Job Hunting Using LinkedIn

Job hunting using Linkedin means you will need a profile that works. Especially, when you’re looking for a role that suits you, you need to effectively showcase your skills and experience to potential employers.

With over 500 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is the world’s biggest professional social network. Alongside using Senex Recruitment to find great job opportunities, creating a LinkedIn profile is crucial to finding your next job.

You will need a LinkedIn profile that’ll impress prospective employers. On the flipside, you also need to avoid making common LinkedIn profile mistakes. In this article we will expose what we think is the biggest mistake to make with your LinkedIn Profile. It is the number one error we see across the platform and likely to be the main reason you are not being found by potential employers. First we will look at some important advice for writing a good LinkedIn profile.

How to make write a good LinkedIn profile - the essentials

Write a good LinkedIn summary

The LinkedIn summary is the text field that sits beneath your name and profile picture.

It’s your personal pitch to employers to show what you offer, using no more than 2,000 characters (about 250 words).

The best LinkedIn summaries establish career goals, highlight relevant skills and experiences, and address any career history gaps.

Job Hunting Using LinkedIn:Tips for a great LinkedIn summary

Think about your “mission statement”

Most people use their LinkedIn summary section to simply describe what they’re currently doing career-wise. They’re missing a trick: The key to a good LinkedIn summary is to spell out your ambitions. It’s helpful to start by looking at what drives you at work.

Your mission statement should be at the heart of your summary. Use it to link together your previous experience with your future career goals.

Tell a compelling "story"

It’s easy to see your career history as a list of facts and dates and forget that it’s part of a larger personal story.

Make sure you tell a compelling and personal story by talking in the first person, Otherwise, you miss the opportunity to introduce yourself to potential employers on a personal level Imagine what you’d say to a potential employer if you were in an elevator with them for a few minutes. Think about the key points you’d like to get across and how you’d do this in an engaging, targeted way – and do it in your summary. Remember LinkedIn is a Social network.

Choose specific examples of your skills and experience

Highlight achievements that best demonstrate your values, skills, and/or progress towards your goals. Use the STAR (Situation, Target, Action, Result) technique to detail your achievements. This is a framework that is often used in competency interviews – using it in your summary will ensure your examples are targeted and effective. Conclude your summary by providing a “call to action.”

Show off your work and education experience with your LinkedIn "CV"

The work and education sections are the areas of your profile that most resemble an online CV, with space for the name of each institution you have worked / studied at, job titles, dates, and details of each role. But your LinkedIn profile should complement, not replace, your CV. Whereas it’s expected that a CV is a detailed breakdown of your work and education experience (you can read our recent article on CV writing here). Keep things short on your LinkedIn profile. Recruiters will often scan multiple profiles looking for relevant candidates, so your work experience needs to be a quick “hook” that makes them want to contact you . Here is what we recommend.

For each of your roles, pick 3 to 4 of your most impressive and relevant responsibilities and/or achievements to highlight. Where possible, use numbers and statistics to evidence your skills. Use appropriate language for your industry, including technical keywords. Address any gaps in your work history, while it can be tempting to simply leave out a career gap due to circumstances like travelling, redundancy, or starting a family, don’t shy away from it. Remember that employers will check your history. It’s not worth risking your reputation and employment prospects.

Regularly review your profile and remember that your CV is only seen when you provide it to a potential employer – but your LinkedIn profile is on view all the time!

What is the biggest mistake people make on LinkedIn and how to rectify it?

To entice potential employers to take a closer look at your profile, you need to know how how LinkedIn works. The information at the very top of a LinkedIn profile is what comes up in the results of a LinkedIn search – namely, a profile picture and a heading (On some version of LinkedIn this will be more - see below).

Employers and Recruiters when searching through LinkedIn will see thousands of potential candidates. Therefore, you need to get this section right if you want to be found.

At most a search result in LinkedIn will show:

Photo

Name

Location

Current Company

Current Title

Time in Role

Possibly a line of the “about section “

Possibly a line of “Employment History”

As mentioned before this is dependent upon the user’s version of LinkedIn (Standard, Sales Navigator or Recruiter). Some, versions provide less information as previously stated. Therefore, if you do not tailor these areas in your profile to reflect the type of job role you are looking for. Recruiters and potential employees will unlikely find you on LinkedIn. Ultimately, your chance of being approached about highly suitable role will be lost.

Example of an incorrectly written LinkedIn Profile

For example, many LinkedIn user who have unfortunately been made redundant change their profile to reflect this.

Therefore, the following sections are changed to:

Current Company: Unemployed

Current Title: Searching for job

Time in Role: i.e. 3 months etc

Possibly a line of the “about section “: Looking for a new job

Possibly a line of “Employment History”: Unemployed

This is the most damaging things a job seeker can do on LinkedIn. It maybe factually true, however the issue is that a recruiter cannot see any of your experience in a search result and will skip over your profile. To rectify this keep all the details of your last employer in these sections along with your last job title. Ensure the first line of the about section and employment history mention your experience in the job you are looking for.  Refer to the redundancy in the summary and turn on the “open to work” option on the profile.

This simple change will make the difference in being found on LinkedIn. As with all things job hunting always think about what the recruiter and employee is looking for and change your approach, CV, profile accordingly.

This article on Job Hunting Using LinkedIn  Is just part of the Careers Advice Senex Recruitment Offers

This Career Advice article on job hunting using LinkedIn is only part of the careers advice we offer. For regular articles on careers advice follow Senex Recruitment on our social media channels for the latest articles  plus jobs in STEM. Our LinkedIn company page can be found here, or use the links below for other channels.

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