or they would go to other places, or some of them were using LinkedIn, but it was with like, surgical precision. So they would go in there and they would be like, yep, I’m going to search for a job. Okay, I found something. Okay, I’m getting out now. And it was like, as fast as they could get out of LinkedIn, they were doing that. And so when we got together, AJ, I think I approached you because I was like, Okay, I don’t get this. People keep asking about it. I need to have an answer. Let’s figure out what you know what’s going on.

And I forgot to mention that you are the CEO of a market research company. So just to be very clear here. It was definitely you who approached me, because it never came on my radar to think, hey, I should go and do an original study. Like, definitely not in my wheelhouse.

Yeah, I mean, it originated because we were doing market research on Gen Z for big companies like Google. And some, let’s see some large banks and things like that. And what what happened was that we started asking the question to like, how do your new employees like find you? Where are you putting your job posts up and seeing the most Gen Z applicants and we were starting to ask those questions. And LinkedIn was just not coming up that often. And so anyway, so we started digging into it, and we started doing our own research. And what we found was really interesting, it was really surprising because what we found is that over 50% of Gen Z’s and you know, across the country, they have a LinkedIn account. I mean, most colleges and universities I would say older Gen Z’s like 18 and up, they have a LinkedIn account. In large part because most universities as a part of a career class or a requirement for some sort of career services, tell their students, you need to download LinkedIn, you need to create an account and so they have been asked to create account in some cases required to create a LinkedIn account, and so over 50% have a LinkedIn account, but only something like 4% were using it. I think it was 96% of the people we talked with. And these were Gen Z’s across the country in the older Gen Z age range. So from about 18 years old to 24 years old. So really like in college, getting their first job, you know, applying for those entry level jobs. They were saying, This is not something we use.

10:25
What I love is, when we were in person, we were actually interviewing students on the campus of University of Utah. And I think we interviewed like 12 or 13 people before finally someone said, Oh, yeah, I have LinkedIn. And we’re like, oh, good, but they show us how you use it. Yeah, yeah. They’re like, Oh, I created an account one time, I can’t even figure out my password. So it was like those who have it. They’re certainly at least not yet not using it.

Yeah. It’s interesting, because this is a group that this is, first of all, this is like the largest living generation right now with a big deal type of group, especially for any sort of digital platform that wants to be, you know, a digital platform five years from now, they need to be marketing to and meeting the needs of this younger generation. And especially for for LinkedIn, which is a platform that enables people to find jobs. This is a generation that is entering the workforce now. And for some reason, there is a breakdown between what LinkedIn offers and the perception of that in the minds of Gen Z. And so I almost will say that I think that LinkedIn is failing, its Gen Z customers, because it’s not giving them the information they need, maybe the tools they need, the features they need, and telling them about them and educating them on it. Because the Gen Z’s we talked to they didn’t even see LinkedIn as a social media platform. It was the same as indeed, it was the same exact thing as anywhere else that they would look for jobs.

Yeah. And on top of that, we talked to several students who were actively looking for a job. And so we asked them, like, Hey, how are you looking? Would you consider LinkedIn? And they had this reaction to it like, Oh, well, the kinds of jobs I’m looking for, aren’t there, so I’m not even gonna try.

Yeah. And some of the jobs were like internships, like, oh, I need a professional internship. And we were like, Oh, my gosh, that kind of stuff is on LinkedIn. Like, of course, we couldn’t say this, because we were conducting like, very third party neutral interviews. But in our minds, we were like, ooh, interesting feedback.

AJ was telling himself like namaste, just keep calm. Expert in all things LinkedIn Haha! Yes.

It was very sad. So yeah, tell us more about like, what are the findings? What really surprised you as you were going through this research?

12:54
I think what surprised me the most is that they don’t see LinkedIn as a social media site. Like it is not in their heads anywhere close to what an Instagram is, or even a Facebook is like. They’re not using Facebook, as much as say, an older demographics. But they certainly understand that Facebook is a social media platform, they’re just not seeing LinkedIn as a social media platform. And they’re definitely not seeing it as something that they would use.

Yeah. And this is so surprising to me, because LinkedIn stopped being a job search platform to me back in like 2012. And it’s been an actual social media for communicating ever since then. So it seems like LinkedIn is either not branding themselves or not reaching Gen Z with the proper messaging so they even know what the platform is and why they would want to use it.

Yeah. Especially because we were asking questions too, about like, Oh, do you ever like go to the news feed? Do you ever look at articles in your field? Or do you ever communicate with people? Do you try to establish connection with that hiring manager? I mean, they tell you who the hiring manager is, who are you trying to connect with them and start conversations with them in any sort of way? And they just had no idea that that was even a possibility.

14:14
Yeah. Do you have any more insights you want to share? Or should we start going into like the prescriptive stuff like let’s

Let’s dig into it because I think the biggest finding here is that LinkedIn is not working for this generation, so I want to hear from you AJ, LinkedIn expert, like what features are really would be really helpful to this generation who is looking for a job. And I guess I should add to that, especially now that this is we’re in COVID, where months into this, it is really hard for a young person, an older Gen Z, who was just out of college to find an entry level job. Like it is extremely difficult because those entry level jobs, they’re being filled by people who are overqualified for them. There. filled by people with many years of experience, who are accepting a lower salary and taking that job because unemployment is high. I mean, really, it’s a really strange time because we went from this kind of the one of the largest economic booms in history to just crash bang, people are unemployed don’t have jobs, like record levels of unemployment, people are just taking whatever they can find. And that made it so much harder all of a sudden to find jobs. And so I would have assumed that because of that, a young Gen Z, who is extremely digitally savvy, would be like, oh, let me hop on LinkedIn and see what there is to offer. And we’re just not seeing that.

Yeah. And first of all, Gen Z, I totally feel for you. I graduated in 2008. And I came out going, yes, can’t wait to attack the world and go get a massive salary. And I found every single company was on hiring freeze due to the big economic downturn,

16:00
I love that you’re talking to Gen Z, like they’re on LinkedIn, posting this on LinkedIn. And you’re, I think that’s the thing. If you are watching this on LinkedIn right now, you’re probably not Gen Z.

Or if you are, you’re one of the only ones and you should be very proud. And I absolutely understand what they’re going through right now. Because it was tough. I mean, I had a year of digital marketing experience when I first graduated, and it took me three months to find a job for like, $14 an hour.

And if you look at the numbers of Gen Z’s right now who are moving back in with their parents, it is just off the charts, astronomical, especially, even if they’re still in college, or they’re, they’ve extended their college because they’re like, I can’t find a job right now so I’m going to like, you know, go for another semester and see what happens.

Especially because it’s, it’s, um, you know, all virtual now. And I think a lot of them are also helping their parents out with their parents’ jobs and things that are going on with their parents’ lives, too. That’s awesome.

That just strikes me is actually really, really intelligent. It might be like, just necessity is the mother of invention. But I’m like, yeah, if I had a Gen Z son or daughter who was getting ready to enter the workforce, that’s exactly like the hustle II’d want to see from them. Just figure out anything you can,

it is a hustle. I mean, I interviewed one Gen Zer recently who said that he had, like, moved. He actually was in LA, trying to like start his career and then had moved back home to New Jersey to help out his parents power washing company, and was doing a ton of like, just manual labor power washing, because that’s what his family needed.

17:40
That’s fantastic. Good for those people. I know, I’m not talking to you, because you’re not here, but good for you.

Never gonna see that. He’s not, it’s not on LinkedIn. But if we posted on Instagram, he probably would.

Oh, totally repost it just a little 30 second snippets. Haha!

Snackable content. Haha!

Yes, we’ll break down only the most valuable stuff, just obviously, all of it. So we can kind of get prescriptive here, we can talk about the things that we think Gen Z could do, which obviously, we’re not talking to you Gen Z, but maybe parents of Gen Z are watching. These are the things that you can help your your children understand and kind of give them a boost into the workforce.

So I think the first thing that I would point out that I think is like the biggest no brainer about it, is if you have a son or daughter who is looking for a job right now in a really competitive environment, and they’re not on LinkedIn, the ability to go viral on LinkedIn organically right now is insane. Um, basically what happens is anytime someone hits, like, comment, or share on your post, It then goes to a portion of their followers. And so the more people that are liking and engaging, the more people LinkedIn, start showing it to that aren’t even in your network.

So that’s so big because being an influencer is like the be all end all for many in this generation. Like that is the goal, to get their ideas and their brand, because they really do think of themselves as an online brand to get that out into the world. Yeah, I don’t think that they understand how, how easy it is to be a thought leader. And, and organically grow on LinkedIn.

19:22
And that’s my point really, for for this is like, I mean, you think about the kinds of thought leaders who are bubbling to the top on LinkedIn. I mean, there’s 30, I could name off who are HR experts, there are 50, who are sales experts who are just sharing stuff and trying to become well known. I don’t know any Gen Zers, who are talking about the experiences they’re having being authentic. I mean, for a generation who totally understands the value of becoming an influencer, the landscape here is totally ripe, for someone of this generation to come in and run it on LinkedIn.

It’s a lot different than the social media that they have right now because a lot of them are maybe doing YouTube videos or on Instagram, or you know even doing TikTok little 15 second TikTok things. And that’s happening on video. And LinkedIn platform is just not set up for many. I mean, even doing this interview alone, we had so many tech difficulties getting Restream to work and getting like LinkedIn video platform to, to play nice with the LinkedIn live on an interview with two videos connecting, like to the point where we’re just like, screw it, let’s do this on a zoom video. And we’ll post it afterwards, which defeats the whole purpose of LinkedIn Live. And I also think that LinkedIn needs to take some responsibility here and say, our features are not set up for the types of video sharing that Gen Z wants to do, that they are accustomed to doing on other platforms.

20:55
Oh, yeah. And the way that video works on LinkedIn, if you don’t already know, you can attach video to it. So we could upload this as a native video, which I’ll probably do, if it’s less than 30 minutes, I think that’s the limit for uploading video. For going live, they don’t have a very, there’s not a native ability to just like, hit it and go live, you have to use a third party, which means you’re looping in all of these other technology issues, which is why we are not doing this live right now. So it adds a lot of complexity to it. Where this is a generation who is just there used to just hold up your phone, start recording yourself.

We even tell when we do market research for companies, when we’re doing product research for companies, we will even tell them if Gen Z can see your technology or notices your technology you’re doing something wrong. Because it needs to be invisible. Like it needs to feel completely seamless, like oh, yeah, I just pushed the button. And yeah, of course that worked. So this whole let’s let’s connect through a third party thing. And I have to figure that out. I need an account. So I have a phone call with somebody at Restream. They don’t hop on the phone. So I mean, just all of this contributes to like not a great experience for this generation.

Yeah. And no knock on Restream. Because I actually love Restream.

22:17
Yeah, I think Restream is great. I think the reason that it didn’t work for us is because you were trying to you’ve got like a computer, a DSLR hooked up, wires connecting, and there was some sort of delay with the video and audio. So I don’t think this is a knock on Restream at all. I think this is a knock on LinkedIn, not natively offering the ability to just like, plug and play, like put a zoom conversation or do some sort of thing. Like I almost feel like they should have a studio in LinkedIn, LinkedIn platform, you can put two people in there and have a conversation like we’re having right now and do it live? Like, why are we doing this on Zoom and Restream even just to get it into LinkedIn live,

And the same solution that they could create, that’s just two people talking, they could create a zoom competitor, where it’s like, hey, don’t even log into zoom, have all of your meetings on LinkedIn with your colleagues, like seems like a missed opportunity here.

Yeah, and and that’s a perfect platform to do it on. Because people are on LinkedIn for work. It’s not like they’re on Facebook all day like while they’re working. You’re trying to close down Facebook as much as you can, or, or Instagram or anything else for especially for older people. LinkedIn is the professional network that that I think most people over over 25 years or just people in general use for professional reasons.

Yeah, totally. And so if you are the parent of a Gen Z, who’s looking to go into the workforce, maybe you can help convince, I know, Gen Z may not want to be convinced of this. But you can help convince them like, yeah, the video stuff is harder, but because no one is doing it, there’s a huge opportunity for you to cut through the clutter and become an influencer quicker, and be comfortable with text like you’re comfortable sharing text and pictures as well, until video gets comfortable with where you’re at.

24:10
I think one of the other findings that we saw that kind of surprised me. I mean, I guess once I thought about it, it was not surprising at all. But it was the fact that the real one of the reasons that Gen Z struggles with LinkedIn is that they go on LinkedIn. They see all these thought leaders, they see these people with great resumes because they’ve got 20 years in the industry or whatever it is. And they’re like, Oh, my resume doesn’t look like that. Like my summer internship where I got coffee for people or my like, I was a checkout person at a grocery store or I was a camp counselor. Like they’re not seeing their experience as relevant to their resume. And that’s in large part because of how they think of social media accounts. So they do think of it, you know that like most Gen Z’s have five or six Instagram accounts. And a lot of people think that they’re fake Instagrams and not real Instagrams, but they’re not. They’re actually, like, they’re all real, legitimate accounts. They’re just for different slices of their personality. And they’re curating these little pockets, these little brands for themselves within each account. So if you’re a Gen Xer and you’re into photography, you might have a photography account, where you just follow photography and post photography, things. And you might also be into like a YouTube celebrity, so you’re gonna have a fan account for them. And then you’re gonna have your normal account, your school account where all your friends go, and then you’re going to have like a separate account called you called your spam account, where like, it’s just for your close friends, where you can be a little more real, because none of these are fully real. It’s all just like little like curated slivers of their themselves. And so when you translate that to a job, they’re going, Oh, I want to get a job in marketing, or that I’m wanting to get a job in HR, I want to get a job in this field, whatever the field is, and they’re saying, none of my past experience tells that curated story to get me that job. And they’re not seeing the connection between hey, the fact that I was a camp counselor actually taught me a lot of teamwork, because I’m planning and project management because I had to coordinate with other counselors, and I had to plan activities for the kids. And I had to do this, and I had to do that. And they taught me responsibility, and like, they’re not seeing the connections between what those early jobs actually teach them, and how that is actually very relevant to a future career and an entry level position. I mean, if I see an entry level person who has had a job, as a grocery store, checkout, I know that they have good people skills, I know that they have good customer service skills, I know that they could basically make small talk with anybody, and that they listen, and they take directions and like, you know, just a lot about them based on an entry level job, even if it is not applicable to the job that they’re applying for. But they don’t see it that way. And they can make change. Yeah, absolutely. Mental math. Sure. Maybe. I don’t know, with all the cash registers that just give it for you now. But yeah, I mean, I think that we also have to do a better job as you know, as parents and you know, as parents who are listening to this and talking to your, your Gen Z kids about, you know, when they put their resume on LinkedIn, or even if you’re a school and listening to this and saying, what am I going to teach to the students in this career class, one of the things is, please list everything, it is relevant. And the fact that they can distill if they can say, I learned teamwork skills, because I did this, this and this at that job, that’s even better. And also, like, I wish that they could do some sort of video resume or something instead, oh, yeah. Again, back to the video, because Gen Z’s will talk about themselves and their goals and what they want to find in a job very quickly on video. Writing is another whole thing.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you can read a resume written out of emojis, like, Gen Z is gonna do great.

I don’t know. Haha!

28:25
Yeah, writing skills, probably not quite there yet. But I just, I learned how to spell a word right last week. So we can still keep learning. So if you’ve got a Gen Zer, you can help them you can help them understand. First of all, like, hey, being an influencer is possible on LinkedIn, no one else is doing it. And here’s how you have to do it on LinkedIn. So I know this is a little bit less comfortable for you in the rest of the social media use, but it’s writing things and sharing things, and leveraging video that may not work quite as smoothly. If you can help them with that, that’s fantastic.

Transcribing the video on otter.ai and then putting it out there.

Yes, and then help them understand help them think through past experience. If they look at LinkedIn and go, man, all these other people have like CEO of this and 18 years of experience in that I’m not worthy with my grocery store checkout profile, help them understand like, point towards the skills that were built, and not necessarily what they think of like, you know, oh, the job title of ice cream scooper. Sorry, I’m not worthy. You are worthy! Figure out the skills that make you interesting, especially to those who are hiring for the entry level positions.

29:38
I think also there’s a lot of kind of partnerships that I see for LinkedIn, with colleges and universities, because these colleges and universities are already telling their kids, hey, you are required to or you should create a LinkedIn account and they’re doing it. I mean, the numbers show that they’re doing it because they’re being asked to do it. So why isn’t there subsequent education that says, okay, now that you have an account, this is how you do it. And it’s almost on LinkedIn to like, LinkedIn should know, based on the profile, how old the person is, like the personalized profile, they should know to show a video on how to customize your profile, instead of just walking them through like, the little checklist of your 80% complete, or whatever it is like they should actually do a video series maybe on LinkedIn learning or something like that, that’s free to anybody who is in a certain age range, looking for an entry level position, and has recently opened an account to follow up and actually get that going.

Yeah, maybe even consider, like some kinds of suggestions where someone puts like, common titles like grocery store clerk or babysitting, it might pop up recommendations and say, other people who have this experience have phrased it like this and have used these points from skills they’ve learned. So you’ll maybe even consider some of those. If it’s not a video, maybe it’s dynamic pop ups.

Yeah. And also, the email is one thing we found in our in just couple years of Gen Z researches that email marketing is not dead for this generation. I mean, a lot of people think that this generation, they assume that this generation doesn’t check the email, but they’re actively checking email. So an email campaign from LinkedIn to people in this generation would work like where it’s like, hey, you know, for the next week, every day, we’re going to give you like a five minute task to do on your LinkedIn profile to make it better, that would work.

And make sure to appeal to their egos, because every child of this generation has been told that they are made of gold.

They are special.

I love it. And I love the idea of of the college partnerships, I mean, for LinkedIn, to go into junior colleges or state universities, and work to make sure that not half of all students end up leaving with a profile, but 100% have them. They have a presence on campus, they have events they’ve put on together and sponsored together to help educate people like not only create an account, this is how you can use it. I mean, it’s not going to reflect on next quarter’s stock results. But it will like four or five years from now, I’m sure it’ll do massive things.

32:29
And imagine if you started your LinkedIn profile, and like started recording the project, you worked on everything when you were 20, instead of when you started the company, when you’re 30 or 35. I mean, just just imagine that like, how much more like meatier your profile would be?

Yeah. And when I was searching for a job in the middle of a recession, no one was hiring. I was ashamed. And I didn’t want to talk or share anything about it. Because I thought like it was a reflection on me as a failure. But especially with this generation, who has watched influencers, they understand the value of being authentic. And maybe it’s offensive, but at least they see that there’s value in showing your authentic self, someone who goes through and starts, like cataloging and showing what their experience is of like, hey, I’m job searching like this. Oh, man, I guarantee you would find a job so fast, when people are are seeing the hustle that you’re putting in, and your control over media.

33:27
Yes, and the documentation of it and stuff like that. If I saw somebody who could really do that, and was hustling like that, I would immediately think, wow, they will hustle for my company if I hire them.

Absolutely. And that’s what you want. Like, that’s the only thing I’m looking when I hire for someone, I just want to see drive. If you are driven and hungry, I can teach you anything about LinkedIn Ads.

Generation is hungry to begin with. I mean, remember that, unlike Millennials, who grew up in a boom, this generation grew up in a recession. These are post 9/11 kids. I mean, they grew up in a time of war and recession, and they are hungry for work to begin with. I mean, these are kids that with millennials, they were like, oh, I’ll take a year off and explore Europe and backpack and find myself and, and that we’re not seeing that in Gen Z, like this is a generation who has entrepreneurial. 61% want to start their own businesses when they come out of high school. And it’s amazing to me. In addition to that, they’re valuing traditional education and they understand, okay, I want to start my own business, but I have a lot to learn to do that, which is a really interesting finding that they they’re entrepreneurial, but value traditional education as well. It’s not the tradition. It’s not that entrepreneur, that millennial entrepreneur, like, Ah, forget this college. I’m just gonna drop out and I’m pretty smart. So I’ll make it. Yeah. other entrepreneurs have done it.

33:48
Is there like something we pin on this generation that feels negative? Like do we talk about Gen Z like they are because I’m on the elder side of being a Millennial, but I very side with Millennials. And I was afraid to admit I was a millennial for years because everything I read was Millennials are lazy and entitled.

And they eat too much avocado toast and they can’t buy a house. Yeah, there’s all of that too. And I’m with you, AJ, I’m a few years older than you. When you said when you graduated? I was like, I’m older, but yeah, I’m in this. I’m actually a microgeneration between we talked about this this microgeneration between Millennials and Gen X, where we didn’t grow up with high speed internet in our homes. So we actually behave more similarly to Gen X than we do to millennials. And it’s kind of an interesting microgeneration. And I wonder if there’s gonna be some sort of microgeneration here now, that’s like the COVID generation or something like that. I mean, they call that micro-generation the Oregon Trail generation because they’re the kids that like, grew up with the big floppy disks where you’re like sharing a computer at school with like three or four other kids and you’re like walking across the country and dying of dysentery, shooting squirrels, you know,

I ran out of ammo again. No, somebody stole my horse! My oxen. Haha!

I loved Oregon Trail.

36:16
So I mean, I wonder if there’s going to be a similar microgeneration here of like the kids who are the young adults who were trying to find a job during COVID.

Yeah. Oh, I totally think there will be. I am so glad, just as an aside, I’m so glad that I was alive for COVID. Because if you would have told me like 10 years later, or 10 years earlier, like there’s this thing that we live through, and the whole world stopped, and everyone started wearing masks like, I would not believe you. So I’m glad we experienced this. And for people to have their formative years during it. I can’t even imagine what that’s like.

Yeah, I’m interested in too. And how this is affecting Gen alpha, which are the kids who are under 13, who today are for the first time like I’m sorry, you can’t be in school.

37:05
Yeah, you can’t be in school, you have to homeschool and we don’t have a device for you, but figure it out kids.

And depending on what here you are as an alpha, like, I’ve got four alphas in my house. And there’s a whole year that they pretty much took off of school. Like it wasn’t the same curriculum. Like, are we going to have a whole generation where this year knows nothing about geography?

I think? Yeah, I absolutely think we will. I mean, that happened to my daughter at the end of last year, when we started homeschooling, I realized in the summer, because we did it like a math assessment for her like, Oh, these are the things you should have learned in third grade. And she missed math, basically, all the things that you learned at the end of third grade math, she just was really weak on them. And I was like I was there I was homeschooling you. I know you did this, I know you learn how to convert fractions. And yet, and yet she was really weak in it. And I think that there’s gonna be a really big gap to between kids who were at a public school, where they were had to be home for a whole year, and the kids who started back this year, in private school, like there’s gonna be a huge gap in terms of the kids who don’t have just missed a whole longer period of time than the kids who were in private schools and able to go back in person because they were small class sizes.

Oh, incredible. This will be so much fun to watch. I know we need to wrap up. We’re out of time. But thank you so much for getting together, cooperating on the study together. This is amazing.

I will say all the research we’ll post a link to it, but it is posted on the Bixa Research blog. So if you want to see the the findings of the research, the major findings, it’s all written out and handed like in a story. Yes. With bullet point findings so that you can actually go ahead and get some of this data and use it. And you know, if you’re creating your own products, too, I mean, even if you’re in marketing somewhere else, it’s super helpful to understand what we’re critiquing LinkedIn for here related to Gen Z. And I bet there are some similarities with your company, too.

Oh, yeah. And if you’re listening to this on the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, we’ll put it in the show notes below, taking you right to bixaresearch.com. So Sarah, thank you so much for doing this. This is amazing. I am in awe of information that you so effortlessly throw out there every time we talk.

39:28
Oh, and let me give you a freebie too! Okay, so if you would like a free chapter of Insta brain, you can go to bixaresearch.com. It’ll be in the show notes or in the comments if this is being posted to LinkedIn bixaresearch.com/freechapter. And you’ll get a free chapter of Instabrain, the new rules to marketing to Gen Z and you’ll also get a PDF of the like top ways we do research for Gen Z. So if you’re thinking about really getting to know this audience, which you should be because it is the last just living generation right now and they’re entering the workforce and they contribute to $655 billion a year in purchase power. So you should be thinking about them as your customers, as your employees, everywhere. They will make you not go out of business! So, you know, when you are ready to do research, this PDF will tell you like the techniques that are really working for them right now.

40:24
Awesome. Thanks so much for running the study. This information was incredible. I know everyone listening you’re gonna love the article. It the in depth research. The data behind it, Sarah was the mastermind and I was merely a contributor.

Oh, he’s not getting and giving himself enough credit for that. I never do.

Also, thanks so much, Sarah. And thanks for everyone for watching slash listening.

Oh, are you a waiver? I recently read a study on people who waive versus not waive on zoom calls at the end.

Really? So what’s the difference? Like what does it mean something about your personality?

Yeah, it’s like people, some people are just totally over zoom. And they’re like goodbye.

Yeah, so yeah, that was your little easter egg, then do your podcast random. Waiting bowl. Do you wave or do you not, you’ll notice it about yourself next time you’re on zoom.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our banter on the findings from this research. I’ve got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around.

Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away.

41:45
All right. So here’s some great resources. First of all, the link to the contest, bit.lylinkedinadscontest. All in lowercase. That’s where you can go and submit to hopefully win this contest. Again, so excited to tell you about what you’re going to win The article that LinkedIn published from Gyanda there about how it’s fixing the ads over reporting, the links right down there in the show notes, you can go and read that for yourself. And then of course, the actual write up all the original research, you can find on bixaresearch.com. The link right to that blog post is down below as well. If you’re just getting started on LinkedIn ads, or you have a colleague or someone who is check out our ads course on LinkedIn Learning the links right down below for that. And it is by far the cheapest and the most complete training on LinkedIn Ads that there is out there at the moment. So check it out. super inexpensive, again, a lot cheaper than hiring me to come and train your team. Definitely hit subscribe on your podcast player right now. Please give us a rating and I’m hoping you’ll give us five stars. But if not tell us why. And then definitely leave a review. I’d love to give you a shout out here. With any questions, any feedback, any thoughts, topics, and anything you want to discuss. Hit us up at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we’ll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

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