Dear Academic: Harness the Power of LinkedIn to Build Your Personal Brand.
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Your instructors and professors told you that all you need to do is put your head down, get good grades, publish those papers in peer-reviewed journals, attend prestigious academic conferences, and surely, your work would “speak for itself”, and you would have your pick of work and opportunities.
You did as they said and stayed in school till you earned your doctorate.
Surely, putting those hard-earned academic letters on your resume should now bring you a plethora of career opportunities, right?
Well…
If you’re like the hundreds of academics I’ve spoken to over the last couple of years, then you know that jobs and opportunities don’t just come pounding at your door simply because you added a terminal degree to your resume.
Yet, for decades, instructors and professors told us that all we needed to do was put our heads down, get good grades, do our work, publish those papers, attend this or that professional conference, and surely, our work would “speak for itself” and we’d have our pick of work and opportunities.
That advice worked twenty years ago.
The job market has changed.
Yes, research and publications CAN get you far. But contrary to what you’ve been told so far, working hard in a little corner will not get you noticed and it is not a guarantee you will land a career you like or which pays well.
In fact, according to an NPR report, at least 70% of careers (likely some of the careers you are looking for right now) are never posted online.
But those positions are getting filled.
Everyday.
How is that happening?
Here’s the answer:
They are being filled by individuals referring people from their networks they feel will be best suited for those roles.
Which means that if you’re focusing ALL of your attention on applying for jobs online, you’re scrambling with everyone for 30% of the job market.
That’s bad news.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Especially for a talented and high-skilled academic like you.
Building your personal brand online as a PhD student or doctorate-holder is no longer a “nice-to-have.” If you want to have your pick of careers, as well as attract opportunities like speaking engagements and opportunities for your thought leadership to be featured in publications and the media, it is crucial that you build a personal brand.
Building an intentional, wildly visible personal brand and thought leadership presence on LinkedIn can pour fuel on your career and your life.
Building my personal brand on LinkedIn as an academic not only opened job opportunities, but has allowed me to speak at institutions like:
- Johns Hopkins University
- University of California-Irvine
- The American Academy of Religion
- University of Southern California and
- The University of Oxford
In addition to that, I’ve had the honor to be interviewed on various podcasts including The Papa PhD Podcast, Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast, and The Self-Compassionate Professor Podcast, to share my work.
And how have I done that? By building a personal brand on LinkedIn.
The content I create on LinkedIn regularly gets hundreds of views, likes, comments and shares which in turn, brings in more opportunities for jobs (even though I have one!), to speak, collaborate or be interviewed on podcasts.

Oh and I love that my personal brand is not only benefitting me. I get messages almost weekly from academics just like you, thanking me for helping them land their next big opportunity.
Building my personal brand has helped me. But in building one, it has also helped other people.
Your personal brand is not just about you.
It is also about making an impact on other people’s lives.
Here are a handful of personal messages I’ve received.

I’m nothing special.
If an introverted African immigrant to the USA can build a personal brand on LinkedIn and gain all these benefits while impacting others, you can do it too.
You have an area of expertise.
You’re a genius in your own right.
You can land a well-paid and fulfilling career.
And if you want to be a thought leader in your field who makes lasting impact, you can do that too.
But I understand if you’re not sure how to get started.
It’s why I created Build Your Scholar Brand.

Build Your Scholar Brand is a no-fluff 2.5-hour self-paced course designed to kickstart your impactful personal brand on LinkedIn that brings you more opportunities than you know what to do with.
Here’s what you can expect to learn in Build Your Scholar Brand:
✅Pixar’s formula for creating memorable content and how you can use that to create LinkedIn content that gets liked, commented on, and shared widely.
✅How to set up your LinkedIn profile so it attracts the attention of recruiters.
✅Uncover the power of a little-used feature on LinkedIn that can take your profile from bland to brilliant.
✅How to network effectively and build relationships through LinkedIn.
✅How to turn your thought leadership on LinkedIn into great opportunities beyond your career.
✅How to create a LIVING RESUME and why that is important.
✅Whether LinkedIn Premium is worth it (hint: you can do everything in the course WITHOUT LinkedIn Premium).
✅Complimenting your LinkedIn profile with a personal website and media kit.
✅…and so much more
You will have lifetime access to this content which means each time I update the course with new content, you will receive that as well.
Before you go on, perhaps you’re wondering who I am.
Let’s get acquainted:
My name is Dr. Gertrude Nonterah.
I received my Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2015. Shortly after that, I started a postdoc – mostly because I didn’t know what else there was to do or how I would get there.
What I knew for a fact was that I didn’t want to remain in academic research.
And even when I learned that there were careers outside academia, I didn’t know where to get started.
My initial attempts at landing a career outside academia fell flat.
Crickets. Zilch. Nada.
I had a Ph.D.
I am smart.
I had published papers in high-impact peer-reviewed journals.
I had the skills these jobs were advertising for.
I applied to MANY jobs. And yet my applications were ignored for close to two years!
It wasn’t until I built a personal brand using LinkedIn that I saw a dramatic turn in responses to my job applications.
And this is why I’m passionate about helping academics like you build impactful personal brands that also build their careers.
When you enroll in the Build Your Scholar Brand, you also gain access to special bonuses I created just for this course:
✅30 attention-grabbing headlines I’ve used over the years to get people to read my content
✅30 content ideas – one idea per day for a month.
✅A Google sheet that will help you track the demographics, psychographics, and growth on LinkedIn.
Ready to build your impactful personal brand as an academic?
Click on the button below to get started.
