How to use LinkedIn to find your next role

We are often asked how people searching for their next job can ensure they are found by hiring managers. However, you need to know how to use LinkedIn to find your next role.

Social media plays a massive part in this. It is essential to build your network and brand even when not actively looking. The best social media channel for this is LinkedIn.

The best way is to understand how to utilise LinkedIn to build and leverage your professional network. 

With the ability to connect directly with hiring managers at your ideal company, LinkedIn is the perfect tool. 

So how can you use LinkedIn to build your career?

Be Seen

How people search while using LinkedIn is different from how they use Google.

On LinkedIn, people are looking for other professionals. They will search for a job title such as “Software Development Manager” or “Head of Engineering.”

To ensure you do not end up ranking lower in the search results, include your job title in your headline and throughout your profile. However, don’t cram it in, so it doesn’t read well. 

What else can you do to appear in the search results on LinkedIn?

• Make as many genuine connections as possible. If you have a mutual connection with a potential hiring manager, your results will feature higher up. Ensure that you engage with the people you already have in your network, like commenting and sharing their content to stay on their timeline.
• Share relevant industry news along with your opinions.
• Regularly edit your profile. Doing this ensures LinkedIn’s algorithm knows that you are an active member.

Tell people what you can do. 

It’s not enough to state your job title. Ensure that you talk about your technical ability, sharing recent projects and successes, and your soft skills, whether people management or business partnering. 

Share on your profile the business benefits of what you do, whether writing a new application that improves customer experience or cloud migration that has offered a better experience for business users. 

Less is More

The way that people consume online content is very different, and you need to make sure you keep hold of your visitors attention for longer.

Tell them what they need to know as quickly as possible. Most people visiting your profile will be on their mobiles so that distraction will happen!

Make your profile appealing and easy to skim read; bullet points are excellent, and avoid block paragraphs if a hiring manager must scroll or spend too long to find the information they need; chances are you’ve lost them.

Tell people how they can contact you

Many rely on the contact information call to action (CTA) at the top of their LinkedIn profile, but this is a significant schoolboy error.

A great trick is to include your contact information in areas where the next natural stage would be to contact you. 

Ask peers, line managers & business partners for recommendations

A potential hiring manager has connected with you – fantastic. They will be clicking on your profile to check you out!

Recommendations are at the lower end of the page, but that’s not to say you should forget about them. After all, a good recommendation provides invaluable insight into your professional ability.

If you decide to go and get some recommendations for your profile, ensure that you space out your recommendation requests as they are date stamped. It would look odd or disingenuous to have six recommendations posted within the same time frame. 

Tactically target connections 

Building a strong network on LinkedIn takes real strategy, and the “throwing mud at the wall” approach can only take you so far.

Targeting a niche sector gives direction. Think about your relevant sector experience and transferable ones; this is a great place to start!

Over 630M people are on LinkedIn, and they can be targeted via their industry, job title and more. 

Remember that when searching on LinkedIn, use synonyms of words too. A simple search of “CTO” will present you with a long list of opportunities but to increase your results, use synonymous phrases such as “Chief Technology Officer” or “Head of Software Engineering”.

Be personable but not over-familiar

People are more likely to accept invitations that include a personal note. Ensure you use the 300 characters to create a personalised message that persuades them to accept.

When creating personalised notes, do not use shortened names as sometimes this can make people uncomfortable and even annoyed. Use the name on their profile, and don’t forget to include your contact details.

Ask an expert

Searching for your next role can be a fairly time-consuming process if you have any questions about building your online presence or are interested in building your brand and speaking at an upcoming TekCurious meetup, then get in touch.