Let’s be clear upfront – LinkedIn is unlike any other social media website. It is for professionals, by professionals and of professionals. You get to showcase your achievements, past and present, creating a visually coherent flow of your bio, so hiring HR managers and recruiters can jump right where you may mean the most to them.
LinkedIn provides a comprehensive portfolio – sharing platforms for your “like” groups, becoming a Company/Organization follower, sharing posts and comments, all besides the usual education and employment have beens.
And why bother to spend time on making an All Star profile, you may ask? Well, ‘coz it’s effective in the process of being noticed as a serious job seeker, with all the goodies your profile promises.
Don’t just take our word for it. A 2014 study by The Adecco Group, world’s leading provider of HR solutions based out of Zurich, conducted among job seekers and recruiters, showed the following results. Job seekers, a total of 17,272 from 24 countries, agree that LinkedIn stands way above Facebook, Twitter, and their likes, in Effectiveness Index of Social Media for Recruitment Purposes. LinkedIn scores at 0.13 on a scale where -1 is the least effective and 1 is the most. In comparison, here are the other tallies.
| Effective Index of Social Media for Recruitment Purposes, for Job Seekers | |
|---|---|
| Social Media | Effectivity Index (-1 to 1) |
| -0.29 | |
| Youtube | -0.56 |
| 0.13 | |
| -0.42 | |
| Blog | -0.43 |
| Tumblr | -0.63 |
| -0.64 | |
| -0.64 | |
| Viadeo | -0.51 |
| -0.60 | |
| Source: Figure 4, Global Report for Job Search, Digital Reputation, and HR Practices in the Social Media Age | |
And recruiters, 1,501 from 24 countries, concur, more strongly than you would imagine. LinkedIn, for recruiters, gets them closer to their desired candidate, effective at 0.60 on the index. The other sites pale in comparison.
In fact, another study by Global Trends, in 2015, claims that top recruiters are 60% more engaged on LinkedIn recruiting tools as compared to average recruiters. Read How Social Media is used in recruitment.
| Effective Index of Social Media for Recruitment Purposes, for Recruiters | |
|---|---|
| Social Media | Effectivity Index (-1 to 1) |
| 0.05 | |
| Youtube | -0.48 |
| 0.60 | |
| -0.20 | |
| Blog | -0.41 |
| Tumblr | -0.55 |
| -0.55 | |
| -0.55 | |
| Viadeo | -0.48 |
| -0.38 | |
| Source: Figure 12, Global Report for Job Search, Digital Reputation, and HR Practices in the Social Media Age | |
What does this mean for you, the job seeker?
You need to dress up your profile. If recruiters are hunting for talent, your name will most likely not occur in their dreams. The idea is to become discoverable to the employers. And there are some known ways to go about it.
If you still don’t trust us, you should try to see the difference for yourself, on the “Who’s viewed your Profile” section of your LinkedIn account. What’s more, it even tells you what category of people are sneaking into your page. People similar to you, recruiters and so on.
So try these tips and let us know how popular you feel, later.
7 LinkedIn Tips to improve your chances of getting a job
1. Your picture is worth a thousand keywords
A nice headshot, preferably not taken on the bathroom mirror, is the smart choice. Limit the background off pets, drunken pals or contraband items. The relatively new backdrop image feature is also a nice touch. Make this one vaguely relevant to your field.
And please don’t muddy the perception by uploading an image from your high school year book, that is if the last time you were in high school was 15 years ago! Mind the resolution please.
2. The heady header
Declare your current position, your type and a brief peek into your skills. Technical Writer at ABC Corporation | Content Writer and Developer. This field should be keyword rich as this would be the first thing, right after your hire me snapshot, to draw the attention of recruiters. And plus, this should match the many different little buzzwords about the job requirement that you are intending to seek.
When recruiters look for candidates, they can only get so creative while searching for who to view. If they are looking for a Content Developer and you are a Content Developer, then it would not do you any good to label your header Aspiring to be the next J K Rowling!
3. A Complete Story
Take out time to fill out all the details, your whole educational background and at least your last two employment histories, in case it is too long a list to remember. Your location is a must to get the right recruiters to notice you. Add the little sections for volunteer work, certificates you have managed to secure, or works that you have published.
And don’t forget to chalk out a catchy Summary, keeping true to the keywords for the radar hit. A quick hint is to scour the details of the job requirements of your desired position, in your desired organizations, and then sprinkling the words in your profile, within reason. Provide a short description about yourself, followed by any blog or website links, if you have one.
The big idea is to mark yourself as a brand, championing a subject, a niche, a field, or some topic that you have enough knowledge about. You should be able to talk about it, as a mini to mega sized expert, on blogs or forums.
Given enough time, your name should become synonymous with that subject matter (Read Build and improve your career by blogging).
That’s a golden one for getting noticed. Though this one needs some work, and patience to see it through.
4. Customize your LinkedIn Public Profile URL
LinkedIn lets you do that. So instead of a public profile address of https://www.linkedin.com/in/J_67hdflkl, you can edit it to be a bit more memorable https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakhi-acharyya-phd/.
If you are unsure as to how to go about it, try turning your head right towards the “Edit your Public Profile” section. The rest will follow. If your name is too common and you are unable to stake a claim on the basic name URL, try adding the added frills, like a PhD, CEO or POTUS.
5. Arrange the Recognitions
Feels good to get a recommendation or an endorsement, right? Well then don’t just let them lie around without purpose. You can request your connections for a healthy dose of atta girl. Also try to filter out the unnecessary endorsements out to get the ones that matter at the top.
6. Work on your connections
Recruiters respond well to a healthy number of connections. But even more useful is to get the right ones (Read Professional Networking). Remember to get connected with business networks asap, like the very night the conference dinner gets over.
HR consultants, responsible for hiring, may just rely on candidates closely connected with one of their company employees. Associations bear some amount of trust.
7. Be a Groupie
Get all active on the group circuit. If you happen to be following the company, whose recruiter is now on a look out with candidates of your profile, you may just score a bit better than your somewhat disloyal job seeking pals.
Pay attention to articles, and posts, and drop in your words of wisdom once in a while. Active users, with a strong display of knowledge, are noticeable. They also happen to be putting themselves out there for more connections in like fields. Be an active poster sharing your updates, and blog articles, regularly.
Additional LinkedIn Tips and Tricks to get you closer to your dream job
But once you’ve implemented these changes, you will see a distinct chatter about your profile page. Follow the feedback feature on your LinkedIn (who viewed your profile and its deeper breakdowns) to tweak further improvements, if necessary.
You can even try the LinkedIn Premium membership to get into more details of your profile views or even be among the better matched candidates when recruiters are out hunting.
In all, Social Media, and its network, is how the world largely communicates now. You can choose to stay away and refrain from a public presence, online, all you want. But if you are planning to expand, grow, or even sustain your career, you should consider the impact Social Networking has on moving and shaking up yours.
It is true that you can build on offline professional networks but you will definitely have to come up with an innovative strategy to be in their sight and on their mind to stay relevant. Comparing that to LinkedIn, a complete profile and regular engagement can jog the memory cells of all your connections, bringing in more with each network branching out.
So go ahead, tell us your story. We, and definitely some recruiters somewhere, are listening!
This is so true. I’ve been living in Australia for the past 3 years now and I can’t agree more on the importance of LinkedIn, especially in a foreign country where you don’t have any prior connections. It’s a very insightful platform to me.