LinkedIn

[Enda Goodwin]

LinkedIn is the largest professional networking tool online and is the single most important social networking tool for your career. For individuals in career transition, an updated LinkedIn profile is a must.

Your profile should be filled out completely, with your relevant work experience, specialties, skills, what you’re looking for, and recommendations from former colleagues.

Once you have established a profile, you can use LinkedIn proactively to build your network, develop your expertise, find job leads, and connect with recruiters and hiring managers at the companies of your choice.

Follow these steps to get yourself connected:

Sign up. Go to LinkedIn.com.

Fill in your profile. Important sections to fill out:

 

Profile Picture: Profiles with photos are 7 times more likely to be viewed by recruiters and hiring managers.

Headline: Use 2-3 words describing who you are professionally.

Example of a Headline: Digital Product Manager | Product Owner | Portfolio Manager | Systems Analyst |  Infrastructure Manager

or

Training Specialist | Human Resources Professional | Organizational Development Professional

Do not use: Unemployed, seeking opportunities, retired, formerly a VP of Finance

Summary: Use your positioning statement here.

Your Personal Brand: What story do you want to tell employers? This may be the most important element of your LinkedIn profile. Write a compelling summary. Don’t treat this section as a throwaway, cobbling a couple of sentences together. This is the content that can show up in a Google search. Use your summary to insert key words that will pop out to hiring managers. When they have hundreds of profiles to look at, they may not go beyond the summary if it’s not eye-catching. This is your professional brand, your personality, and your differentiator.

Work Experience: 

• Anything beyond 10 to 15 years is old on LinkedIn.
• Use your most recent experience and insert your responsibility scope and a few accomplishment stories for each role.

Education and Certifications

Skills: Make sure to show 50 skills in this section as this is the section used to find talent!

• Connect with friends and colleagues from the past. Upload your email contacts/address book. Find out who is a member of LinkedIn and invite them to connect. Make sure you add friends, former colleagues, professional contacts and acquaintances.
• Ask for recommendations. Once you’ve connected with people on LinkedIn, choose individuals you trust and request a professional recommendation. If they write a recommendation, this will be displayed on your profile – and will be visible as a testament of your skill to potential employers. Consider asking those who have already said they will be references for you.
• Follow your target companies. Stay up to date on company and industry news.
• Connect with people at your target companies by way of introductions: 2^nd degree connections may be able to help.
• Join professional groups. Many industries and professional associations have networking groups. Do a LinkedIn search for your field, discover which groups exist, then join a few. Groups can help you keep up with your industry’s news, to network and to find job leads.
• Set up your job search preferences. Customize the job openings that are served up to you by selecting title, location, etc.
• Check for 100 percent completeness. When you are done, LinkedIn informs you how complete your profile is. If you’re not hitting 100, then go back and revisit sections that might require a little more work.

Best practices for using LinkedIn

• Write a compelling summary. Don’t treat this section as a throwaway, cobbling a couple of sentences together. This is the content that can show up in a Google search. Use your summary to insert key words that will pop out to hiring managers. When they have hundreds of profiles to look at, they may not go beyond the summary if it’s not eye-catching. This is your professional brand, your personality, and your differentiator.
• Write a personal note with each LinkedIn invitation. When sending an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, the automatic default is the invitation text “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” This is the easy way, but we recommend you take the time to write a personal note. It will set you apart from most of the crowd.
• Send an invitation to connect right after a meeting. If you meet someone new at an event, for instance, and see them as a valuable contact, send a LinkedIn invitation within a day or two of meeting that person. This will ensure they remember meeting you.
• Be proactive. Search for hiring managers and related key words. LinkedIn allows you to search based on keywords in other people’s profiles, so take advantage of this feature to search for hiring managers and others who work at companies of interest.