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LinkedIn is the most powerful career tool, bar none. Each week, 49 million people actively use the site to search for jobs.
If you’re looking for a career change or just expanding your network, you want to treat LinkedIn as a part-time job. This means leveling up your LinkedIn skills and getting familiar with the service as much as possible.
Worry not. We’ll tell you exactly how to get noticed on LinkedIn. Read on to find 5 tips for making profile tweaks, choosing a career path, and optimizing your LinkedIn to reach its full potential.
- Sport a Professional Headshot
Corporate headshots make all the difference.
Your photo is 100% the first thing anyone notices about your profile. Like it or not, people make judgments about your character, your professional qualities, and more based on how your picture looks.
If you last logged in in 2015 and put up a blurry photo of your dog thinking you’d change it later, now’s the time to make the change.
Your headshot doesn’t necessarily need to be of you in a full suit, but it should be high quality; it should be taken with a DSLR and it should match your field of work. If you work in banking, you’ll need a more professional photo. If you work with kids, you’ll want to appear friendly and inviting in the photo.
- Take Advantage of New Additions
Did you know you can now turn on “Open to Opportunities” on your LinkedIn profile?
This marks you as an active job seeker and it’s an excellent way to get a recruiter’s attention. You can mark the industry you work in, and even industries you’re currently prospecting.
Turning on this feature won’t add an awkward tagline like “looking for a job” to your profile. It’s actually something that will only be visible to a recruiter, who will be using a recruiter-specific version of LinkedIn. Trust us, the recruiters are who you want to be noticed by.
- Work Smart
Need help choosing a career path? Another reason LinkedIn is such a powerful tool is that it basically functions as a search engine for jobs.
You can search up people that are already in a similar position to the one you want, and tailor your profile to match theirs to a reasonable extent.
For example, you see someone working as a business administrator. Notice what skills they highlight on their profile, or what certifications they have. Now, you can either choose to feature those same skills (if you have them), or you know exactly what skills to work on next.
- Network Exhaustively
Finding a job now is all about connecting with people. The more connections, the better. You don’t have to keep all of them in the loop, but just connecting with them opens up opportunities in the future.
If you graduated from university, belong to special interest groups, or even groups within your corporation, reach out to other people!
- Regularly Post Updates
These days, LinkedIn works like social media. If you never post updates on where you’re at or the latest developments in your career, you’re losing opportunities for people to engage with you.
Post updates, and wait for people to engage with your content (or engage with others’ content). Arrange meetups, zoom chats, webinars, or whatever. You never know what comes out of these connections.
How to Get Noticed on LinkedIn: Further Tips
Our number one tip for how to get noticed on LinkedIn is to just use the website more.
These days, the biggest mistake you can make is leaving your profile there as a static resume. The tool has the potential to be so much more for your career search.
For more tips, check out our technology articles!
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