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Follow us @PosIgnition www.positionignition.com
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.
Follow us @PosIgnition www.positionignition.com
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.
Follow us @PosIgnition www.positionignition.com
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 [email protected] for more information or to suggest additional resources.