Social media is a world of its own and whatever one wants to get out of it, one can.
If you are seeking a job, social media is a great place you can leverage to get a job. Although you can get jobs from practically all the social media platforms, those are mostly randomly.
If you are seriously seeking for a job, LinkedIn is where to be; LinkedIn is the social media platform for professional; the platform is mainly for connecting people and entities in similar industries to ease networking.
Practically every serious professional is on LinkedIn and you have to get with the programme if you are seeking a job.
However, there are certain things you have to be acquainted with if you want your search to be successful. There are so many accounts on the platform and as a job seeker, you don't want your profile to be lost amongst the multitude; you want to stand out.
If you are serious about your job search, then you want to be serious about any platform that might help you find a job. It is important to take the time to complete your profile. You can dedicate hours to it to make sure it is exactly as you want and increase your chances of getting a job. Don't just leave it to chance, actually put in the work to make sure no important part is left blank. Fortunately, LinkedIn helps you by giving you ideas on how to make your profile stronger; you can simply follow the recommendations.
Take time to do a search engine optimisation on your profile. Search for keywords that are related to your industry, job position and skill that rank high on SEO. Recruiters also search for job seekers using certain keywords and you will want to know those words, so you can be easily discovered. You can sprinkle those words in your summary, experiences and achievements but make sure you are not just throwing words around that will make you seem phoney or pompous or even incoherent. One section that you can take advantage of to use keywords is the skills section. LinkedIn gives the opportunity to put about 50 skills, so you can knock yourself out in the skills section. It is important that you use the keywords subtly in your summary.
People are more likely to relate with you if you have a picture on your profile. It is fallacious to think a picture doesn’t matter because LinkedIn is a professional platform; people want to relate with a human, not a blank picture. However, make sure to use the appropriate picture. Dress nice, look professional and smile; smiling will make you seem accommodating and approachable. Another idea that is recommended is putting a picture showing you at work; it unconsciously communicates a willingness to work to recruiters. If you are not sure of what works, go through the profiles of people in your industry to get an idea of the kind of picture to put up. On the other hand, don't leave your background photo blank as well. Recruiters will appreciate the extra effort and it will add a little colour to your profile. You don't have to use a personal picture for the background, you can instead use an image that represents your industry or your job position.
LinkedIn custom profile URL comes with a bunch of numbers that are not only unnecessary but also doesn’t work well for a publicised profile. Thankfully, LinkedIn provided the opportunity to edit your personal URL, many people overlook for long but it will make you stand out from the bunch. It is easy to edit your profile URL as well. Use a desktop for this; go to the bottom of the grey window that shows your basic information of the “edit profile” page. Click “Edit” beside the “Public Profile URL” and go ahead to edit to the URL you will prefer and save once done.
Recommendations are like reviews on products; they go a long way to suggesting to recruiters if you are someone they will like to have further talks with or not. If you have done a great job for someone that is on LinkedIn or met on LinkedIn, you should reach out to the person to recommend you on LinkedIn. Also, don't be shy to suggest what you will want them to write because it is your profile and you want to make sure it is communicating what you will want to communicate. Try to make sure the recommendation is not generic or strategic, especially to certain relevant skills that you will want to highlight. You can also choose to hide or show recommendations or even dismiss them before it goes public because LinkedIn alerts you of any recommendations. This will help you choose only the recommendations that you want to go public.
The fact that LinkedIn is a professional platform trick many people into treating it like a resume. It is a social media platform and while you don't have the playfulness that other platforms have, it doesn’t mean you will have to completely lose the human touch. Put a personal touch in your profile and write your summary as though you are having a conversation with someone. Let anybody that goes through your profile feel a sense of your personality from what they are reading. Don't fall into the trap of using the third person to address yourself, it only makes recruiters feel out of touch with you as a person.
Your headline is the first contact that anybody that goes through your profile has with you, so make sure it is catchy enough to make them keep going. In fact, you are likely to catch the attention of recruiters if you do not make your job search the first contact they have with you. Sell yourself with your headline and draw them in. If you can work it in, you can work a good keyword into your headline. But make sure it is catchy and not just an attempt to add a keyword.
Your summary is another opportunity to sell yourself; a very captivating 3-5 paragraphs of who you are and what you have to offer can buy any recruiter to what you have to offer. Many job seekers fall into the trap of wanting to use bogus words, such as analytical, dedicated, innovative, driven, organisational amongst others, to draw recruiters in. Try to creatively show that you have value to offer without necessarily sounding phoney. This is where you want to talk about your experiences and accomplishments, including results to prove success. You can also include your passion and how it relates to your job and the value you are looking to add in any organisation you join.
The best way to get a job is to be recommended for it or even personally referred to it and you can get that through networking. Join groups strategically; instead of joining groups randomly, join industry-based groups or groups that are based on similar industries. However, it is not enough to join these groups; you have to actively participate in the groups to get noticed. Apart from being active, strategically seek people out and engage them. Remember not to be persistent or reach out to people when you have nothing in particular to discuss. So, it is important to be even knowledgeable about your industry so when you engage people, you know what you are talking about. You want to be remembered for being knowledgeable and not otherwise.
Another great way to get noticed is to show off your skills as a writer or just weigh on developments in your industry or even popular issues. Try as much as possible, however, to stay away from controversial topics; you don't know which topic might offend potential employers. But making posts, commenting intelligently on the posts of others can quickly get you noticed and could just get you your desired job.
Recruiters are looking for achievers, so they purposely look for people who have achieved a lot because that is the only guarantee they have that they can get the same value in their organisation. So, add all the projects that you were a part of and were successfully carried out.
Many applicants make the mistake of keeping the current job section blank because they are not currently in a job. You will likely be skipped if you do because many recruiters use the current job section to search for applicants, so as to reduce the number of entries they have to go through. The best thing is to list the job position you are seeking and put “In Transition” or “Seeking New Opportunities” or “Seeking Opportunities” in the company name box.
Multimedia does not only add colour to your profile, but a profile with multimedia also attracts more recruiters than a profile that is without. Pictures and videos always add spice to a page but the multimedia will serve a proof to anybody that goes through your summary. So, don't hesitate to include slides, presentations, videos and images that show you in action and corroborate what you have down in your summary.
This might look simple but often taken for granted. Don't forget to add contact info, so the recruiters can contact you.
You should definitely include interest and volunteer services if you have any. You never know what will catch the interest of a recruiter; it could be shared interest or the fact that you take time to offer volunteer services.
Getting a job levering LinkedIn is fairly simple and it all begins with a great LinkedIn profile.
very good and educative job alerts. keep up the good work ive shared them to friends. thank you
Caught my attention. I've been avoiding many important areas in my cv, wonderful and educative job alert.
Fantastic. Very educative.