Krytie TV Posted March 25, 2013 Posted March 25, 2013 I know there are a few of you out there, on the hiring side, that can attest to the positive effect of LinkedIn. Help us jobseekers out! Don't be shy about the facebook route either. My dilemma is that I want to avoid my LinkedIn account being like my facebook account. I don't see it as a place to connect with friends or coworkers you'll never see again. How exactly is someone supposed to utilize LinkedIn to its fullest? Is paying for an upgraded service almost necessary? Give me/us the skinny from the other side of life on how one could use this service to actually find work. I should add I have no friends/family/coworkers that are anywhere near the same field of work that I am trying to find a job in. 1
january2011 Posted March 25, 2013 Posted March 25, 2013 (edited) Profile-related: create a full profile listing, including all your positions and highlights of achievements rather than just listing everything that was on your job spec, add skills, interests, awards, projects, qualifications, etc - fill in everything that you canuse keyword phrases that recruiters would be looking for (if you don't know what these are then look at job ads and adopt similar phrasing) - this is especially important because LinkedIn changed their search algorithm todaywrite a decent summary that focuses on what you can do in bullet point format (but bear in mind that some recruiters might ignore this bit)make sure you also use relevant keyword phrases for your profile title - I'm still in two minds whether "looking for work" actually leads to someone clicking your profile - I think you'd be better off highlighting what you do/are, e.g., "Professionally-qualified Automotive Sales Manager | French-speaker" or "Senior Marketer | MBA from top 10 school", if you can mention a relevant professional qualification or something that makes you stand out, all the better. If you are in the search results, this title will be the one that shows up when someone does a search - it needs to stand out when the person scans the page of resultshave a decent professional but friendly photo as your profile photo - if you are in the creative fields, you can afford to be more arty with the photoask people you've worked with to give you a recommendation and repay the favour if they ask for itendorse people skills if you worked with them and know that they have those skillsset your profile as public so that it can be found on the internet - you never know when how someone could find youif you don't have any volunteer experience on your CV, go and get some - even if it's only slightly related to your fieldonce you build up a largish network also respond to people in your activity feed, congratulate them on their job anniversary, respond to their posts and status updates Other: join the relevant groups in your industryconnect with people in your industry, not just hiring managers and recruiters - sometimes connecting with someone on the periphery and lower down the career ladder leads to a connection with someeone who is a decision-makermessage people who hold the job that you want or used to and ask if they'd be happy to give you some tips --> arrange an informational coffee meeting if they are in your area; otherwise use their profile as inspiration for what to write on yoursjoin and post in groups relevant to your industry, generate discussion, share ideas and knowledge, create pollspost status updates that point people to interesting news in your industry as well as other topical news that might be non-business related but isn't too political/risque/controversialfollow companies you want to work for so that you get updates when they post jobs and also company news that you can use in interviewsfollow industry sectors you want to work in so that you get relevant industry newsif someone looks at your profile, see if you can message them back and start a discussion about whether there are any positions available, for examplestart a Twitter account and blog and use that to tweet/post relevant industry news and opinion pieces - use LinkedIn to direct people to your Twitter account and blog Yes, there are jobseeker memberships available for LinkedIn, but I'm not sure about the value of these, so I can't recommend them personally. If you have a full profile, over 500+ connections and have been on LinkedIn for a while, I think that LinkedIn occasionally email you with offers to try one of these membership levels for one month for free. So it might be worth waiting for one of these emails rather than paying for an upgraded membership right now when you don't know if it's going to be worth it. Edited March 25, 2013 by january2011 1
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