Job Searching Using LinkedIn
Your LinkedIn profile is your shop window to recruiters and potential employers, and the first place at which potential recruiters will look when they are considering contacting you. Here is a checklist of things to think about when job searching: 1. Consider your job seeking objectives Like any social networking medium you need to firstly decide why and how you will use LinkedIn for your job search. Before you can use LinkedIn, you need to have decided on what role you are looking for. It is no good branding your LinkedIn profile for a role within a professional practice if you decide you want to go in-house. 2. No typos, spelling or grammatical errors please You don’t need to tell us that on-line first impressions count just as much as face-to-face first impressions. It’s also even easier to make assumptions about someone or some group when working with them online rather than face-to-face. Make sure that your profile, as well as being error-free, is succinct and articulate. Ideally, spend as much time working on your LinkedIn profile as you would your CV.
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3. Who do you want to be seen as? Every time you appear on LinkedIn your headline or personal tag line goes with you. Make sure you brand your headline as what you want to be seen as by the on-line community, and especially potential recruiters. It is better to brand yourself for the job you want rather than the job you have. The reason? Recruiters will often search for a specific job title when looking for potential candidates. 4. Write your elevator pitch The summary box in your profile needs to be your personal elevator pitch but targeted at the people you want to see it – i.e. recruiters. Your elevator pitch needs to be why you are different and the value you can bring to an organisation. Make sure you include some of the keywords which recruiters are likely to be searching for. Use the second paragraph – ‘specialties’, to list your specialties as this is a good opportunity to add in keywords as recruiters search on this section. 5. Complete your profile The more complete your profile is, the more jobs LinkedIn will be able to send your way and suggest to you based on what you have written about yourself. Having a complete profile also provides potential employers with the information they need to get a sense of who you are and what you can do, and therefore whether you might be a good fit for their organization - or not. 6. Connect up your social networking presence It is very inefficient to manually update all of your social networking presences. Luckily, LinkedIn can be used to connect up all of your social networking presences. If you have a Twitter account you can link up the updates. If you have a blog, you can pull the RSS feed in of your articles to share them with your connections and to display them on your profile. Think of ways to best co-ordinate your online job search strategy. Follow us @PosIgnition www.positionignition.com
7. Recommendations Most social networking sites have the ability for members to collect recommendations and testimonials. LinkedIn is no different – and your recommendations are very prominently displayed. Do take the time to ask your clients and colleagues to recommend you on LinkedIn. For example, after I finish a coaching relationship I ask my client if they are willing to write me a LinkedIn testimonial. A bunch of positive recommendations can often be the deciding factor between being rung up by a recruiter. 8. Make it consistent Consistency just like integrity and reliability is very important in the online world. Make sure the messages on your website, Twitter biography, (business) Facebook page and other on-line sites you maintain a profile on are all consistent. For example you should use the same avatar for each on-line profile. Recruiters will do online searches for you, BEFORE they decide whether to call you. 9. Keywords Search Engine Optimisation is very important on LinkedIn. Therefore, all those keywords, which you put in the ‘electronic’ version of your CV need to be liberally scattered through your profile. For example, remember to put an industry in your professional summary because recruiters often use that field to search.
10. Check out the jobs section LinkedIn has a dedicated jobs section. Employers post vacancies in the hope that a savvy jobseeker like you will come across them and turn out to be the ideal candidate. Click on the Jobs tab at the top of the homepage and you'll be taken to a keyword search box as well as a list of suggested vacancies based on what your profile says.
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11. Join Groups You'll get more traffic to your profile if people know you exist. One of the best ways to maintain a visible presence on LinkedIn is to join groups and take part in their discussions. If you join several groups in your chosen career field, chances are you will keep coming across a few people who are also in all those groups. People build up a rapport by contributing to one another's discussions in their shared groups.
This checklist has been created by Position Ignition Ltd one of the UK’s leading career consulting companies. Please contact enquiries@positionignition.com for more information or to suggest additional resources.
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