AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview with Bianca J Jackson, a seasoned consultant turned career coach and LinkedIn strategist. In today’s interview, Bianca shares her career journey IT consulting,  side hustles, and how she transitioned into entrepreneurship.  She also breaks down how she got started with LinkedIN, including how she grew her following on LinkedIN to over 20, 000 followers.

We’re doing an AMA interview. AMA is when I have a chance to connect with former or seasoned consultant and they give you advice. We had a chance to connect with Bianca J. Jackson. She is a seasoned consultant and a LinkedIn expert and she’s going to give some full tips on how you can maximize your LinkedIn profile and take your game to the next level. Bianca, thank you so much for joining us on the MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?
Interview with Bianca J. Jackson
I’m doing fantastic. Thanks for having me.
We’re going to talk about LinkedIn. Maybe you can introduce yourself to the Go-Getter of the MECE Muse Unplugged.
I am Bianca J. Jackson and you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m excited to be here to talk about the importance of LinkedIn, how you can leverage LinkedIn and position yourself as an expert. I’ve been on LinkedIn for about ten years now and it seems like a long time, but over the last year, I’ve grown my following significantly. I’ve gone from 1,200 people to about 22,000 or 23,000 followers. I’m wanting to be a speaker. To be in a virtual reality space and also to be able to help people move their careers along. That’s pretty much in a nutshell why I feel like I can speak about LinkedIn and give people some valuable helpful tips.
You’re definitely the go-to expert, Bianca, and I must say, with all the different social media platforms, I personally feel like LinkedIn is one of the harder platforms to build a following because it’s not just putting out personal things. It’s also being able to have that professional valuable content that people deem you an expert to follow. I give you a lot of kudos for being able to grow your platform significantly to over 22,000 followers. That’s a lot and that’s pretty amazing. Maybe you can share a little bit about your career journey. I know you’ve been a consultant for quite some time and you’ve transitioned. You’re now doing career coaching and a LinkedIn strategist. Maybe you can take a step back and share a little bit about your journey in consulting.
When I graduated in college, I came on board as a full-time consultant for a software company in Philadelphia and I loved it at first. I was traveling all over the place. When you travel a lot, there is the ugly side of the traveling to being stuck on a tarmac. Your flights being delayed, being a consultant wears off. Then I went to full-time, so I was no longer a consultant. I did that for about four years and then I went back to consulting over the summer and then I had full-time jobs ever since. I left my last corporate position as a project manager. My whole career had been in IT and I decided that I was going to run my own businesses. Now, I’m back in the consulting realm, helping not only individuals but also businesses. Being a black woman, being in tech, the way that I like to describe it from time to time is I was a bit of a unicorn. For anyone who doesn’t know too much about the tech industry, about 25% are women. Women employees that represent 25% of all tech employees in the US and then when it comes to women of color, we’re about 1% to 3%.
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