If you are looking for a job and aren’t using LinkedIn, you are making a mistake. Now to be clear, I don’t work for LinkedIn and I’m not trying to sell you on their services, so this comes from an unbiased place. But LinkedIn is basically a professional version of Facebook and if you’ve read any of my articles before (if not go back and read some) you know how much I stress the importance of networking.
Now, you may be thinking, “I can’t do too much on LinkedIn because I don’t have LinkedIn Premium.” That thinking my friends is not correct. While LinkedIn Premium does give you slightly more features than the regular version, it doesn’t hurt you if you don’t have it. It’s also expensive so unless you want to fork over a nice chunk of change each month, you should just stick to the regular version.
Okay so what are these hacks that I’m offering you? Read on and you might find some of these helpful the next time you’re looking for a job.
Have a Catchy Headline and Even More Catchy Summary
I can’t tell you the amount of times I see people with a headline saying “Eager Financial Professional Looking for Work” with a bio saying that they are “A motivated and hard-working person”….just like..everyone else…looking…for..a…job.
Think of your LinkedIn profile as your sales page. You might not be a salesperson, but everyone on LinkedIn and everyone looking for a job needs to be able to sell and market themselves. If you don’t have a profile that stands out and aren’t creative,, why would a company want to spend time interviewing you and finding out more.
So how do you spruce up your headline and bio? Talk about what you can do for a company. Companies mainly care about what you can do for them, and if you’re someone who can make the company profitable by doing the work of 5 people, mention that somewhere. Or if you helped to generate revenue at your company, mention that.
Make Yourself Available to be Searched by Recruiters
If you’re looking for a job and this little button isn’t flipped on at the top of your profile, you are closing off a way for recruiters to find you. Believe it or not, recruiters do use LinkedIn to search for qualified candidates.
Now if you’re worried that your employer will see that you are open to finding a new opportunity, you may want to think about using the block feature. Unfortunately, at the time I write this, you can’t block entire companies from seeing your profile specifically, but you can block certain individuals. I wouldn’t recommend putting your profile on “Private” because then you’re closing yourself off to being found by recruiters.
If you do have this feature enabled, you can specify which type of roles you are looking for and this way, you can have recruiters reach out to you if there are open opportunities. Now I wouldn’t sit back and wait for someone to reach out to you because it may take a while, but it’s a great option to have.
Include As Many Skills As Possible
The more skills you include, the more you will come up in searches and the more relevant jobs will come up on your “Jobs” page. It’s important to maximize the amount of skills that you have on your profile (which should be 50) to optimize your page to the fullest.
There are several different skills you can choose from (and add on your own) so even if you think it may not be a skill, it probably is. This should include any technical skills, leadership skills and soft skills like communications and public speaking.
Including the maximum amount of skills will also help to move your LinkedIn profile from Beginner to Intermediate which also gives you more of a reputation on LinkedIn and some different features than the beginners. You may be able to see who viewed your profile and how viewed your posts.
Be Active
The more active you are on LinkedIn, the more chances you’ll have to network with people (which is the point of the site to begin with). If you act like I do on Instagram…which is basically post a picture once or twice a year and then use it to just look at everyone else’s pictures…you won’t get very far.
Comment on people’s posts, share articles, join groups. These are just some of the things you can be doing to help you stand out. If you’re looking for a job at a hospital, you better believe there are a bunch of hospital centric groups that you can join. Even better, there are groups that you can join for hospital workers looking for jobs. The more you look and research, the more you’ll find.
So, don’t just go on LinkedIn occasionally and look at the jobs section and then give up when you don’t find anything. Be an active member of LinkedIn.
Now, while doing these things won’t necessarily guarantee you a job, they will get you out ahead of the rest of the pack. Applying for a job is a numbers game, and if you can have legitimate connections at a company, it’s going to help you more than being someone who has a good-looking resume.
LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media sites for working professionals, so you need to use it for your benefit. Even if you are timid and doesn’t like to reach out to people directly, you can find plenty of message boards on different groups that you can participate in. Don’t feel as though you must spend all day on LinkedIn to get a job, but you should put in at least an hour or two a day following the hacks I laid out for you.
Especially in a post-Covid world, networking on social media has become the norm, so it should be used to your advantage. Now go out there and network, network, network!
The Workin' Parent 