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How to use LinkedIn to impact your career
Looking for career opportunities or career advice?
LinkedIn offers a platform where millions of professionals can form connections; it promotes your online identity in a professional manner; and it’s usually the first result that comes up in search pages, giving potential employers access to positive information about you.
Don’t have a LinkedIn profile? Sign up for LinkedIn now and follow these 3 steps to ensure your profile lands you that job interview you’ve always wanted:
Step 1: Creating the perfect LinkedIn profile and resume
Want to stand out among the 450 million professionals using LinkedIn? Here are a few ways you can make your profile and online resume impressive:
The headline
This is used to define your industry and the role you have within it
- Keep it succinct
- Be professional
- Use key terms
Your name
- Do include your first, last and middle name
- Don’t use humorous job titles or nicknames
Your profile picture
When selecting the appropriate headshot, consider your industry, as well as potential consumers and peers you may come into contact with, and choose an image that would make the best first impression on those people.
Adding a photo to your profile makes you 36 times more likely to receive a message on LinkedIn.
Your summary
The secret to creating a LinkedIn profile that shows up in LinkedIn search results is to craft a killer summary. Write a concise description of who you are, and include your present and future career endeavors.Before you begin, ask yourself these 3 questions:
Before you begin, ask yourself these 3 questions:
- Who do you want to reach with your summary?
- What do you want them to learn or do?
- How do you want them to feel?
Tip: Adding media to your summary gives credibility to who you are and your career achievements. Include videos, slideshows, blog posts and articles.
Your experience
This section acts as an online resume, and is another way to support what you have said about your career experience and skill set. Use this section as a way to add more intrigue and keep people reading your profile for longer.
Why should you complete your profile?
The main reason is to ensure you appear in LinkedIn search results. The search algorithm display results in this order:
- 100% complete profiles
- Shared connections
- Connections by degree (1st, 2nd and 3rd)
- Groups in common
Users with completed profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn
Step 2: Send recommendation requests
This is a great way of enhancing your credibility, and building a strong network of successful connections – something which will afford you more career opportunities. Recommendations are written by other LinkedIn members who have worked with you in the past. It’s important to try get up to two recommendations for each of your most important former positions.
The difference between recommendations and endorsements?
Endorsements are still very important for LinkedIn’s algorithm, but these are more subtle signals of advocacy and aren’t as credible as recommendations.
Step 3: Use LinkedIn Publisher to boost your career opportunities
This is a great tool for getting exposure for your business or brand. Whenever you publish a post, your connections and followers will receive a notification about it and are often also notified about it via email. What better way to get more eyes on your LinkedIn page, and create brand awareness while doing so?
If your content is really good and generates a large amount of likes, shares and comments, LinkedIn rewards you by adding it to LinkedIn Pulse – a hub of content that is highly indexed by Google and LinkedIn search. If your article is trending on LinkedIn Pulse, you can expect to receive a lot of exposure.
LinkedIn users that include skills in their profiles receive on average, 13 times more profile views.
Add to your skill set today with an online short course