Five useful ways to use LinkedIn

Five useful ways to use LinkedIn
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When it comes to developing your career, there are few websites that are as useful as LinkedIn is.

LinkedIn is by far the best website around for professional social networking and gives you access to powerful career development tools that can help you to land your dream job or to increase your professional standing.

LinkedIn essentially functions as an online database and directory of working professionals and organizations. By creating an account, you can expand your professional network with the click of a button. This is in addition to the job search and professional learning tools which have helped LinkedIn to become one of the most powerful social media brands.

This formula is clearly working. As of 2021, LinkedIn had amassed more than 740 million users across 200 hundred countries. This includes the top executives from all the fortune 500 companies, heads of state and even celebrities.

Although LinkedIn puts a set of powerful professional tools at your disposal, many of these are surprisingly underutilized by the vast majority of users. With this in mind, in the following short article we will set out five useful, but frequently underutilized, ways to use LinkedIn. By following these tips and strategies, you might just be able to land that dream job you have always wanted!

Perfect your profile

Although the adage ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ might be good advice to live your life by, this does not appear to be the case when it comes to LinkedIn. With that said, how your profile looks will have a significant impact on how much you can get out of the platform.

Having a well-presented, polished profile that provides a professionally oriented introduction to who you are could make all the difference between a recruiter taking an active interest in your profile and simply scrolling through to the next one.

With this in mind, there are a number of important features that the top performing profiles typically share, including:

  • A high-quality profile picture
  • A well-written, thought-out profile summary
  • Use of keywords to attract the attention of recruiters and hiring managers
  • Expresses personality
  • Concise descriptions of your professional skills and experiences

Use your LinkedIn profile address

Now that you have updated your LinkedIn profile by following the tips just set out, it is time to show your profile off.

Ensure that all your hard work does not go to waste and make sure to include a link to your LinkedIn profile in any covering letter or resume that you use when applying for a job. This will provide the recruiter or hiring manager with a direct link to your LinkedIn profile where they can check out your profile, skills, experience and qualifications.

Before embedding a link to your profile, you should make sure that you have created a custom URL. This will not only look more attractive but will also be easier to use.

Expand your professional network

As a social media platform dedicated to professional networking, you would be surprised at how underutilized this aspect of the platform is.

With that said, be sure to take the opportunity to look beyond your previous or current colleagues and reach out to new professional contacts. This will help you to expand your professional network and to open the door to new and exciting opportunities.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that it eases the awkwardness typically associated with reaching out to new contacts for the first time. So be sure to take advantage of this benefit!

Apply for jobs

LinkedIn is easily among the most active job search databases. Given the sheer size of the userbase, there are few online destinations with as many active job postings as LinkedIn currently has.

However, even if you aren’t actively looking for a job, you can set your profile to periodically send you job listings that might be of interest. This is an excellent way to keep track of opportunities as they arise without having to trawl through a myriad of job and recruitment websites.

Additionally, by filling your profile with search terms relevant to your experience and expertise, this will allow recruiters to easily find your profile.

Become a content creator

Interestingly, out of the 700+ million accounts on LinkedIn, well under 1% are actively creating new content.

While this statistic might suggest something bleak about the content creation side of the platform, it also shows how easy it is to have an impact on the platform. With so few accounts creating new content, this means there is ample opportunity to stand out!

With that said, use this opportunity as a way to show off your professional expertise and to build new industry contacts. Afterall, you never know where it might take you.

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