Leveraging LinkedIn

If you are thinking about changing your career, adding another part-time position, a volunteer or board position role, joining a network, seeking a mentor, or creating a successful relationship with your clients, users, or vendors, then LinkedIn is one of the best tools I can recommend.

Use LinkedIn to tell a story about you.  Take advantage of it!  Don’t let the platform just use you for data!

Over the past ten years, I have extensively used LinkedIn to screen many hundreds of applicants for positions I have been interviewing for. In addition, I recently leveraged LinkedIn to get myself recruited for a position at a company that is an amazing fit for me. To be more visible to recruiters, I didn’t pay for anything, I just spent some time to keep my profile updated and took advantage of free features for attracting recruiters.

2 Reasons to Leverage LinkedIn

1. Resume Replacement

It’s already a necessary complement, but LinkedIn will/has become a replacement for your resume in many cases.

• Many career websites for companies now ask you to apply THROUGH LINKEDIN. This makes applicants easy to read and compare. While you can also append a resume, they will be looking at your LinkedIn profile in these cases for sure.
• If you apply to a company that requests resumes and cover letters in the traditional way, they are very likely to still seek you out online; having an up-to-date LinkedIn shows you are professional and serious about your job hunt.
• Recruiters are out there looking for someone with your skills and experience and they won’t find you without a LinkedIn profile.

Quick and Impactful Updates You Can DO NOW

Picture This

• Get a photo on there, like, yesterday.
• As per LinkedIn, a pic “will help get you recognized and connect to potential opportunities. Members with a profile photo receive up to 21x more profile views and 9x more connection requests”.
• Photo checklist:
  • should be a headshot
  • have only you in the image
  • look appropriate for your profession (i.e., clothing, location, lighting matters)
  • You do not need to spend money on a new pic, just get someone to take a nice photo of you against a blank wall in your home while you are wearing something you might wear to an interview.

List Your Positions

• Get your current position listed, including any title changes/promotions you have had in the past 5-10 years.
• LinkedIn says “Members with current positions are discovered up to 16x more in recruiter searches”.
• High school jobs are not as relevant unless you are very early in your career or there is a direct connection to what you’re searching for now.
• Focus more of your attention on the ones you have been doing most recently.
• Include major responsibilities, and link to any project websites if possible.

Skills Rule

• Open your profile up to recruiters and add SKILLS.
• LinkedIn says this is critical as those “with more than 5 skills are 27x more likely to be discovered in searches by recruiters”.

Make It Personal and Make it YOUR Story

• Write a blurb and a headline. This might take a little bit of time, but get a small paragraph about who and what you are and how you want others to see you.*
• Add your city that you are in since LinkedIn says that including “the city where you are based makes you stand out up to 23x in searches”.
• Set a URL with your name in it to be easier for someone to type in if every needed (i.e., make it easy to find you).
• Fluent and job searching in multiple languages?  Add profiles in the other languages to demonstrate your fluency and reach recruiters in those languages.
• Open your profile up to recruiters with target job keywords and cities of interest.
• Add Projects, link-outs and show evidence of your experience and expertise.
• Use LinkedIn to tell a story about you.  Take advantage of it!  Don’t let the platform just use you for data!

*Sometimes people have trouble describing themselves and their roles, or knowing how much is too little or too much. My advice is to look at other people’s LinkedIn profiles, particularly senior people in your industry, peers, or other professionals you admire.

LinkedIn Premium Profiles

If you do decide you want to pay to get more features, the Premium option usually starts with a free month, then pay ‘as little’ as CA$34.99+tax/month, whihc includes:

• 5 InMails (per month)
  • This is good for strategically targeting active recruiters from 5 different organizations you want to apply to, something you can’t do with a normal account unless they accept you as a connection.
• Who’s Viewed Your Profile
  • Makes networking a snap – just reach out to those that looked at your profile.
• Job Insights
  • Lots of extra insights into the company’s that are posting jobs such as their growth based on number of jobs they have posted over time, plus easier ways to find jobs that match your skills, and salary compare tools to help you with negotiations.
• Featured Applicant
  • Your profile is highlighted to recruiters above other people that match the same key words.
• LinkedIn Learning
  • If you want to do some courses, they are all included in the monthly cost for premium, and there is hours of content.
• Open Profile
  • Allows people to find your profile without being in your network or having a paid recruiter profile = more visibility to those making hiring decisions!
• Resume Builder
  • Nifty little feature to generate a traditional resume document from your finely crafted and up-to-date profile.

Do you need to pay for this? My thoughts are, only if:

• You are going to put in effort to take advantage of it, use the features, do some learning, and be actively job hunting,
• You have already exhausted all the free options on the site to get noticed and you aren’t seeing results, or
• You need more of a boost to break through the noise, such as a very saturated job seeker market in your region.

Final Thoughts

Find 10-15 minutes a month to put towards reviewing and improving your profile, taking advantages of new features as they are constantly rolling out, as well as adding people to your network.

Get a friend to critically review your LinkedIn profile (someone who isn’t scared to rip into your content a little bit).

Let’s be LinkedIn connected! Add me to your network: linkedin.com/in/meganamilton