LinkedIn wasn’t designed to do anything but help you advance your career and share your personal brand with current and future network contacts. In fact, I can personally testify to the power of LinkedIn in a career search, for it was LinkedIn that enabled me to make the connection that led to my current role.
Therefore, I don’t believe that LinkedIn itself could ever be guilty of holding back your job search. However, what I do believe is that you may not be leveraging LinkedIn and its many features effectively in your search efforts to find and secure your next opportunity.
Here are 15 ways you can use LinkedIn to accelerate your career search:
1. Complete your profile 100%. LinkedIn provides you a step-by-step guide to complete your profile. Not only does completing your profile 100% make you look more professional, but it also, helps optimize your placement in LinkedIn’s People Search results.
Here’s what you need to have a 100% complete profile:
- Your Current Position
- Two Past Positions
- Education
- Profile Summary
- Profile Photo
- Your Specialties/Skills
- 3 Recommendations
2. Add a professional photo. Don’t forget to add a face to your name and to the brand you are creating on your LinkedIn profile. This helps build a stronger and more personal connection between you and your profile viewers. Also ensure that your profile picture is professional so to maximize your first impression.
3. Proofread your profile for grammar, punctuation and capitalization. Make sure to review your entire profile a number of times to avoid missing any grammatical errors. Ask someone you know to review your profile for an outside perspective and for an extra pair of eyes to catch possible mistakes or opportunities for improvement.
4. Feature your personal brand or statement in your profile. First of all, in your profile subtitle, don’t miss the opportunity to attract more profile viewers and impress potential employers and career stakeholders by listing yourself as “Finance Professional,” “College Student” or anything else generic or boring. Use this area to share your brand and unique and differentiating value with your network and future target audience. Also, don’t forget about your summary section where you can feature your personal brand and supporting pitch and really hook viewers to read the rest of your profile.
5. Customize your own LinkedIn profile URL. Many professionals forget or neglect to personalize their LinkedIn profile URL with their name and leave the default letters and numbers in place. This looks less professional, but also prevents you from using this in your networking efforts to link your contacts back to your profile.
6. Share links to your websites or other networks. Cross-promote your activities online by adding links from your LinkedIn profile to your website, a blog, your Twitter profile, your VisualCV, or any other site you want to share with your network.
7. Get recommended. LinkedIn allows you to collect short, yet informative recommendations from anyone in your network. This is a great feature that helps you come across as a credible, top professional and/or job candidate.
8. Make your profile public. While your privacy is definitely important, establishing an online presence is essential to being found by others and to advancing your career. Make sure not to make your profile private, or you may miss out on opportunities to be searched and found by potential career stakeholders.
9. Round out your profile. There are a number of ways you can enhance your profile and let your personality and brand shine a little brighter in your LinkedIn Profile. Most importantly, don’t forget to add your interests, hobbies or passions in the Interests area as an additional way to connect with new contacts.
10. Get some apps! Check out the various applications available that can do everything from stream in your tweets and feed in your blog posts to share your past presentations and your recommended reading lists.
11. Join LinkedIn Groups. There are thousands of networking groups on LinkedIn for you to join, whether they be for your college, graduate school, current or past employers, industries, associations, functions, you name it. Join any groups that you think will help you in your career networking and start getting active. Participate in discussions and start your own. Post links to articles and resources that will be helpful to the other members and always look for ways to add value.
12. Conduct informational interviews: Most job seekers forget the power of informational interviews. As you build your network and join new groups on LinkedIn, reach out to these contacts and request a few minutes to discuss their careers, their companies and any career advice they might offer to help you in your own. Many times, these conversations can lead to opportunities not posted on job boards.
13. Use the LinkedIn Jobs section. Don’t forget that LinkedIn has its own job board of both aggregated and exclusive job postings. The great thing about applying through LinkedIn is that 1) many times you can see who posted the job (which can help for follow-up purposes), 2) your profile is only a click away for the reviewers which can help link them to your brand and all of your activities and 3) you can click through to the company and see professionals in your network also employed by the company.
14. Find and follow target companies. LinkedIn’s Companies tab offers a very comprehensive directory of company listings by industry, size, geography and more. Use it to identify contacts at specific companies with whom you can conduct those informational interviews, see if they have job postings and even follow their activity to keep track of any future activity you might be able to leverage to your advantage.
15. Become an Expert on LinkedIn Answers. LinkedIn Answers not only allows you to ask questions to which all of LinkedIn’s members can provide responses, but also allows you to answer others’ questions and get rated as an expert for the information and insight that you share. This is featured on your profile as well showing off your expertise and value to profile viewers.
Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.
About the author
Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.
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