How LinkedIn Will Help You Find a Job

Is it true? Well, yes, LinkedIn is an incredibly useful tool if you are looking for a job or your next career move. It’s not the only place to find recruiters or be found by them, but having a profile is very much like having an online CV.

If you create an appealing profile and use LinkedIn correctly, you’re giving yourself a head start when it comes to finding a job.

Let’s start with the basics and creating your profile. Here are some of our top tips:

• Add a photo but ensure it’s a professional one, ideally not you on holiday or a night out!
• Have a professional headline outlining what you do, or your key skillset, for example, ‘experienced mechanical engineer’, ‘fully qualified electrician looking for next career move’
• If possible, change the unique URL for your profile. It removes the lengthy numbers and makes the link to your profile cleaner and more shareable
• Label correctly and link any websites you’re affiliated to or your Twitter account (if appropriate)
• Have you written a summary? Use this to add a few sentences about who you are, what your skills and qualifications are and what you are looking for
• List all your skills – ideally a minimum of 10
• Ask for and give recommendations of people you have worked with before. This gives a public endorsement of your skills. If you recommend someone, they are very likely to return the gesture

So that’s setting up your profile. It’s very much your shop window and is just stage one. Make sure you set your preferences to say you are looking for work or open to offers – this makes you much more appealing and searchable!

LinkedIn is a social network and to vastly increase your chances of connecting with the right people; you have to be social and network! This doesn’t mean spamming out lots of messages but rather engaging in conversations, participating in discussions and taking the time to interact with people.

Like any social network, being online can be a time drain. Make sure you’re aware of how long you have been online and if needs be, set yourself a timer. You shouldn’t be spending any longer than 1 hour on LinkedIn, maximum. To make sure your time is well spent, here are a few more tips to get the most out of LinkedIn:

• Connect with people – invite them to join your network and remember to personalise the invitation. It can be a simple message like ‘I am looking for my next role so I thought it would be useful to connect’
• Update your status regularly, ideally once or twice a day. You can preschedule posts using a tool like eclincher
• If you are looking for ideas of what to post, go for topical news stories, anything that is trending, use the search function or head over to Google and look for news stories or articles relevant to your industry
• Tag people into your posts or comments asking for their thoughts
• From your homepage, interact with your newsfeed – use the reactions buttons to like, love, or celebrate a status, comment on it, or share it if you think your network would find it useful
• Check your network notifications – the red button at the top of your page will flag anything that might be worth you following up. It might be reacting to work anniversaries (congratulate the relevant individuals), wishing people a happy birthday or engaging with an article or post they have shared
• Visit a minimum of 10 profiles a day – go for people you want to engage with, whether that is a recruiter, a potential employer or prospective customer. You can do this manually or use a tool like Dux-Soup. The individuals will be able to see you’ve visited their profile, and it will keep you in front of their mind.

This is scratching the surface of LinkedIn, but networking is a great way to boost your profile and vastly improve your chances of finding your next job.

For more information about social media, including your checklists for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, visit the Green Umbrella website.