8 Essential Tips for Boosting Your Visibility to Get Found on LinkedIn
8 Essential Tips for Boosting Your Visibility to Get Found on LinkedIn
15 minutes every day is all it takes!
Top Tip: Treat LinkedIn as your personal website, a filing cabinet and professional platform where you will showcase your skills, history and achievements.
LinkedIn started in 2003 with the purpose of sharing CV’s, so that has always been at the heart of job searching.
How will you use your 15 minutes today, what is your goal?
Some ideas…………………..
1. CREATE A BOLD HEADLINE WITH A PROFESSIONAL PICTURE
Create a keyword rich headline banner for your profile (suggest using Canva) which has a short and impactful statement so that anyone opening your profile immediately knows what you offer, are skilled at and the job role you’re looking for. Essentially its a personal branding statement. +Have a professional headshot which engages with good eye contact looking forward.
2. MAKE YOURSELF DISCOVERABLE
Always keep your profile relevant and never copy and paste your CV into LinkedIn!
The last 2 most recent roles should have facts and detail: having your key positions filled out with great information is shown to be 12x more effective in being contacted.
Add your education details: but no dates to avoid bias. Also in the qualification section add your courses, qualifications and licenses if you hold any, so if someone is searching for a specific qualification they will find you.
Use all 50 of the available skills options – these are categorised, so choose from the key ones across Industry knowledge, Tools, technology, People and Interpersonal.
Struggling to choose which skills? Get nosey!… look at other people you know have a similar role and get inspiration from what they have included.
3. REVIEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
These are vital for visibiity – ask for them and also give them, they make a difference to the know, like trust factor.
4. BUILDING YOUR NETWORK
LinkedIn will intuitively make suggestions for connections based on how you are using the platform and existing connections – so regular housekeeping is essential to keeping this current.
Review the people you know and are connected with frequently – are they still relevant for you? If not, you can unfollow them without disconnecting – which means that you clear your newsfeed to be current.
For the people who are still relevant to you ensure you are commenting and engaging (an occasional like does not count!). Also if they are people that you want to know all their updates then click on the ‘bell’ on the top right of their profile page and choose that option.
If sending a DM asking to connect makes you cringe find a style that suits you – eg I will accept requests from people with obvious connections to me without a message. if I don’t know them I am wary of obvious ‘sales’ type approaches but value connecting with people who are thought leaders, high content delivery, connected to people or brands I am curious about. Basically add value to me and I can reciprocate.
Keep a list of all your connection requests and follow up – comment, reach out – build the relationship.
5. OPTIMISE YOUR ALUMNI
70% of roles are filled by connections – what a startling statistic!
A lot of these are via alumni, so ensure you are optimising these – using the education tab, click on your university and search names you remember – you will see connections at all levels, even as far as dates/sectors/companies and job titles for people there before and after you as well as during – a brilliant tool.
6. OPEN TO WORK
Add the open to work status to your profile as hiring managers and recruiters use this category to search within; linkedin states you are 40% more likely to be found.
N.B. You can select to set this as only visible to recruiters
7. THE INTERESTED FEATURE – NEW!
If you don’t want to use “open to work’ feature you can ‘Express an interest’ by:
– Go to the company LinkedIn page
-Head to the About section
– Scroll down to ‘Interested in working for us in the future’ and select I’m interested
Recruiters will then be able to see all the potential candidates who have expressed an interest in the previous 12 months
This is a new option and not all companies have the feature yet but it is gradually rolling out to those with active Linkedin Career page and recruiter contacts.
8. THE RECRUITER SPOTLIGHT: 5 KEY ELEMENTS
AI is of course infiltrating recruitment and as a result LI has developed AI for Recruiters which helps them know who are the most responsive to certain scenarios across various categories – these should make you think strategically about how you are optimising these opportunities!
LIKELY TO RESPOND
This option helps the Recruiter by highlighting candidates who are the most responsive to Recruiters.
OPEN TO OPPORTUNITIES
AI identifies and shows candidates who meet a specific criteria and have chosen to share career details and interests with recruiters. e.g. what roles/FT or PT / locations options, job titles….
CONNECTIONS
It tells the recruiter about 1st degree connections at specific companies
FOLLOWERS
Highlights people who are engaging with the brand/company – eg commenting. liking; the AI tracks any contact potential candidates have in any area, eg job posts, adverts etc. Also those ‘interested in the company
PREVIOUS APPLICANTS
Tracks those who have previously expressed an interest or applied to a role.This category are very responsive so are contacted early in a project.
