3 LinkedIn Top Voices to Follow for a Smarter, More Future-Proof Career

0:00LinkedIn Top Voices:Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. Every week we borrow some brilliance from a people, a place, an article or a book, really anything that's piqued our curiosity. And we try to turn that curiosity into something useful for you and your career.

0:18Sarah Ellis:and so this week Sarah sent me a whatsapp over the weekend actually and said have you seen that LinkedIn's latest top voices is out could it be a good one for us to borrow brilliance on and I thought oh that could be that could be useful so if you're not familiar with what top voices are it is a quarterly list that LinkedIn shares and they do it for loads of different markets actually but I looked at the UK top voices and it is people who are sharing things that feel, I guess, very relevant right now. It's like their posts are interesting, insightful, connected to what's going on in the world.

0:54Sarah Ellis:And as a list of people, it's a really good way to stay informed. And I think connect with people beyond the people that you already know, because I think there's a bit of a risk of an echo chamber in just connecting with people that you already know. And I think looking at this list helps you to get beyond that and sort of learn outside of perhaps worlds that you might be working at the moment.

1:20LinkedIn Top Voices:I was also reflecting on everybody talks about like the algorithm, you know, for like whatever social platform you're on. And, you know, the algorithm means you don't always see what you want to see. And it's hard to crack the algorithm. And I'm not sure I want to spend time trying to crack the algorithm. But I do wonder whether this is a way to at least influence the algorithm so by following some of these people you know if you you only have to like just to engage engage with some of their content I am sure or if I say I'm sure I'm obviously not sure I assume you might at least stand a better chance of like seeing more of their content and kind of maybe less of the content that you're not as interested in and obviously LinkedIn is not the only way that you could like follow follow the work these people do so actually there's something we're going to talk about later today I then um actually independently then went and read a really long article about something on the guardian because it had been mentioned by this person so I don't think we're saying you know you must spend like more time on social platforms or this is just about LinkedIn I think the bigger point here is we don't want to get stuck in a silo or be to kind of head down and keep hearing the same voices to helen's echo chamber point um and i always think like new piece people bring like fresh perspectives things you've not thought of before um and they just open it open your eyes right it's just it's just a really good way of borrowing brilliance and this feels like quite an easy way to get started

2:49Sarah Ellis:it also made me think how am i showing up like i was so we picked three people i picked how am i showing up non-existent more like so i went through the list and i thought who are three people from this list that I think are really useful to follow in the context of a squiggly career that I think that everybody who listens to this podcast would learn something useful from these people and in diving into their profiles and looking at their posts it it really made me reflect on two actually two specific things one it made me reflect on my like LinkedIn bio because there's someone I'll talk about in a minute who had a very good bio and I was like oh I should I should make mine better that's a really good example and then the other one was when I was looking at their posts I really clicked on the posts that were useful and insightful you know people that were sharing insight and data and provocative questions and it made me think or if I was you know if I was looking at my LinkedIn profile for the first time would would that be what you would see in my post would you see an insight a provocative question something that you thought was worth spending time with me if you didn't know me.

3:59Sarah Ellis:So I think, yes, it's great to learn, but it's quite good to reflect. So we've got three people. I've gone through them and I've kind of picked out who the person is. And again, we'll put the longer list of all the people in the show notes if you want to kind of dive into the longer list. But these are three that I thought were useful for everybody who follows Squiggly Careers. So we've kind of got the person and what they do. And then we've got kind of why follow them? What are you going to learn by following this person? So my first one is Dr Shani Dander, who in her LinkedIn profile describes herself as a multi-award winning disability inclusion and accessibility consultant.

4:34Sarah Ellis:She's got quite a lot of slashes. So she's also a broadcaster and an author. And she was also voted the most influential disabled person in the UK in 2023. So was this one of the people that you already followed? It was one of the people, yeah.

4:48LinkedIn Top Voices:Out of the three that you chose, this was, yeah, two of the three

4:52Sarah Ellis:I followed but one one was new to me because I didn't follow any of these people until this list

4:57LinkedIn Top Voices:so actually they were all they're all sort of brand new to me so how did you know about Dr Shani's work you remember I think it was through our work with the BBC and I think Shani does work I think sometimes it's on on the BBC or has worked kind of with the BBC because she does like broadcast interviews and those kind of things and I think she came up with one of the like BBC careers week that we've done in the past where people recommended like her work to each other and then obviously I just like steal everybody's ideas and borrow brilliance indeed

5:28Sarah Ellis:in all ways and so why follow Shani I think she makes accessibility accessible so the way that she what she shares and the way that she shares her thoughts I think it makes it honestly like really easy to learn because I think sometimes you might fear oh I might get this wrong or I might not have the wrong facts or I might not know how to approach this conversation at work. But I just feel like the way that she writes, she kind of writes about policy updates, for example, or kind of insights from the community. In fact, she's created her own community. It's growing really fast on LinkedIn. It's called the Access to Work Collective.

6:07Sarah Ellis:She created it last year and it's already got 6 ,000 members. So I feel like she's having a conversation. That's what it feels like. So in a conversation about accessibility that you can get involved in in lots and lots of different ways. When I was going through a post and there was a stat in there that I thought, oh, gosh, that's something that I want to learn more about was about the disability employment gap, which is now at nearly 30 percentage points. And it's the difference between how many disabled and non-disabled people are in work, basically. And it's growing. It's not closing. So it's a it's a worsening problem.

6:42Sarah Ellis:but I just feel that the way she shares and what she shares you learn and you get insights about what you could do differently but in a way that if there's this is an area that you're starting you know quite from scratch you just want to learn you want to get involved she just makes

6:55LinkedIn Top Voices:it very easy to do yeah I had a read through some of her articles and you know she's she's very good at using stats to tell stories and you know that's a skill I think lots of us like recognize is really useful um but i also like because you know how much i enjoy copywriting and words generally she she's very concise and clear um so she has a sentence actually just after that stat that you that you just shared where she just finishes it by by saying progress has stalled full stop and you know you're just like it but it leaves you in no doubt what that data is telling you and you know sometimes you might get a bit confused or like you say you're newer to a subject and I just feel like she's very good at connecting the dots between the data that you need to know using data to tell stories but also just leaving you in no doubt and I really like the clarity of her writing um so actually just if you wanted to as well as kind of learning about the topic if you want to get better at writing um or as Helen will tell you in a minute her bio is also very very good she's clearly a very good writer yeah that was my yeah when I was talking about

8:05Sarah Ellis:kind of learning about people's profiles and how to write them better her profile is so good brilliant it's so good please go and have a look at it because i looked at this she explains herself then she talks about um the results are clear so she kind of has here's what i do this is what my expertise is in the results of my work are clear um and then she has um she puts a quote from somebody else who's recommended in there and at the end she has some highlights i was just i looked at this and i was like wow you sound like you're doing really good work and you come across as really positive and you are the sort of person I want to influence my algorithm please back to

8:39LinkedIn Top Voices:back to your point at the start and it still felt like her so I think that's always a tricky balance to get right you know you're you're trying to show up in a credible way you know the work that she does is serious she's making a difference on a you know an important topic but equally she manages to retain like warmth and personality um and i feel like she you know sometimes you feel like did ai write this now when you read people's bios on linkedin um or sometimes people write them in third person which i'm never 100 sure about like writing about yourself in third person but with hers she sort of there's an informality to it that makes it actually feel very believable whilst at the same at the same time being incredibly impressive and again i think that's i think that's hard to achieve um yeah i mean i read it and then i was like crikey that i feel like if hers is a nine out of ten i was like i feel like mine is a three actually i can't remember the

9:35Sarah Ellis:last time i rewrote mine but it's something you know you need some good examples don't you like people i think she is a great example of someone who's got that that profile right so um yes go and go and have a look and i'm gonna update mine don't look at mine just yet everybody to make it more like more like shanny's okay so our second person i think this is another person that you followed. I did. Because I saw you when I when I screenshotted it I was like Sarah's there already.

10:00Helen Tupper:So this is Zoe Kleinman who works at BBC. It's interesting two people kind of with

10:05Sarah Ellis:the journalist background that I've picked out. But she is the technology editor on BBC News and the reason I picked her as somebody that I think is a really like useful person to follow is she takes like complex tech stories and she communicates them in a really useful way and particularly she shares emerging tech that you know if you want to be I think if you want to kind of just know what's going on like what's all the hoo-ha with grok and images or what's the latest tech that I can talk about in my team meeting if you quite like being on the pulse of that stuff and you're finding it hard to stay on top of it I think Zoe has done the hard work for you and by following her you will find out new interesting tech straight away um I was learning about a new um a new social network for AI agents which I did not know about called Maltbook um and then I also learned about which I'd I'd read about but I think I'd lost it in my brain about that Google's new like try it on tool it's AI and it can you can like take an image of yourself and try on clothing and it'll put the clothing on you so you can see the clothing on you um but she shares all that stuff as well as insights about um you know stats and data and research so there's kind of there's more serious implications of the tech um as well but she is really good for like tech trends and

11:30LinkedIn Top Voices:new tech yeah i think technology can feel for lots of people quite overwhelming or people just opt out you know they sort of go on you know like you do hear the phrase like i'm not techie i'm just not good with technology and I think you hear it actually from people of all ages from all backgrounds like there's sort of this sense of like oh that's just like kind of not me or not for me uh but I do think if you sort of start from that approach is then you are obviously you're going to limit your learning but I understand why people kind of get a bit like I don't really know where to start and I think just following Zoe you'd be so much better because of it and this is actually the example where I saw actually someone else I know and Zoe had written about Malt Book and then I did go and read a Guardian article about it which if I wasn't scared before I was I was more scared afterwards um but you know like I I want I'd rather know you know like ignorance is not always bliss you know when it comes to these things I'm like I'd I'd rather be in the know I want to see how people are using technology it's very interesting to see how different people are framing kind of moltbook which is essentially AI agents talking to each other and as a human you are only allowed to observe it and I read the Guardian article got so nervous about like what it can potentially do that I I have built an AI agent like a really really basic one um but I don't dare put it in because because I'd read the article and then I was like oh no um but I would I would quite like to see what's happening but I couldn't work out I had to see the conversation without actually putting in my own AI agent, which I don't want to do.

13:11LinkedIn Top Voices:Have you tried it yet? No, I haven't tried it.

13:13Sarah Ellis:I only read about it. Like literally, I only found out about it from following her preparing for this podcast. And then I went on and yeah, no, I haven't spent time with it yet. But I think she's just a good trusted voice in a world of tech, like you say, that can feel quite overwhelming. I think she's just done a lot of the filtering. And by the way, in case people don't know, whether it's the people that we've identified or just generally people whose posts you want to see more of or whose insights that you trust, there's like a little bell on people's profile. And it's normally like if you go to that, so if you went to Sarah's page, for example, if you were like, I want to see everything that Sarah occasionally posts about squiggly careers.

13:54LinkedIn Top Voices:I mean, you're not going to be inundated. So it would be a real treat every so often.

14:01Helen Tupper:Sarah's a very occasional LinkedIn poster but when she does it I'm so proud of myself every time I do it

14:07Sarah Ellis:but anyway Sarah or someone else you go to their profile and there's a little bell on the right side of their profile and if you press that it means that it will go to the top of your feed so that you won't it's like a double influence the algorithm so you follow the person you click the bell and then it kind of I didn't know that there you go

14:26Helen Tupper:does everybody have a bell? yes everyone has a bell

14:29Sarah Ellis:I think actually I think I say that I hesitated I'm gonna see if you've got a bell oh don't because my friend

14:36Helen Tupper:Anna messaged me and she's like I can't find your bell I'm going to do it now imagine if you don't have one will you be really upset I had to raise a request with LinkedIn about where's my bell because my friend Anna was like I can't find your bell I mean can you oh no have I got a bell have I got a bell yes you have next to the there we go right let me click it I mean you don't need you don't need to click the bell you get enough of me you don't need to click the bell oh okay let's have a look oh sarah is live testing i've saved it and now you've got a double bell

15:06LinkedIn Top Voices:yeah there you go because i'm now because i'm now doing that now you get me on linkedin as well as

15:10Helen Tupper:whatsapp and teams and every moment for a second because i was like don't start you know you know how i feel about notifications because initially it was like there was a sense that i might get

15:18LinkedIn Top Voices:some notifications i was like i don't want to get notifications about linkedin posts

15:22Helen Tupper:not me um so anyway everyone there you can see how easy it was um and so not only can you influence your algorithm by who you follow you can doubly do it by clicking clicking the bell clicking the

15:33Sarah Ellis:bell um so yeah that was zoe and then the the last person i think was new to you and um yeah all new to me um so the third person that i wanted to kind of recommend was cassian horowitz who is now the head of executive digital communications at Google. But that's probably not why I would say follow him. He does share some interesting insights about Google search trends. But the reason I would say follow Cassian is because of his squiggly career, which I think he presents very well in what he shares. So this is from his LinkedIn bio. I'll just read it because it's interesting. My journey hasn't been a straight line.

16:14Sarah Ellis:I started in a newsroom's BBC and ITV. Then I co-founded a creative agency. Then I joined Rishi Sunak as a special advisor. And then I became head of strategic communications at digital and digital at number 10. Now I'm based in California and I leave executive digital communications at Google. So he's just done so many different things in like the in politics and the private sector. I think it's really interesting. And I think he's a really good example of somebody who is transferring their talents in their squiggly career rather than just moving from a more senior to a more senior title.

16:51LinkedIn Top Voices:I also love his not so humble brag on LinkedIn. He's got, you know, the photo that sits behind your circle photo. And he's like meeting Brack Obama. And I'm just like, well, you know, if you were left in any doubt that he, I don't know, has friends in high places. um also this is like true true story the second time in like two work days um a friday and a monday where someone clips someone i've talked to or we've been talking about knows barack obama so i was interviewing um the ceo of ted for the random insight i know but i was like how has this come up twice in like two days uh yeah because the ceo of ted used to work for barack obama at like his foundation so like worked for him for like 18 months

17:36Helen Tupper:there doesn't borrow brilliance from barack just oh um can you oh my god that sounds great oh my gosh can someone can someone make the introduction maybe cassian can who knows cassian can that could be his new thing i mean he should definitely be using that if he's not cassian can um if anyone can cassian can um i feel like also that's really not his vibe having

18:00Sarah Ellis:read some of his work. I don't think so. No, what is his vibe is what he says you should follow him for. A look at how tech, media and politics are converging to change our world. So this is why I think he's a really interesting follow because what he's done is he's taken all those different places that he's worked and then he sort of turns that into what he posts about. So of the three people, I think what he shares is the most thought provoking. It's not provocative as in I don't think he shares like really like challenging things that's going to encourage people to disagree with him he's not kind of that kind of a poster but it's thought-provoking um and it made like little things that he he shared were about um for example uh the bbc going youtube first um they're creating bespoke content for the platform so just how traditional media is now changing onto new platforms i thought was quite interesting um and then he talks about prime ministers launching podcasts because politicians are using social media I mean Trump will be examples of this right like but to get to a lot a lot closer directly close to their audience and what what are the implications of them being so unfiltered again it just makes you he sort of shares things based on fact that then make you think probably more than the other people with with Shani and Zoe I want to steal their stuff and I want to share it quite quickly I want to steal Stani's stats so that we can drive change.

19:23Sarah Ellis:I don't want to steal Zoe's tech so it makes me look smart. But Cassian, I'm like, you make me think about the impact of some of the changes that are happening in politics and in media and what that might mean.

19:38LinkedIn Top Voices:Well, he's also, he's probably making more suggestions or sort of sharing ideas. Like you say, it's not like super provocative, but he is sort of going, oh, what would happen if a prime minister started a podcast and actually then he sort of points to a few different places where it definitely made me think that's probably going to happen because you can see how that would be really useful and actually some of his like competitors are already doing those kind of things and there's a challenge isn't there with like how do you make politicians like warmer and more connected to people and that's you can you can have a very different kind of conversation so it doesn't feel a million miles off from something that could happen um and like you said you were telling me beforehand when we were uh preparing because he does work at google he has some interesting insights into what people are searching for which is obviously always fascinating

20:32Helen Tupper:yeah i know isn't that weird how we always it's like you get a little bit nosy isn't it yeah he