28% of people on LinkedIn are headhunters/recruiters, so if you want to be found – you need to be on it. LinkedIn’s purpose is to connect people across the world as a networking tool – it’s also a great resource when you are job searching. Many employers will check you out on LinkedIn before they interview you. This resource is written for customers I have written a professional LinkedIn profile for but it may also be useful for anyone out there with a LinkedIn profile.
1) Connections
Increase your number of connections. Connections in the thousands can easily be the norm depending on what you want to achieve.
Start with people you already know as they are your best advocates for the future and are also most likely to give you recommendations – consider connecting with customers, suppliers, people you’ve worked within the past from previous employers – both managers and team members. Accept connection requests from people who have invited you to connect.
2) Turn career notifications to ‘on’
Vital if you are looking for work. It’s only visible to headhunters/recruiters – so your existing employer won’t know. Go into ‘View Profile’ scroll down to ‘Your Dashboard’ then under ‘Career Interests’ you can select ‘on’ it then asks you to complete basic information to narrow down your search. If you find you get swamped with job offers you can always turn it off! But if it’s not on you decrease your chances of being approached for work.
3) Check jobs and companies you may be interested in
Go to the icon ‘Jobs’ on the black bar at the top – it will give you jobs you may be interested in. It gets this information from your profile, career interests and jobs you have previously looked at.
4) Recommendations
Invite people to recommend you on LinkedIn – previous customers, suppliers and people you have worked with over the years. You need to be connected to them first. This is really effective on LinkedIn and people will read them if they are considering engaging with you. Also, return the favour and give recommendations when asked!
(to ask an existing connection for a recommendation: Add profile section > Additional Information > Request a Recommendation, please note you can only ask people you have already connected to on LinkedIn)
5) Share and like posts
Check your LinkedIn regularly (daily if you can) it doesn’t take long. I do mine whilst having my lunch break as it’s easy to do one-handed! Read your news feed, get involved and share and like posts that you are interested in and complement your brand/outlook and industry sector. It’s one of the easiest ways to stay up to date with ‘noise’ in your sector, build your own brand and to learn something new.
6) Publish articles
When you’ve got the hang of LinkedIn – consider publishing an article. It’s easy to do and is a great way of increasing your profile as an ‘expert’ in your field. Support your article with an image (I use www.shutterstock.com). If people like what you publish – they will like it and share it with others.
For more detail: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-linkedin-articles-people-will-read-and-share/
7) Join ‘Groups’ that you are interested in – you can get involved in discussions with like-minded professionals. If you have a niche sector, you can consider setting up your own group which is easy to do. (Go to ‘Work’ icon on the black bar and click on Groups)
8) Save to PDF
The lazy man’s way of creating a CV type of document! This is a new thing for LinkedIn and I love it because it’s helpful. I recommend you do this because it’s an easy way of saving the profile so you have a backup. It also gives you another ‘document’ you can print on paper or send by email if you need it. To do this: next to ‘Add Profile Section’ is ‘More’ click on this and click on drop-down box ‘Save to PDF’
9) Personalise your URL
You can change your LinkedIn URL to one that actually means something and looks less clunky than the one they automatically give you. Just go to ‘Edit public profile & URL’ and follow the instructions
10) Are you multi-lingual and seeking work in other languages?
You can ‘Add profile in another language’.
A common question customers ask me is if they need to sign up for ‘LinkedIn Premium’. For normal job searching uses – I personally don’t think you need to and I am not signed up to Premium. It enables you to see who’s looked at your profile, gives you access to on-demand learning, monthly in-mail and helpful stuff relating to best-fitting jobs. However, it’s expensive. So if you are thinking of doing it, try it free for a month and see how useful it is.