As a job seeker, the point of being on LinkedIn is to make yourself as visible as possible for hiring managers and recruiters. So with that in mind, be mindful of the bar showing what percentage your profile is complete. If it is not fully complete, it will not be as visible as it could be. Here are ten ways to improve that, step by step:
1. Include a picture
2. Work on getting the number of your contacts up. One thing that you can do is search for people in the advanced search section with keywords of "IT LION." LION stands for LinkedIn Open Networker, and these are people who will accept anyone as a contact. They also usually have hundreds if not thousands of contacts which opens your network significantly. IT I of course use simply as an example for Information Technology, but you can use any words that accomplish the search purpose, LION is the key though.
3. Get recommendation. You don't need 20, but 4 or 5 won't hurt
4. Joined some associations. Be sure to participate in some of the online forums and give yourself chances to interact with others.
5. Make sure the Skills section is pretty well filled in. This will give additional key words a searcher may be searching for.
6. I would look at perhaps creating a personal website or blog. Although not completely necessary, it also can be a nice touch if you can show observers more about you, especially when it comes to your professional expertise. A blog is a perfect medium to do this.
7. The title. Think of a description to use. Something like "Highly experienced ,,,,,." It doesn't need to be out of this world, or too elaborate, but just something that gives some interest.
8. Perhaps most important, and this is why I saved it for near the last, is the Summary and Experience sections. I would copy and paste it directly from your resume, because that is more in-depth than the descriptions you have now. I would use the Key Contributions and everything. Also don't forget Technical Skills. If you have been laid off, or if you have an impending layoff, you can and should also mention that at the beginning of the Summary. In this case a title such as "Qualified .......... seeking position as......." would be appropriate.
9. Answer questions. This is something that helps increases exposure.
10. Use the status bar once in a while to update your status and by saying things like, "seeking position as ....."
Beyond that just keep being persistent and seek out contacts such as recruiters or colleagues that can help you. Also I would recommend researching anywhere from 5 - 10 companies that you would like to target, and once you have built your network start doing searches to see names who pop up within that company so you can send them direct emails. Often times you will notice that a job pops up on Monster or CareerBuilder, but instead of applying directly send someone in the company an email. It is a way to get around the red tape and get in the door.
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