Introduction inkedIn is the best job search tool you’re not using properly. The site offers amazing possibilities for job seekers and those seeking to develop their careers, but most people don’t know it. And this lack of knowledge among your competition means that you have a wonderful opportunity. Simply put, if you spend some time learning about the site, you can tap into tons of opportunities that your competition has no idea about.
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If you’ve read The Blue Sky Guide to Job Search, you’ll already know my philosophy on proactive job search strategies. If not, I’ll talk more about it later, but for now just let me say this: Most people make huge mistakes when looking for a job. The biggest mistake is that they focus on applying for advertised vacancies when in fact most vacant jobs are never advertised. Instead, these jobs are filled by professional headhunters, or by employee referrals, or by internal promotions, or just because the right resume landed on a hiring manager’s desk at the right time. We call these unadvertised vacancies “the hidden job market,” and understanding it shifts your whole job search perspective. Once you realize that most jobs are filled without ever being posted on Monster.com, you have a massive advantage. You can now focus most of your time and energy on tapping into the hidden job market and let everyone else fight for the few advertised vacancies. In this guide, I’m going to show you why LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool for accessing that hidden job market. I’ll walk you step-by-step through strategies that will put you head and shoulders above the other people looking for work in your field. And I’ll show you exactly what you need to do to get the most out of the site — including showing you the underused features most people don’t know about.
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What is Linkedin? LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Think of it as a huge database of business professionals — the biggest in the world – that allows you to search and make connections. It isn’t actually a job search website, although it is often used that way. Rather it is a professional networking site, a bit like a networking meeting on steroids. Registered users can connect with each other, thereby gaining access to information about each other’s career history and enabling them to communicate directly. As a member, you can control the level of your accessibility, making yourself available only to people who already know you, or accepting contacts from everyone. You can also choose whether or not to allow strangers to view your profile, although as you’ll see, refusing to do so would be job search madness.
Why is it so valuable for your job search? The great strength of LinkedIn for job seekers is the laser-like focus on business. Unlike Facebook, which is almost purely social, or Twitter — which combines both business and personal users — LinkedIn is only used for professional networking. Registered users tend to be more highly educated and better paid than the general population, meaning that many of them are exactly the kind of people in a position to hire you. What’s more, the site is a popular tool for recruiters and hiring managers looking to fill positions. If you’re not on LinkedIn, and not actively using its features, you are missing out on job opportunities. That’s just a fact. Here are just some of the ways LinkedIn will help you find your next job:
1 . Networking is the best job search strategy there is. Survey after survey has shown that networking is the most effective job search methodology and LinkedIn is the ultimate networking tool. You will be able to search a huge database of business professionals and make contact easily. And if you’re introverted or averse to in-person networking, you will also be able to notify your connections about your job search without having to make awkward phone calls or personal visits.
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2 . You’ll be able to connect with movers and shakers in your industry.
LinkedIn gives you access to key players, such as recruiters and hiring managers. Offline, you might struggle to find these people; even if you could locate them, it’s unlikely you would get them to answer your call. But using the simple tools provided by LinkedIn, you can reach out, add them to your network, and send them emails.
3 . You can find long-lost friends and work colleagues. The people you have
worked with before know you already. They may well be able to recommend you for positions with their current employer — if only they knew you were looking. LinkedIn allows you to reconnect with everyone from your career past, opening up a whole new world of opportunities.
4 . Headhunters and company recruiters can find you. Professional
headhunters use the site to source ‘passive’ candidates, and LinkedIn even markets a special paid service to headhunters. These headhunters have been hired by companies to fill jobs that will never be advertised anywhere, so if you’re not on the site and highly visible, you’ll never hear of those opportunities. If you set up your profile properly and follow the directions in the rest of this guide, you can expect contacts from headhunters.
5 . LinkedIn gives you search engine visibility. If properly completed, your
profile will rank high in search engines for a search of your name. This is increasingly important because surveys show that most recruiters, hiring managers, and HR professionals will google candidates before interviewing them. You can’t control what they will find when they look (blog comments, forum conversations, and articles about you in the local paper are all things that might come up in the results of a search for your name), but LinkedIn gives you a way to gain some influence over search results. A well-written profile that positions you effectively can make the difference between getting invited for that interview and not even getting a response.
6 . LinkedIn has a job board. The job board isn’t LinkedIn’s strongest point, but it is worth checking out because it offers features that no other board can offer. The most important of these features is the ability to immediately see the people in your network who work at a company advertising a vacancy. Surveys consistently show that candidates who are referred by another employee fare far better than those who reply to advertisements. So being able to see your connections when you view a posted position obviously gives you a great advantage.
7 . You can research companies and individuals. Wouldn’t it be great to
have one place where you could research target companies, learn about interviewers, and find contact names to send your resume to? LinkedIn allows you to do all those things for free. You’ll be able to use it to find
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unadvertised vacancies before they happen, dig into the background of the person interviewing you, and learn all about the company’s latest news and events. In short, LinkedIn is a job board with benefits. Readers of my other Blue Sky Guides will know that I am not a big advocate of job boards in general. Too many job seekers think that they can secure their next position just by registering with a few job boards and applying for suitable vacancies. But 80% of the jobs filled are never posted on a site like Monster.com. Instead, they are filled by headhunters, agencies, word-of-mouth, employee referrals, internal transfers, or employers searching the database of resumes they already have. This means that most job seekers are spending vast amounts of time chasing 20% of all the available jobs. (Picture those job seekers like a big herd of sheep all running in the same direction!) If they set up a LinkedIn profile at all, they generally rarely go back to the site afterwards (LinkedIn’s own stats bear this out), and they have no idea how to use the site to uncover all those unadvertised vacancies that are available at any one time. That’s what I will teach you in this guide. Let the sheep chase the advertised jobs while you spend your time tapping into the awesome power of LinkedIn to find your next opportunity.
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I don’t need this guide — I’m already on LinkedIn. If you have already set up a profile, congratulations! But setting up a profile is only the first step. In this guide I’ll also teach you: How to optimize your profile so it attracts recruiters and hiring managers How to use the research tools to find unadvertised positions How to use your existing network to find opportunities How to turn your current contacts into more contacts How to get the most out of LinkedIn’s job board and job seekers tools How to make yourself highly visible in only a few hours a week How to use the free tools on the site to build positive relationships How to continue using LinkedIn effectively after you get your dream job Writing a profile is just the first step. Walking away at that point is like building a new house and then not moving into it.
Why Some People Resist Joining LinkedIn If you’re one of the people who’s resisted joining LinkedIn until now, you’re not alone. I meet people every day who do not want to join for one reason or another. But because LinkedIn is such an amazing job search tool, I hope I can persuade you that these concerns are misguided. Here are some of the objections I hear from job seekers:
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What about my privacy? This is one of the most common concerns expressed by people who resist joining LinkedIn. Particularly among job seekers over the age of 40, there is often a reluctance to post career details online where anyone can see them. I do understand the concern. But I think it’s important to understand two things:
1 . Times have changed. A lot of your information may already be in the public domain. The difference is that with LinkedIn you can control what people see.
2 . Recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers will google your name. If they
don’t find anything, they will assume either a) you haven’t made much of an impact and/or b) you are not tech-savvy enough to be on LinkedIn.
If you’ve read The Blue Sky Guide to Job Search, you’ll know that I am a big advocate of building a powerful online presence in order to create a strong reputation for yourself and attract opportunities. There are lots of free tools available to you to do this, but the most well-known and most widely used of them all when it comes to business networking is LinkedIn. You simply can’t afford not to be on there unless you are willing to miss out on career opportunities.
I don’t want my boss to know I’m looking for a job. Remember, LinkedIn is not a job search site. Most people use it purely for business networking. If you want to let people know you’re looking for work, you can. But if you need to keep that secret, there are ways to write your profile so that no one will realize you would like to leave your current job. Oddly enough, this doesn’t stop headhunters from getting in touch with you. Headhunters are hired by a company because, for a variety of reasons, the company’s HR staff can’t fill the position. If all they do is run ads and screen resumes, they are not adding any value. So they like to find what are known as “passive candidates” — people who are happy and valued in their current job but appear to be suitable candidates for the position they need to fill — because this means they are adding real value by identifying candidates the company wouldn’t otherwise have discovered. So, if you’re concerned about alerting others to your search, I’ll teach you how to write a profile that gives nothing away while still opening lots of new doors.
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I prefer to network in person. Great! In-person networking is often much more effective than online contacts. But being on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you stop networking in person. In fact, being on LinkedIn helps you expand your in-person networking efforts. Think of it this way: Before LinkedIn, other people’s networks were invisible to you. Now they are all online and available for you to tap into. If networking is the art of getting to know more and more people, LinkedIn makes it 10 times easier than it used to be. Once you have made the initial connection, you can take it offline at any time.
Who is this guide for? This guide was written with job seekers in mind, but almost every piece of information here also applies to people who are not currently searching but want to use LinkedIn to raise their career profile Or to those who own a small business and want to use LinkedIn more effectively to find clients. The advice in this guide works whether you are entry-level or at the most senior levels of a company. It works whether you are currently employed or temporarily out of work.
How it works This is a “how to” guide. I’ll be using detailed explanations and screenshots to show you exactly what to do as you work through each section of the program. That means it will probably make sense to print out each module as you’re working on it, so that you can have the instructions right there as you go through the steps online. There are 8 modules including this one, and in each module I’ll focus on a different aspect of LinkedIn and provide step-by-step instructions on how to make the most of each of the features.
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What you’ll learn How to create a winning LinkedIn profile that attracts recruiters and makes others want to connect with you. How to edit your settings for maximum visibility. How to find and add contacts using the built-in tools provided by LinkedIn. How to use the power of recommendations and how to solicit them from others. How you can find potential employers and connect with their staff. How to network effectively. (LinkedIn is not a passive tool. If you just create a profile and then expect people to offer you jobs, you’ll be waiting a long time. But there are simple steps you can take to build and maintain your network and attract attention.) How to approach people in LinkedIn: right and wrong ways. How to use the LinkedIn job board most effectively. How to make yourself highly visible to others on LinkedIn using free and simple tools. In short, you’ll get a step-by-step guide written especially for job seekers. Follow these instructions and you’ll be tapping into the amazing power of LinkedIn within hours.
The modules This guide is broken out into modules, each one focusing on a different aspect of the site. Everyone will need Modules 2 and 3, as these cover the basics of getting set up on the site and writing a great profile, but after that you are free to skip around and do the work in whatever order suits you. The modules are as follows:
Introduction That’s this one!
Module 1: Writing Your Profile
Nothing is more important to your success on LinkedIn than your profile. Get it right, and everything else will flow from that. Get it wrong, and you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about. I’ll walk you step-by-step through every section of your profile, with tips and strategies for writing each section to
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ensure your maximum visibility and appeal. We’ll cover every aspect of the profile, from writing a headline that attracts recruiter attention, through describing your jobs without revealing company secrets, all the way to soliciting recommendations that make recruiters eager to talk to you.
Module 2: Editing Your Settings
A great profile is no good if nobody can find it. In this module, I’ll show you how to determine the optimal settings for maximum visibility.
Module 3: Making Connections
Survey after survey shows that networking is the #1 way to get a job. The success rate for networking far exceeds job boards, which is where most people spend their time. And LinkedIn is the #1 business-networking website in the world. Period. In this module, we’ll walk you through how to build your network, including how to find people, how to contact them, how to keep your network active and engaged, and how to involve your network in your search without being pushy or annoying.
Module 4: Networking Effectively
Once you have made contact with lots of people, how do you use your new network to help you find work? You might be surprised that asking people to help you find a new job is not what we suggest. Instead, we’ll teach you how to ask for the type of help everyone can give easily, how to turn each connection into more useful connections, and how to translate an online connection into a “real world” meeting or phone call. You’ll be amazed at the results that come from this simple step.
Module 5: The LinkedIn Job Board
LinkedIn has its own job board and it contains some pretty nifty features. In this module, we’ll teach you how to get the most out of this feature of the site, including how to use your LinkedIn connections to network your way into any advertised position (even if the job is advertised on another job board!)
Module 6: LinkedIn’s Research Tools
LinkedIn offers some amazing information free of charge. In this module, you’ll learn how to make the most of it. You’ll find out how to uncover potential employers, follow their latest news, analyze their hiring patterns, and get the early scoop on upcoming job opportunities. You can also use this section of the site to prepare for interviews by researching both the company and the interviewer. We’ll show you exactly how to find what you need and how to use it once you’ve found it.
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Module 7: Making Yourself Visible
LinkedIn offers a number of free tools that can help you build a positive and strong presence online. We’ll show you how you can raise awareness and build a reputation as an expert in your field using free tools including “Questions and Answers” and “Groups.” We’ll also talk about integrating with Twitter, for those who use both sites.
In Summary If you have ever wondered whether or not you should be on LinkedIn, I hope I have persuaded you that the answer is a resounding “yes.” And if you’ve used the site but always had the feeling there’s more you could be doing, I hope I’ve shown that you are right. LinkedIn is a wonderful and multi-faceted job search tool. Using it effectively will allow you to tap into the hidden job market to find and interview for opportunities long before anyone else knows about them. It will also help you prepare to ace every interview by learning all about the company and your interviewer before you step through the door for your first meeting. And it has the added advantage that in order to do all this, you’ll rekindle lots of old connections and make a lot of new ones. If you’re ready to get started, let’s go! Note: This guide is updated regularly to address changes to site functionality, but if something has changed between versions of the guide, and you don’t know what to do, just shoot us an email at helpme@blueskyresumes.com.
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Module
1
Writing Your Profile
H
aving a strong profile is absolutely crucial. Your LinkedIn profile will speak on your behalf to recruiters, employers, interviewers, potential business partners, or clients.
Your profile represents you to people all over the world, 365 days a year. At any time of the day or night, someone somewhere could be reading your profile. And yet most people don’t even complete their profiles. Perhaps it seems like too much work. Perhaps they’re not sure what to write. Perhaps they’re not comfortable letting the world see their resume. But whatever the reason, the end result is the same: they miss countless opportunities to make a positive impression, often on people in a position to hire them. This is insanity, and it’s not going to happen to you. Your LinkedIn profile is going to be powerful, compelling, concise, highly visible, and perfectly calibrated to appeal to people who make hiring decisions. I’m going to walk you step-by-step through the profile creation process and give tips that work for those who want everyone to know they’re looking for a
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job as well as tips for those who want to give the impression of being happily employed (while secretly inviting headhunters to get in touch). If you’ve been on LinkedIn for a while and already have a profile set up — don’t skip this stage! The likelihood is that you still have a lot of work to do to get your profile to where it needs to be. And you must do the work — LinkedIn’s own stats show that people with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to be contacted on the site than people whose profiles are incomplete. There’s just no excuse for not making the most of that opportunity. The only people who can skip this module are those who hired Blue Sky Resumes to write their LinkedIn profile. If this is you, move on to Module 2 — you have other work to do! So let’s start with the basics.
Setting Up Your Account It’s free and easy to sign up. Just go to www.linkedin.com and look for the “Join Today” tab. Once you have signed up, you’ll need to confirm your account and then you’ll be able to log in. Be sure to sign up with an email address that you use regularly. Since LinkedIn is all about networking, you’ll want to receive email notifications when people want to connect with you, or when recruiters have an opportunity, so it’s important to use your main email address for this site. Note that at some stage of the sign-up process, you might be asked whether you would like to upgrade to a paid account. Don’t take this option just now. In Module 5, I’ll outline the advantages of a paid account (and there are some) but a free account is more than sufficient to do 90% of what can be done on LinkedIn, so for now that’s the option you should go with.
Hiding what you’re doing By default, LinkedIn notifies all your contacts when you make a change to your profile. If you are currently employed and don’t want to attract attention, you won’t want people to know that you are updating your profile. To make sure no one knows, you’ll need to make a change to your settings. (If you’re
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new to LinkedIn and don’t yet have any contacts, you can ignore this step.) For everyone else, to change this setting: Look for your name on the top right-hand side of the page. Hover over this and a dropdown box will appear showing the option “Settings.” Choose “Settings” and you will come to a main page for editing your profile settings. We’ll cover most of this in Module 2, but for now all we need to do is turn off alerts so that your contacts don’t know you made any changes. Towards the bottom of this page you will see this:
Fig. 1
Choose the first option “Turn on/off your activity broadcasts” and then uncheck the box. Hit “Save changes” and you’re ready to start editing your profile without anyone knowing. Note that you should change this back once you’re done, as these updates are a key way of keeping your name in front of your contacts (which might be important if one of them is looking to hire someone like you in the future).
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Editing or Creating Your Profile When you first log in, you will always be taken to your “Home page” — this is a dashboard type page where you can see updates from your friends and contacts, and also access all the different features LinkedIn offers. Across the top you’ll see the navigation bar where your options are Home, Profile, Contacts, Groups, Jobs, Inbox, Companies, and More. Hovering the cursor over one of the words in this bar gives you a list of all the available options. Hover over “Profile” and you’ll see the first option is “Edit Profile.”
Fig. 2
Choose that option and you will be taken to your Profile page, ready to start either editing what’s there or creating your page from scratch. Let’s work through your profile in the order it appears on the site.
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Your Professional Headline Right under your name is a space to describe yourself. It looks like this:
Fig. 3
This section of your profile is critically important because it is the first thing people see when they search. But if you don’t write something, LinkedIn will automatically populate this field with your current (or most recent) job title. This is a huge lost opportunity because when anyone runs a keyword search in LinkedIn, your professional headline is the only thing they see. To show you what I mean, I ran two different searches. The first was for the keyword “accounting manager” (let’s imagine for a second that we are recruiters who have been asked to find an accounting manager). Running that search, this is what I got (names disguised for privacy):
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Fig. 4
Notice that every single account manager has allowed LinkedIn to autopopulate his or her professional headline. Putting yourself into the recruiters’ shoes, you can see that you would have very little way to decide whose profile to read. You’d really be forced to choose by industry (if you can figure out what industry these people work in) and you may overlook the perfect candidate just because you don’t know that he/she has the background.
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Now let’s run another search, this time for the title ‘Marketing Manager.’ This time the results are better. As you would expect, these marketing managers are much more adept at self-promotion than our accountants.
Fig. 5
All of these people except the last one have customized their profiles and their headlines give recruiters a much better sense of whether to click through and learn more. So how do you write a headline that communicates your strengths and makes managers want to talk to you? Especially as you have only a limited number of characters to play with (once you exceed the limit, LinkedIn will let you know). Here’s how:
1 . Know your target audience:
What do employers and recruiters care most about when hiring someone like you? Whatever that is, it needs to be right in your headline. For example, a qualified CPA must include “CPA” in her headline as that qualification is a requirement for many jobs. A Marketing Manager might
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emphasize his mix of traditional, web, and social media marketing expertise. No matter what information you choose to include, make sure it’s the two or three key facts that would convince a recruiter to further read your profile.
2 . Be factual and stay away from hype:
I recently rewrote a profile for an entertainment industry executive who had customized his headline but made it much too self-promotional. His headline read: Strategic and visionary executive with the power to turn around your entertainment business. I like the intent, but I think the execution is a little too hype-filled and as a result will turn off some readers. Instead, we wrote his headline this way: Entertainment Executive with 15 years Experience | ABC, NBC, Sony Music & Warner Bros | Record of Turnarounds | MBA, Wharton Now his headline reads as a series of facts. He has 15 years of experience, so the reader knows he’s not inexperienced. He has worked for some top companies (and including these names also helps if a recruiter searches for employees of those companies). He has a record of turnarounds. And, finally, he has an MBA from a highly respected business school.
I recommend working hard to hone this part of your profile because it’s so crucial. First, determine the key facts someone might want to know about a person applying for the work you want to do. These will vary depending on the type of work you do, but here are some possibilities: Number of years of experience (never go above 15. Just say 15+) Function (e.g. HR, marketing, accounting, etc.) Level (E.g. Manager, VP, associate, CEO). Industry expertise (if you want to stay in the same industry) Degree (if particularly impressive) Professional qualifications (e.g., CPA, LEED, PMP) Skills that are especially important for your profession Specialties (e.g., company start-ups, user interface design, PHP programming) Big name employers or clients Particularly impressive accomplishment
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Your availability (if your search is not a secret) Something personal (e.g., hobby or passion) Your current job title and employers (if it’s impressive) To get a sense of what’s important within your profession or industry, spend some time reviewing job postings. Look for the common themes. What skills, experiences, or character traits are commonly asked for? In addition, what does your own experience tell you? What are the unspoken qualifications behind each job posting? For example, it’s unlikely a recruiter will ask for employees from a specific competitor, but you might know that they would love to hire managers away from the top names in your industry. As you think about this, here are some more examples of effective headlines: Sales & Marketing professional with 10+ years of experience in Telecom and Mobile Commerce. Expertise in global sales and channel marketing. (This headline expresses what he does, his industry expertise, and his specialties all in one succinct headline). Creative Director at Bluebottle Web Design | Typography Fiend | User Experience Addict | Winningest Little League Coach in Scranton (This person didn’t want his employers to know he was looking, so he created a headline that is not promotional in any way but still tells recruiters his interests and skills. The last entry adds a little personality and humor.) Consultant specializing in helping US tech companies enter the Chinese market. Extensive relationships with Chinese officials and businesses. (This is a consultant seeking clients rather than a professional looking for a job, but the same principles apply: he communicates his specialty very specifically (only tech companies and only China) and uses his second line to communicate a key selling point for his services.) Company Recruiter with history of reducing the time to fill positions by as much as 78%. In-depth knowledge of sourcing and applicant tracking strategies. (In this headline, the job seeker focuses on her specialty and provides stats to back it up.)
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