Can Clubhouse help your career? Clubhouse is a new live, audio-only social media platform. Nothing is archived or preserved so all connections are done in real time. But how can doctors use Clubhouse for professional purposes? If you’re considering using Clubhouse, check out this episode.
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- Curating your feed and followers
- Communicating on and off the app
- Career benefits and opportunities from Clubhouse
Today we’re talking about how Clubhouse could help you with a career pivot. This topic came up in a live course that I’m teaching right now, as we were discussing how to use social media sites and public platforms for career changes. I’ve spent just a bit of time on this new platform and I’ve noticed three ways this might become a great networking app.
In this episode, we’ll discuss the critical first steps of navigating a new Clubhouse account, how to connect with people in your professional world, and how to show up as your best professional self on Clubhouse.
“Be mindful about who you follow and what rooms you join, because Clubhouse will keep serving you more of the same.”- Marjorie Stiegler
In this Episode:
[1:40] Clubhouse is unique because it’s “live only”
[2:30] Sign up now to reserve your desired username
[3:28] Do this when you first sign in!
[4:15] Keep your career goals in mind
[4:40] Be mindful of clickbait rooms (teaching the algorithm)
[6:10] Be mindful of who you follow and why
[7:40] The easiest ways to follow up with direct messages
[9:30] How to use Clubhouse to learn about new careers or industries
[11:00] Mapping your desired network (how to know who to follow)
[12:30] Have a crisp way to introduce yourself (hello again, professional branding!)
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 54 – Can Clubhouse Help Your Career?
Hey there, welcome to The Career Rx. I’m your host, Marjorie Stiegler. This podcast is all about the important stuff they don’t teach you in medical school, about how to treat your career, like the business it really is, and how to be strategic about your success. I’ll show you how to use modern strategies to get ahead, create your own path and do more of what you love. Every episode is inspired by questions from listeners just like you. So be sure to subscribe. And of course, send me those questions, so I can use them on a future episode. so you don’t miss anything. Be sure to always check the show notes on my website. Are you ready? Let’s get into it.
Hey, there, today we’re gonna be talking about Clubhouse, the new social media platform. And whether or not this can help you in your career. This was inspired by a really simple question that I was asked in a live course that I’m teaching right now over the past couple of weeks and into the next few weeks, we’ve been talking all about career pivots, and how to land a new role in either a leadership position or something that’s outside of your of your current situation. And the question came up, “can Clubhouse help you in this?”
So Clubhouse is pretty new, and I have been exploring it although I have not, I’m not headfirst into all the shiny new objects, but I have been exploring it. And I’ve got sort of three top tips, at least for now about how I think Clubhouse may be able to help you in your career and three important things that you really should know about Clubhouse. So let’s get into it. First, if you have not heard of Clubhouse, as I mentioned, this is a new social media platform. What makes it unique is that it is audio only. So it’s a little bit like talk radio it is or perhaps like a podcast, but there’s an interactive element where you can speak and there’s often multiple people speaking so it’s audio only there’s nothing live, it’s great don’t have to be camera ready. The other thing is it is live only. This is an important and distinct feature about Clubhouse. It is against the terms of service to record. And things are not archived or or preserved afterwards. So the time that you’re in the room with others is the time to make connections. So let me kind of break down what I think this all means for you.
If you haven’t been on Clubhouse yet, you will need to sign up. And it’s in beta mode by invitation only. So you’ll need to sign up and it’s well worth doing that. Go ahead and sign up and reserve a username. Once you’ve done that, then you will be suggested to other people. So if you have contacts who are already on Clubhouse, you’ll show up in their suggestions when they’re on the platform to say hey, you have a new contact, would you like to invite them. So it’s great if you know someone who has invitations, you can just ask. But if you don’t, as long as you’re signed up, and you have a username reserved, you’ll be suggested to your contacts so that that can speed up the likelihood of you getting an invitation and getting on the inside. At the moment of this recording, it’s for iPhone and iPad only, I believe. But I have heard this could be a rumor that in March, they’re bringing it to Android and there will probably be a day when it’s not Invitational again, it’s in beta.
All right. So here are the things I think you need to know about it. Number one is be very intentional. So once you’re on the inside, be very intentional about who you follow, what rooms you join, because it is a new platform, it’s in its infancy. And what you do, will tell the algorithm what you want to see more of. Now I have found that it’s a little bit hard as a physician looking for other physicians for professional discussion, to find the kinds of rooms and people that I’m interested in. Because there’s so much going on on Clubhouse, it’s obviously a learning platform, and I think this will get better. But when you first sign up, you can give it some interests and you can choose to follow people. So I recommend being careful about your interests being just narrow and selective. And then looking very deliberately for people that you already know, in, or they already know of, you don’t need to know them necessarily personally, but you already know of them and you want to follow them specifically for your career goals. So that’s one thing be very intentional about doing that. Then in your feed, which is called The Hallway on, on Clubhouse, you’ll see just sort of a scroll of events or rooms, which are temporary discussions. And some of these have really enticing names. And so anybody can join the room. If you see it in your hallway, you can just tap on it and join it. But again, I’d be very, very mindful about doing that. Because if you tap into rooms that have really interesting headlines, you know, like how to make a million dollars this month, then what you will see are going to be rooms that are similar in that content. Conversely, you can, you can hide rooms by swiping. And that I think will also teach the algorithm about what you want to do. But there’s so many things on there that will probably pique your curiosity. And unless you want to be inundated with more of that same kind of content, I would really be very mindful about who you follow and what rooms you join.
Okay, the second thing to be really, really mindful of on Clubhouse is that it is live only as I’ve mentioned, so nothing is recorded, nothing is captured, and you can’t go back. The reason this is really important is because people enter and leave rooms in a very dynamic way. So if you’re in a room listening to an interesting conversation, you want to look at who are the speakers who are the moderators, but also who are the other people in attendance. And you may want to follow them, it’s really easy, because you’ll just see your, your phone will have sort of a grid of a little avatar of everybody who’s in the room. And you can, while you’re listening, tap on each Avatar and get a quick look at their bio of just about the first three lines of their bio. And right there, you can choose to follow them or not.
So what I often do, if I’m in an interesting room is I will pull up all of the speakers and just one by one go through as well as other attendees, and just take a look and decide whether or not I want to follow them. But as I mentioned, you have to be really mindful about who you choose to follow. So if you’re unsure, you may want to just take a screenshot, or write down the names of the people who have your interest. So you can go back at a more leisurely pace and determine whether you wish to follow them. Because if they leave the room, while you are, you know figuring this out, then they’re gone. And if unless you can remember their name, you may not be able to find them again. So that’s really, really important. If you’re in a room that’s interesting, and people are adding value and you you think you may want to follow them. Or you may want to connect with them offline, you will want to take notes or screenshot so that you know who it is that was in that room.
The other thing you can do on Clubhouse that’s really quite convenient, I think is Clubhouse has linked its user profiles. If you, if you turn this on when you set up your own profile, if you have a Instagram account or a Twitter account, you can sort of connect those so that from within the Clubhouse interface, a person can follow you on Instagram or follow you on Twitter. The reason that’s important is because there is no messaging feature within Clubhouse, or at least not right now. I have no idea if they intend to add that. But there’s no, there’s no way to have any kind of communication or conversation with anybody on Clubhouse itself, you have to connect and do that kind of messaging or communication offline. So you either have to know who they are, and then go find them on their website, on LinkedIn or Facebook. Or you can connect with them through Instagram and Twitter.
Now, it doesn’t mean that you can’t communicate with people, when you’re in a room, you can raise your hand. And hopefully then the moderators will invite you to speak. And that’s called being on the stage. So you could ask a question or add a comment. But you don’t have any way of communicating ahead of time what you’re going to say. So you can imagine that the moderators depending on their room format, they may or may not invite you up to speak. Just like when you raise your hand, it’s optional, whether the moderator will invite you on stage. If they happen to spontaneously invite you up, it’s also optional, whether or not you want to accept that so you’ll just get a little notice. And you could decline. So some people are listening to Clubhouse while they’re doing other things where they really can’t speak. So if you’re invited to speak and you can’t, you just hit decline.
If they invite you to speak, you should keep it kind of crisp and snappy, you should have in mind clearly what you want to say what your question is or what your comment is. So it doesn’t go on forever. Because the moderators won’t want that’s not really respectful to the room and everybody else’s time. Also, generally speaking, unless it’s a room specifically designed for practicing your pitch for your company or yourself as a professional, it’s not good etiquette to raise your hand get a moment on stage and then begin to you know, sort of soft pitch herself or or your side gig or business. People don’t like that. So don’t do that unless that is specifically the purpose of the room.
So how can this help you all with your career I think of a couple of ways. Number one, it is an really, really enormous resource a great way to learn. For example, I have seen a lot going on on telemedicine on Clubhouse so if you are interested in telemedicine either as a potential career for yourself, or to consider launching a telemedicine company or otherwise, just wanted to understand more about telemedicine. You can learn all about the state of the industry. What are the trends? What’s the future thinking? Who are the major players you can get to know and see you know, who is out there talking about this? And you can also get to know really pretty easily some of the people who lead some of the leading companies and telemedicine. Now, again, you can’t message them directly on the platform, but you could certainly learn who people are Find out about them and then go find them elsewhere find them offline.
That leads me to what I think is really another way this can help you with your career is it’s a fantastic way to network as long as you make sure to capture the names and follow up with people offline. But just like if you watched somebody on a webinar, or saw them speak live, you might reach out to somebody on LinkedIn or some other messaging platform to say, Hey, I was in your room on Clubhouse, or I was in this room on Clubhouse, I heard you speaking. So you want to take notes of those kinds of things, so that you can use that as you know your icebreaker, especially if you’re reaching out cold, it makes it a little bit less cold. If you can say that you’re in a Clubhouse room together. And this is what you heard, and this is what caught your interest, think that it’s very likely to get somebody to want to reply to you.
This is also a great way to start showing up on a regular basis, especially if you have a defined area of interest. So as my telemedicine example, once you’ve followed a handful of people, you can continue to look, you know, see who they follow and see who follows them. And that will help you to identify even more people that might be of interest for you, in your professional surgery or professional networking. And I predict that this is going to be a great way, just like LinkedIn and Facebook are today, to really show up and increase your professional visibility by showing up in circles that you aren’t currently part of but that you’re interested in, right. This helps you to learn and it helps you to network. And if you show up regularly, it will help people to feel like you’re a familiar face in that space, which is enormously helpful when it comes to formal networking.
So those are the things I think Clubhouse can do for you and your career. Again, it’s a new space, I’m going to keep my eye on it. I’d love to know what you think. But number one, remember that it is live only. So you’ve got to capture folks and connect offline. Be very intentional about who you follow and what rooms you join because you will get more of that. So if you want to make it very useful, you got to be very careful in the beginning to really kind of curate who you follow and what you join. And then make sure that you have a really crisp and clear professional bio and Avatar, and elevator… I don’t want to call it a pitch elevator speech maybe about yourself when that opportunity presents. Now are you on Clubhouse? If you are and you’re using it for professional purposes, I would just love to hear about your experience. So please do come drop me a line you know where to find me by email at Marjorie at Marjorie Stiegler md comm or you can find me on Clubhouse. That’s it for today. Bye for now.
Thanks for joining me on this episode of The Career RX. Be sure to leave me a review on Apple podcasts or whatever podcast player you’re using to listen today. And definitely send me those questions so I can answer them and give you a shout out on a future episode. Bye for now.
