Making Best Use Of Your LinkedIn Profile
With more than 500 million users in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is a great tool for building a professional network, getting yourself noticed by recruiters and promoting yourself within your industry.
By CV Knowhow Senior CV Consultant – Jen David
You’ll first need to set up your profile. Treat this as you would a CV – keep it professional and well presented. If you want to share pictures of your kids / holiday / night out, save them for other social networks.
Complete as many of the available fields as you can. Give details of your responsibilities and achievements in the experience section and write a compelling, engaging introduction for your summary. Although your profile should reflect your CV, it’s common practice to write a LinkedIn profile in the first person as opposed to the third person you would use in a CV.
Having completed your profile, you need to start building a network. The key here is to add as many colleagues and professional contacts as you can. By all means add your mum if you must, but remember that the point of LinkedIn is to build a professional network to support your career progression, not to duplicate your friends lists from other social media sites.
Don’t be afraid to ask your new network to endorse or recommend you on LinkedIn (and don’t forget to offer the same for them in return). In much the same way as a traditional reference, endorsements and recommendations add credibility to your profile.
You can also join groups and follow companies of interest. This is a great way to stay ahead of trending topics and news from your sector and to get the latest information on businesses you’re targeting for a new job. You might even want to write articles of your own, thereby showcasing your knowledge to a wider audience and engaging with more people in the industry.
When you’re ready to begin your job hunt, LinkedIn can notify you of vacancies in your field. You can tailor these to better suit your precise requirements by updating you career interests. Recruiters are also able to search for potential candidates, so make sure your profile contains the relevant keywords to enable them to find you.
Finally, review your security settings and update your contact details. If you’re hoping to be found by a recruiter, the least you can do is make sure they can actually see your profile.