Five Ways To Get The Most Out Of LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the professional networking site, is an invaluable resource and tool when it comes to job searches and recruitment. It can help you find the right role for you, secure your next interview and make meaningful connections. Just take a look at some of the stats. But how do you get the most of LinkedIn?

• Almost 830 million members (33 million of whom are in the UK)
• More than 10% of the global population has a LinkedIn account
• 95 job seekers apply for a job on LinkedIn every second
• 6 people are hired on LinkedIn every minute
• Hires on LinkedIn have increased by 88% in 2022

So, how do you harness all this power?

How To Harness The Power Of LinkedIn & Secure Your Next Role

1. Understand how headhunters use LinkedIn

If you’re hoping to secure your next role through LinkedIn, it helps to understand how headhunters and recruiters use the platform to find candidates for positions they’re trying to fill.

Typically, they’ll look for talent in industry groups, search to see who is recommending and endorsing people, find similar candidates to the ones they know and use Google to search for public profiles.

Knowing this means that you can tailor your LinkedIn account to come up in headhunter and recruiter searches. Join industry groups. Endorse and recommend people (and ask for endorsements and recommendations). Widen your network by making connections, and ensure your profile is set to public so you can be found in a Google search.

2. Optimise your LinkedIn profile

Much has been written about the best ways of best ways to make your LinkedIn profile stand out, and you could go to the nth degree, but there are some key points you should definitely cover:

• Make sure you have a professional headshot – no selfies or pictures of your dog, it’s not Facebook
• Write a targeted headline – what is it that makes you stand out?
• Maximise the profile summary section – and be aware that only the first two lines of your summary show up in search results, so get your selling points across here
• Add a little personality – while your profile should be professional, show a glimpse of the person behind it
• Make sure your profile is set to #opentowork so recruiters know that you’re actively seeking a new role

If you need help optimising your LinkedIn profile, check out our LinkedIn profile writing service and discover how City CV can help you build influence, boost credibility and open doors that would otherwise be closed.

3. Manage your skills & endorsements section

As we mentioned above, recruiters and headhunters look at this section to confirm the skills you’ve said you have. If you have plenty of endorsements, that’s a really positive signal, so reach out to your network to ask them to endorse you.

When you have a number of endorsements, you can reorder them so that the most important or relevant ones show up first.

On the flip side, it’s just as important that you endorse others as this also shows up on your profile and highlights both how you support others and how wide your network is.

4. Get active

Having an outstanding profile and a long list of endorsements is great (and necessary), but you have to ensure your profile is kept at the top of searches by being regularly active on LinkedIn. The key is consistency.

This means writing posts, ideally linked to your industry or job role, joining and being active in groups, commenting on and sharing others’ posts and actively growing your network.

5. Build your network

LinkedIn wouldn’t have the power it does without the people – who you connect and network with can make a real difference to your career.

This doesn’t just mean making new connections, it means building and nurturing them, and even being useful to them.

Contribute to the conversation, provide advice or tips and add value where you can. Yes, it might not feel comfortable to begin with, but try treating your LinkedIn feed like a networking event and you’ll soon get used to it. As with anything, it’s about practice. If you do it often enough, you’ll position yourself as authentic, trustworthy and as an expert in your field.