Linkedin has come to stay as a professional networking site and it is the largest of its kind. With users spanning across 200 countries and over 133 million of them coming from the United States alone, one cannot ignore linkedin when searching for a job, be it onsite or remote.
In this article, I will
share the 6 easy steps I have discovered to land a job with linkedin.
So stay with me.
1. Create A LinkedIn Profile And Optimize It
The key to landing a jobon linkedin is to be discoverable. You cannot be seen where you are not. The
same also applies on linkedin. Your profession may be in high demand in your
immediate environment or elsewhere, yet, you will not be noticed if you are
nowhere to be found on linkedin.
In this article, I will
assume you have a linkedin account already. But if not, head to linkedin and get started.
After registration on
linkedin, you need to optimize your profile page to be easily seen. An
optimized profile page makes you easily discoverable to employers and agencies
looking for your services. Optimization your profile page does the talking for
you when you are offline. How to optimize your profile page for better visibility
depends on how well you fill your profile information like putting a
clear and professional profile image, writing catchy headline with
relevant keywords, your Bio, work experiences, Skills, and Education
attained.
TIP: Linkedin profile
pages with skills are 13 times more likely to have their pages viewed than
profile pages without skills.
Profile optimization is
a continuous process. The more changes and additions you make on your Linkedin
profile page, the more chances you get on being seen. The Linkedin algorithm
works in a way that it rewards profile pages with complete profiles with more
views and search appearance.
2. Share Your Work Experience
Whatever you do on
linkedin, you must remember to be a professional. Professional in the sense that you need to be good at what you do. Nobody on linkedin wants to
hire an imposter or half baked employee.
Sharing your own curated
content and your work on linkedin builds your organic audience.
Authenticity should be seen in your work too. Your works should have a way to show your passion to your audience. It doesn’t have to be perfect work.
Try as much as possible not
to appear salesy. Your posts or whatever you share should add value to your
audience. You don’t necessarily need to dig deep deep to offer value to people,
even reminding them of what you believe they know already is also
valuable. After all, the human brain learns most by repetition.
For example, if you are
a photographer, looking for a job or clients on linkedin. Post one of your best
shots and state why you believe it is the best shot you have taken, why you
took the shot, or what was going on in your mind when you took the shot.
This way, you are selling yourself to your audience. The magic is
that people will only see your passion and not the long statements you
made.
3. Share Your Little Success On LinkedIn
Neglect not the days of
humble beginnings. That is a bible advice anyway.
We are all beginners at
one point in our career journey. You discovered a new thing about your
profession, no matter how small, share it. You had a crazy thought about the
future of your profession, share it. Somebody is seeing those efforts and it
will pay one day.
For Example: A beginner
in programming does not need to learn all the topics in programming
before sharing his “Hello World program”. An easy way to write a particular
function can be shared, or a most often used function can be shared.
4. Connect And Network With Other Linkedin Users
When searching for a job with LinkedIn, utilize the LinkedIn connection and networking feature. On
linkedin, whatever your profession, there are people, hundreds of thousands of
them who are in a similar or related field as yourself. When you come to
linkedin newly, Linkedin recommends some first degree followers you can send a
connection request to. After that, you will need to connect with more people,
either from your list of friends or colleagues at former places of work to grow your connection. People can connect with you too.
TIP: It is not advisable
to send connection requests to people randomly. At least, make sure you are
professionally related to the connection you will make.
In connecting with people, be intentional to connect with relevant people.
Connect with your school alumni who are working in a company you may wish to
work with or professionals working in the role you are seeking a job. This is
the reason why LinkedIn was built in the first place.
Some connections you
make on LinkedIn can be useful in recommending you to their hiring managers
when they see how relevant and knowledgeable you are through profile page or
your posts or little wins you have made over time.
5. Join professional Linkedin Groups
Linkedin groups are
places to explore topics and conversations of interest and there are groups
dedicated to just anything you might be looking for on LinkedIn.
6. Get Recommendations And Endorsement
Recommendation is a
public display of Acknowledgement and it is one of the ways to win new clients.
As a social proof, recommendation is visible to anybody that visits your
profile, letting them see what service you have offered and to what individual
or company.
You can request for recommendation from your LinkedIn connections and offer to
give one in return. It is necessary to get recommendations if you have worked
for some of your connections as it attests to your experience and
expertise. However, as many as your recommendations are, only few people will
read past 10 of them. Don't go hunting.
TIP: Company recommendation is more valuable than individual recommendation.
A helpful Tip : Draft a
recommendation template and send it to anyone you are requesting a
recommendation from. This will take away the hard work from them and make the
recommendation come faster than leaving them to think it all up by
themselves.
7. Follow Company Pages Of Your Target Industry
Many professionals have
confessed to getting a job through this simple tip and it still works.
Follow the company page
you have interest in and connect with HR and people already working in the role
you are seeking for.
8.
Use The Linkedin Job Search Section
Linkedin allows you to
search for jobs from their home page. You can narrow your searches by using
filter words and keywords. When searching for a job, also search for the
company you seek to work with and connect with them. Even if they are not
recruiting at the time, set a job alert to get notified of their future job
postings.
It is known that 94% of
all recruiters use social media as their means of getting new recruits.
Alongside that, 5 billion searches were done on social media only last year.
The Linkedin job section
is a place every job seeker must visit frequently and this section can
make a lot of difference.