Navigating LinkedIn
What is its purpose?
- Job seeking tool
- Building a professional network
- Building an online brand
- Employers using it as a recruitment tool
- Personal, Professional and Field Specific articles and resources
LinkedIn Statistics
- 93% of recruiters are looking up social profiles of candidates
- 42% of these recruiters used information found through social media profiles when making hiring decisions
Building Your Profile
You can choose what is and isn't displayed for different groups of people
- Turn on/off your profile edits
- Select who can see your activity feed
- Select what others see when you've viewed their profile
- Select who can see your connections
- Choose who can follow your updates
- Change your profile photo & visibility
- Show/hide "Viewers of this profile also viewed" box
- Your profile is 21 times more likely to be viewed if you include a photo
- Profiles with photos get 36 times more messages
- Keep your photo up to date & appropriate
- Make eye contact with the camera & smile
- Quality is important
- Update picture of you shoulders up. Professional posture and warm smile with minimalistic background
- Arrange your information in order of importance
- Record the pronunciation of your name
- Pronouns - a new addition to LinkedIn that you can add if you choose to
- Ensure you add a Summary or About section that expresses your professional identity
- Add information about your experience in the Background section - Work Experience, Education, Licenses + Certifications, Volunteer Experience (and keep this up to date)
- Detail your current skills
- Describe your accomplishments (Publications, Patents, Courses, Projects, Honors + Awards, Test Scores, Languages, Organizations)
- Create an eye-catching headline - try using www.copy.ai to assist you!
- Your headline should be a dazzling summary of who you are, what you do, and how you do it.
- Fill in your industry (or desired industry if you’re not yet working in the field)
- Ensure that your profile is grammatically correct and does not contain typos
- Succinct description of who you are – keep it brief & to the point
- Describe your experience, successes, and accomplishments
- Use keywords relevant to your target industry
- Go through the summaries of professionals in your industry for inspiration
- Connect with the Career Bridge MET coordinator if you need assistance with uploading - my.experience@uleth.ca
Making Connections
- Personalize your greeting (spell their names correctly!)
- Explain how you know them or how you found them
- Explain your purpose for writing
- Find a connection point – something in common, something from their profile, something they wrote in a group, etc.
- Thank them
Job Search Tips & Tools
- Follow companies you are interested in
- Get a curated news feed of the industry - the more you engage, the better the algorithm will work for you!
- Connect with employees of companies of interest
- Research their career paths
- Conduct information interviews
- Find jobs + create alerts
- Find alumni from your University
