LinkedIn: A Powerful Online Resource for a Job Search & for Networking

I didn’t say much about LinkedIn in my recent blog about personal social media. That’s because LinkedIn is a professional social media platform. The approach to LinkedIn – if you’re on the job market now or expect to be at some point – is very different from other platforms. It’s the opposite. With personal social media, the goal is to curate anything public-facing. Your private life remains mostly private, and a recruiter or hiring manager only sees what you want them to see. With LinkedIn, it’s more about using the platform well to build up the kind of presence that you want professional contacts to see.

There are many ways to use LinkedIn to expand and engage with a professional network. As a starting point here, we’ll focus on making sure your profile is as good as possible, making connections, and using some of the engagement tools the site provides.

Your LinkedIn Profile

In a way, your LinkedIn profile is like an online resume. Like your resume, your profile should be kept current, with your professional experience and other activities up to date. Like a resume, your work experience should focus more on your achievements – your work’s impact on your company – than on tasks and duties.

Your LinkedIn profile is much more potent than a traditional resume, though. Because of the nature of the platform, this means thinking about your resume in the same way an SEO specialist thinks about optimizing a web page for search engines and users to find it.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

The right keywords help you show up. While recruiters scan resumes for keywords, LinkedIn allows them to search the entire database for these (the same way Google scans for relevant information on a website). As you write your profile, think about the terms a recruiter might be searching for if they were looking for you. Ensure that these keywords and phrases are scattered throughout.

A good preview generates clicks. Google’s summary of a webpage on the search results page determines whether someone will click through or not. Similarly, your photo, headline, and summary are the first things someone will see on a search results page. They’ll base their decision to click on your profile on what they see there. A good quality, professional profile picture and a summary and headline that capture your experience. More importantly, what you offer to a prospective employer – are so important.

A strong profile attracts interest. The top half of the first page of a resume is the most important ‘real estate’. On your LinkedIn profile, focusing particular attention on the information that’s ‘above the scroll’ – the content someone will see without scrolling down the page. Your photo, headline, and summary are there, as are your skills and perhaps the most recent job or two. Of all the content on your profile, make sure this is top-notch.

Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Network

Once you’ve got your profile in great shape, it’s time to start making connections. Some people measure their professional worth by the number of LinkedIn connections. Growing a network well, though, should be more quality than quantity. Be thoughtful about the kinds of people with whom you request connections. Current and former colleagues and fellow alumni are a good start. Close industry contacts – especially with numerous connections in common – are also fair game. Random connection requests with no evident correlation won’t do much good and could damage your credibility.

When you connect, be thoughtful about how you engage those new connections. It’s OK to send a quick, direct message to thank them for connecting. But it’s off-putting to most people to have a new contact immediately ask for something – jumping in with a sales pitch, for example, or requesting an introduction to a mutual connection.

Like networking offline, think more about what you can offer to your growing community than what you can get from it.

Using the LinkedIn Platform

The first rule for using LinkedIn is to be active. As mentioned above, your profile should always be current and accurate. Updates are great ways to stay top-of-mind with your contacts, as they’ll see those updates in their feed. Each week, find some time to interact with your newsfeed: liking and commenting on posts that others have made and posting to your profile. As a quick aside, more and more people are using LinkedIn to post things that would be more at home on Facebook. When you’re posting and sharing, keep it professional. It doesn’t belong here if it’s not something you’d talk about at a professional networking event.

Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Network

As your network grows, offer recommendations and endorsements to others that you know professionally, and ask your close working contacts for them. In addition to highlighting your skills and abilities, these recommendations and endorsements help your profile’s SEO. LinkedIn displays profiles with these features higher up in search results.

Lastly, use interests and groups wisely. Following interests relevant to your professional field will populate your feed with current developments and news stories that are valuable to share with your network. The discussions in relevant groups that you join will do the same. Those groups can also be a rich source of future connections – people with whom you share interests and goals and who might just be the link to your next great career move.

LinkedIn: A Powerful Online Resource for a Job Search & for Networking, can be one of the most valuable tools in a professional’s toolbox if used well. How are you using the platform, and how strong a profile do you have? I’d be happy to look at yours, give you an objective viewpoint, and maybe suggest a few things you could do to make it even better. Feel free to get in touch.

Additional Resources

Rock Your LinkedIn Profile

Learning LinkedIn (2021)

How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Recommendation in Under 2 Min