There’s no denying that as far as social media sites go, LinkedIn is the most effective in growing your career and selling your skills, or finding the talent your company needs. It’s a great place to showcase your talents, represent your skill set and sell yourself to potential employers. You can literally grow your career using LinkedIn. But like most tools, it’s best when used properly – but how can you do that?
Let’s first discuss why you should use LinkedIn to further your professional career. Then we can dive into the intricacies of what LinkedIn has to offer and how you can use its features to your advantage.
Why You Should Choose LinkedIn
Being entirely honest, it’s tempting to just stick to what you know. Twitter and Facebook are old favourites and you’re sure you can work them to your favor. The problem with both of these and many other social media platforms is they aren’t specialized and are flooded with mundane accounts intent on little more than sharing material or posting about personal lives. There’s also far less headhunters knocking around on such varied platforms.
LinkedIn was made for professionals, is full of freelancers and skilled persons looking for jobs to utilize their skills and since it’s known as a hub for talented persons, plenty of recruiters join and peruse the site in search of talent. Linked separates the wheat from the chaff and puts you in a prime position to be spotted, so long as your profile stands out.
With that in mind, let’s look at making a profile that sells your skills.
General Practices: Setting Up For Success
Despite being for professionals and not general users, LinkedIn is still a social platform. Making use of the inter-connectivity and interactions available takes little time or effort, and can be done through these simple steps:
Get Personal: When asking replying to messages, be sure to personalize them and be courteous. You want to make a good first impression and encourage a good rapport. You can even provide potential recommenders with notes to help them along the way, once they’ve agreed.
Choose Recommendations Wisely: You have the ability to include recommendations from others on your profile. Make sure they’re relevant, high quality and showcase your work ethic as well as your skills. Every recommendation should offer something different, to bolster your profile.
Keep it Fresh: Update your profile often, keeping your education and work status up to date. It would be a shame to lose a potential job because you’d already taken another one; a refusal will be remembered, while a missed opportunity can always be revisited.
Be Active: Make sure to check in at least once a week, send congratulations to connections who land a new job and add your endorsements whenever you feel driven, since they’re quick and easy. You can also join groups to expand your reach in a chosen circle and increase your chance of being discovered for a dream job.
Grow Your Career Using LinkedIn: Easy Ways To Enhance Your Profile
With basics under your belt, it’s time to consider how to stand out. To do you, you need to think about your skills and attributes: What makes you special, compared to other candidates? How can you convey these on your profile? Here’s a few easy ways to enhance your LinkedIn profile:
Skills, Skills, Skills!: Highlight your personal skills on your profile, as doing so is guaranteed to get more hits on searches made by recruiters. Don’t stop at specialized skills either. You can include anything that makes you a good candidate; organization, timeliness, shorthand skills. So long as it’s a professional boost, jot it down.
Develop Your Skills: While you’re waiting for employment, check out what others in your field can do and see how you match up. Have an uncommon skill? Prominently highlight it on your profile for recruiters to see.
Never Stop Learning: Make sure of the LinkedIn Learning content to bolster your profile and fill in those holes. Continuous learning is never a waste of time or resources, and you’ll have something new to add to your profile afterwards.
Bonus: There’s An App For That
Struggling to keep up with engagement or make meaningful connections? Investing in an app to add your LinkedIn profile to any emails, maintain social media engagement or mine information from contacts for interests will help you.
Check out Crystal, ELinkPro or Linkedin’s own Sales Navigator for some automated assistance.
Michael Dehoyos assists companies in marketing strategy concepts and contributes to numerous sites and publications. He’s also a web developer and editor at Academic brits.