A Step-By-Step Guide To Getting A Job Through LinkedIn

Hiranya Fernando, Lumiere

There are more than 277 million people on LinkedIn at last count. This means you want to be on it. But you also don’t want to get lost in the crowd.

Hopefully, by now, you have read our tips on how to create an unforgettable LinkedIn profile that will help you stand out. This is your first step. Now, we’ll show you how to actually use LinkedIn once you are properly on it.

LinkedIn is a formidable professional networking platform as well as a powerful job board and search engine. The fact that a full 94% of recruiters use social media, in particular LinkedIn, to fill open positions should get you excited. 

Here’s how you can use this game-changing platform to get your next job. 

1. Understand where LinkedIn “fits in.”

In order to use it well, it’s important to understand how it fits into the larger context of social media networking.

Facebook is about brand and identity, whether that is a personal profile or a business page. Twitter is about events or occurrences, which could be a missing plane in the Indian Ocean or letting your audience know that your latest blog post is published. LinkedIn is the best channel for engaging with people and organizations that could potentially hire you.

In the latest survey, 77% of LinkedIn users said that it helped them research people and companies. This is something that’s very handy before meeting a contact for coffee, when requesting an informational chat with someone, and, especially, as key preparation before a formal job interview. You want to know everything you possibly can about the person/people who is/are interviewing you. It will help you ask good questions as well as find points of connection over which you can bond. For example, perhaps you went to the same school or once lived in the same city or country. 

3. Create shareable experiences. 

7. Write thoughtful networking emails.

Read more on these 3 steps, all 7 steps, and the complete Business Insider article

7 Essential LinkedIn Marketing Stats: When to Post, What to Post and How to Improve

Written by Kevan Lee

A quick glance at a chart of the Internet’s fastest-growing social networks reveals what you likely already knew (Instagram is growing like mad) and what might be a surprise: LinkedIn is the third-fastest-growing social network.

We at the Buffer blog can vouch for LinkedIn’s growth as our blog has experienced a swell in LinkedIn referral traffic over the past year, up 4,000 percent from last year at this time. Part of that has to do with our emphasis on updates and sharing at LinkedIn, another part has to do with the popularity of LinkedIn contributing a larger audience and more eyes to our content. Together, these factors have made LinkedIn a great source of visitors for our blog, and I’d imagine you might see a similar impact on your own site.

So the question becomes: How best to take advantage of this expanding interest in LinkedIn? Though the network isn’t analyzed in quite the same detail as Facebook and Twitter, there still exist several stats and tidbits that can help you improve your LinkedIn marketing and engage with your followers.

1. LinkedIn sends nearly four times more people to your homepage than Twitter and Facebook

3. Avoid posting evenings, late afternoons, and weekends

5. A single status update reaches 20 percent of your followers

Read more about these 3, all 7 stats, and the complete article

35 minutes a week to improve your professional future using LinkedIn

Trevor Young

I’ve only allowed five minutes a day for LinkedIn and this does not include reading the many and varied valuable articles and updates that pop up daily if you subscribe to them – as you should!
If I only had five minutes a day on LinkedIn, this is what I’d do:

• Visit the site every day – keeping an eye on those people I’m connected with who are moving jobs or getting promotions, and then (selectively) dropping them a line to congratulate them.
• Update my feed with news and links to relevant videos and articles you think others in your network might be interested in (you can do this via BufferApp if need be, thus saving tons of time)
• Share or comment upon other people’s content if I felt it was interesting and relevant for my audience.
• Always be on the lookout to link in with people who I either already know and have had dealings with, or do so during my day-to-day connecting with people via Twitter or as a result of meeting them at events etc.

More on how to spend your time on LinkedIn, 15 minutes a day on Twitter, and the complete FireBrand article

The Secret to Getting Noticed on LinkedIn

BY Rene Shimada Siegel

Click on Profile on your LinkedIn site and you'll see a list of your experiences, schools, and contacts. Most people focus on developing these lists to make connections at places they've worked and where they have gone to school. LinkedIn, after all, is a great networking tool.

But before you get to this mass of information is the summary section on top. Most people don't bother to fill this out--and it may be the key to help you connect to more people than you thought possible.

From my experience, the summary is where the beefy, real content begins--and the only place to really find out who the person really is. It acts like a movie trailer, getting people emotionally connected and excited for the coming attraction. It reinforces a person's personal brand. 

Whether you are trying to connect to customers, suppliers, or even new employees, the summary can offer you a snapshot of who this person is and any specialities that may be beneficial to you. For example, you can look for soft skills, attitude and creativity that are important to you. 

This works in your favor, too. It is an opportunity to tell your story. 

Here's how to make it work for you and what to look for in other summaries.  - To find out how to make it work for you please read the complete Inc. article

Darth Vader’s Guide to measuring LinkedIn Success

by Clive Roach

Darth Vader’s Guide to measuring LinkedIn Success
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 250 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the globe. It is seen as essential for most professionals as a networking platform, or for recruitment. If you look a little deeper, LinkedIn provides us with many ways to measure our networking reach and the results of our efforts in groups and on brand pages.

Your LinkedIn professional universe and timeline.
Darth Vader: “The Force is strong with this one”

Over 3 years ago the LinkedIn labs gave us tools to visualize our career timeline and the extent of our connections. The great news is that as of today, these tools are still live. I created my first LinkedIn timeline in 2011. You can track your connections that you have made over the years and animate it using the slider.

The LinkedIn InMap is an interactive visual representation of your professional universe, based on the relationships between your connections. Different color zones represent different periods in your career and school. Here is mine; -- See the InMap and read the complete article 

3 Persuasive Ways To Use LinkedIn Recommendations

by Ryan Niessen

Everyone knows you should get recommendations on LinkedIn, but few are aware of the most persuasive ways to use them to get your dream job. After all, that’s what it really comes down to… getting a job that excites you, with a company that you feel proud to be a part of.

And if you look at LinkedIn recommendations from a slightly different perspective, you’ll see that they might just help you out even more than you thought possible… when used correctly.

So, just for a second…

Let’s Look At Them From The Perspective Of A Marketer

See, what you’re really doing when seeking your dream job is marketing yourself to an employer. They’re in the marketplace looking for the best candidate, and you’re in the marketplace looking for the best position. Now, LinkedIn recommendations are essentially testimonials to your character and ability.

And to marketers, testimonials are GOLD… especially focused ones that highlight the areas most important to your prospect (your future employer, in this case). A marketer will tell you that you can make any claim you want, but it’s not believable or effective unless you have solid proof.

And testimonials are the proof you need. They’re a testament from a credible source saying that you’re able to do what you claim you can.

3 Types Of Testimonials You Need

Here are the three kinds of testimonials you need:

1. Expert testimonial – This can be from a mentor, boss, or teacher. Try to get one from a leader in your field if possible, since they’ll be easily recognizable as an authority to your future employer.

2. Character testimonial - Read more about #2, #3, and the full Careerealism article

10 Ways to Finally Get a Recruiter’s Attention on LinkedIn

by Tony Restell

You’ve finally finished your LinkedIn profile, and are patiently waiting for recruiters to call. But after weeks without a bite, you wonder if there is anything you can do to improve the performance of your LinkedIn profile.

And there is!

A LinkedIn profile can easily be improved that you stand out from your peers. Let’s look at a few ways to capture recruiters’ attention with 10 expert tips for creating an outstanding LinkedIn profile.

1. Your Image Is Everything

2. Strong Summary Standout

3. Make It Job Search Friendly

4. Endorsements vs. Testimonials

5. Are You Connected Enough?

Experts recommend that you shoot for around 350-500 connections on LinkedIn. This enables you to be part of enough industry networks who will include recruiters looking for people with our skillsets. So, get out there and make strategic connections to build up your circle of influence.

***  I say 501 is the number to shoot for so that it shows the 500+ in the connections area.


Read more on ways 1-5, ways 6-10, and the complete article

5 Essential Tips for a KILLER LinkedIn Summary

By Brenda Bernstein

First impressions count and your LinkedIn Summary is the first opportunity a potential employer has to find out who you are beyond a photo and a job title. So, make the most those precious moments. Follow these 5 essential tips to impress employers instead of making them yawn. Implement all 5 of these tips and your LinkedIn Summary will help that phone start to ring!

TIP #1: Never leave the Summary section blank!!    

TIP #2: Use all 2,000 characters.

TIP #3: Tell stories.

Read more on these 3 tips, tips 4-5, and the complete Career Cast article 

Get LinkedIn recommendations instead of endorsements

posted by Joseph Liu

With LinkedIn passing the 15 million member mark in the UK in early March, the online platform is now undoubtedly one of the most important social networks on which every single marketer, not to mention every professional, should be.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) recently released a study revealing revealed that 40 per cent of employers look at candidates’ online activity or profiles to inform recruitment decisions. With this in mind, having a robust and effective profile is more critical than ever, because a LinkedIn profile is often the first place a prospective employer, a potential business partner, or hiring manager will go to learn more about you, your professional history, and your accomplishments.

In my work as a career consultant, the topic of LinkedIn often comes up, including which sections matter and which do not, especially when you’re is trying to make a positive impression with prospective employers. Many of my clients have recently been asking me if LinkedIn Skill Endorsements are useful to display on their profiles. To put it bluntly, no. As background, LinkedIn rolled out the 1-click skill endorsements feature in late 2012, where your Connections can quickly select from a suggested tick-list of your “skills” when you pop-up at the top of their profile. People can also do this directly in your profile. Endorsements then get tallied and listed in rank order on your profile, based on how many people have vouched for you having that skill.
While I have heard arguments from people about why endorsements are useful, including how it supposedly serves as a proxy indicator for your top skills, in the context of a hiring decision, I’ve never encountered a situation where endorsements made one bit of tangible difference. Here are three reasons why:

1. Endorsements are not objective- The actual mechanic of the LinkedIn endorsement feature immediately skews the objectivity of the scoring process because it prompts you with a list of suggested “skills” associated with an individual. This is a bit like leading the witness, and one could imagine that people are simply clicking on the options offered up because in that split second, it’s actually easier to just click on what appears instead of really thinking about whether this person possesses that skill.

Reasons 2,3, and the complete article

5 Reasons Why Linkedin is Crucial to your Career

To quote Forbes magazine: “LinkedIn is far and away the most advantageous social networking tool available to job seekers and business professionals today.”

Linkedin was born in the living room of Reid Hoffman in 2002 and launched in May 2003. It had 4,400 members by June of that year.  By November 2012 it was in use in 200 countries and had 187 million members.  In January 2013 it had 18 million members in the UK alone.

I have been on LinkedIn for many years and have seen it grow from a platform largely inhabited by IT industry early adopters to the essential tool for all job seekers that it is today.  Recently I read a very interesting blog by Greg Savage, a highly respected recruiter trainer, who wrote very convincingly of his belief that Linkedin’s business plan is to take the recruitment industry out of the market by connecting job seekers directly with Inhouse recruiters.  You can read what he said here: Can we trust Linkedin?

In order to achieve this long term goal Greg believes that LinkedIn is wooing the recruitment industry with offers and functionality designed order to make the platform even more attractive as a place for recruiters to go.  This in turn will attract the job seekers.  Then at some point Linkedin will chuck all “external” recruiters off the platform and charge comapnies to access the talent.  Now Greg may or may not be right in his opinion, but the long and short of it for those looking to progress their career is that LinkedIn is now a critical part of any job search strategy, whatever your level of seniority, wherever you live and whether or not you are looking for your next permanent role or for an interim opportunity.
Linkedin is important to you as a Career-building tool for 5 reasons:

1) It is the most effective and cheapest way of building your personal employment brand online.

2) It makes you visible to both External and In-house Recruiters

3) It gives you access to the unadvertised job market.

Read more on these three reasons, reasons 4 and 5, and the complete article

The 31 Best LinkedIn Profile Tips for Job Seekers

When you’re not looking for a job, it can be easy to ignore your LinkedIn profile. Sure, you add people you meet at networking events as contacts and accept requests as they come in, but everything else? Eh, you’ll get to it when you need to.

While we definitely don’t recommend this approach (hey, the recruiter from your dream company finding you and offering you a job? It could happen), we get that there are times you need a total LinkedIn profile overhaul. And for those times? We’ve got you covered!

Here, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about tricking out your LinkedIn profile—from crafting a stunning summary to selling your accomplishments, projects, and skills—in one place. Read on for expert-backed ways to make your profile seriously shine—and start getting noticed by recruiters.

1. Put in the Time to Make it Awesome

4. Write a Headline That Rocks

7. Use Numbers Right Up Front

9. Avoid Buzzwords Like the Plague

11. But Use the First Person

Read more on these 5 tips, all 31 tips, the complete "TheMuse" article

5 Steps To Being Productive On LinkedIn

By Valerie Levin

When it comes to accessing social networks during office hours, the first two things that come to mind are definitely procrastination and wasting time. This may be true for Facebook or even Twitter, but LinkedIn is different. Recognized as the leading social network for professionals, LinkedIn lies at the core of three key areas: people, technology and information. Rather than help you kill time, it’s actually designed to make you more productive – and is much more than just a massive database of people. In terms of business objectives, it can help connect you to the most relevant people in your industry, share your company’s messaging and content with qualified prospects, and help push your career forward. The trick to using LinkedIn in a strategically productive manner is: have a purpose.

If you’ve logging in to see who’s viewed your profile, read customized Pulse content and scroll through news feed updates – that’s great, but you’ll have to determine what your specific goal is gain actual value from the network. Asher Abraham, who hosted a recent Oktopost webinar on The Psychology of LinkedIn, views the social network as a “zone of productivity,” and believes that having a sense of purpose will drive you to be more productive. Additionally, he introduced a 5-step process aimed at ensuring that LinkedIn members maximize the social network’s potential.

How exactly do you become more productive and successful on LinkedIn?

1. Branding

2. Positioning

3. Intentional Networking

Read more about steps 1-3, steps 4 and 5, and the complete B2C article

Should You Add a “Current” Job on LinkedIn When You’re Unemployed?

By Laura Smith-Proulx

Newly unemployed – and considering whether you should add a “current” job to your LinkedIn Profile as a cover story?

You’ve probably heard you won’t rank in LinkedIn search results without a current job, or that you must attain a 100% complete Profile to be findable online.

However, there’s no need to panic or become overly creative – no matter what your situation or career level. You’ll simply need to respect employers’ need for truthful, helpful information, and then formulate an effective LinkedIn strategy.

Here are tips for handling your “unemployed” status on LinkedIn:


1 – How to add a “job-seeking” entry.


2 – How to justify omitting a current job entirely.

Read about tips 1,2, more tips, and the complete CareerRocketeer article

22 LinkedIn Secrets LinkedIn Won't Tell You

William Arruda

I have written several articles about LinkedIn, and they often generate the most comments. Here are the highlights of my LinkedIn advice from previous articles, along with additional tips and tricks, many of which remain unspoken by the people at LinkedIn. With this checklist in hand, you can make your LinkedIn profile your best personal branding tool. These little-known, often-overlooked and seemingly counterintuitive tips deliver big results with minimal effort.

1. Be secretive. When you’re updating your LinkedIn profile, it can annoy your contacts if they’re alerted to every little change. When you’re in edit mode, head to your privacy controls. Turn off activity broadcasts and change the setting for  “select who can see your activity feed” to “only you.”

2. Be opportunistic. Join groups that will let you connect with people who are in your target audience but are not contacts. Being part of the group gives you permission to reach out to them and invite them to join your network. You don’t need to upgrade to Premium to do so.

3. Be redundant. Know the top five strengths for which you want to be recognized and use them in your profile – repeatedly. If your top skill is project management, describe your project management proficiency in your summary as well as in multiple experience descriptions. This will help the right audience find you.

4. Be ungrateful. Ask your contacts to endorse you for only your top skills. Having the highest number of endorsements for your signature strengths will influence those who are looking at your profile. Have the courage to delete or reject the endorsements that aren’t central to how you want to be known.


5. Be stingy. Only give recommendations and endorsements to those whom you genuinely admire. When you recommend other people, their reputation is seen an extension of your values.

Read secrets 6-22, and the complete Forbes article 

17 must-have features on your LinkedIn profile

By Kristin Piombino

Being active on LinkedIn can help you gain new business, find job opportunities or attract potential customers.


But you only have a shot at those things if your profile provides people with a complete set of information about you, including your contact information, examples of your work, or additional qualifications you may have.

This infographicfrom Maximize Social Business lists 17 features your profile must have if you want to get the most out of LinkedIn. You probably already know some of them (have a professional photo, customize your profile's URL), but others are less obvious.
For example:

• Enable people to contact you: List an email address, or links to your Facebook or Twitter profiles.
• Employ visuals: Feature examples of your work on your profile, including videos, presentations or Word documents.
• Show off additional qualifications: Add volunteer experience, certifications, projects, test scores and anything else that may set you apart from others.
• List all of your past jobs: The more jobs you list, the better you will be able to connect with people from those organizations.     

Take a look at the graphic for the entire list: 

5 Ways to Not Get Rejected on LinkedIn

By Martha C. White

By now, most of the Internet has heard about (and commented on) the bizarre response a self-professed “passionate advocate” for people looking for work gave a young job-seeker who had the nerve to contact her on LinkedIn.

“Your invite to connect is inappropriate, beneficial only to you, and tacky,” Kelly Blazek wrote, blasting what she called Diana Mekota’s “sense of entitlement” and noting that the “green” 26-year-old job-seeker “has nothing to offer me.”

While it’s stunning in its nastiness as well as its stupidity (apparently it never occurred to Blazek, who bragged about her “960+… top-tier marketing connections,” that Mekota might share her tirade with the entire Internet), there’s a lesson for the rest of us here.

No, you’ll probably never receive a scathing reply that goes viral in response to a LinkedIn request — you’ll  just be ignored. If you’re looking for a job, you can’t afford to shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to cultivating your LinkedIn network: Recruiting software company Jobvite found in a recent survey that 94% of recruiters use the site to search for candidates. So, here’s what career experts say you should do to get potential connections to hit “reply” instead of “delete.”

1) Keep it short.

2) Play up mutual connections.

3) Don’t ask for a job.

Read more on ways 1 - 3, ways 4,5, and the complete Time article


** Bonus way - Tell the why you want to connect.  Everyday I receive connection requests and very few actually say why they want to connect with me.

Sample:  I am looking to grow my network of fellow Recruiting / HR professionals and would welcome the opportunity to add you to my network.

Linkedin’s 12 Top Tips for Strengthening your Profile and Business.

Linkedin is a great professional social media  platform that unlike portals such as Twitter and Facebook, it allows for detailed searches for relevant member and group keywords. Success from Linkedin is all about being found and participating within relevant group discussions. Here are some top tips which will improve your visibility and success from using Linkedin:

1. Make sure that you have a 100% completed profile, if you haven’t then you need to complete your account profile details with Linkedin so that your profile strength is ‘All-Star’.
2. Professional photograph always goes along way in business so make sure the profile image you use depicts who you are in the best possible way. Consider professional photography.
3. Join relevant groups within your business sector and participate by sharing comments on threads.

Tips 4-12 and the complete article

11 Things You Should Be Doing On LinkedIn But Probably Aren't

Richard Feloni

With 277 million users and counting, LinkedIn has become the definitive business networking site. If you're just using the site as a place to keep your resume online, however, then you're missing out on some great opportunities.


LinkedIn has been rolling out several new features in the past year, including a new publishing platform and a revamped "Who's Viewed Your Profile" function.

Here's a look at 11 ways you can make LinkedIn a more valuable tool for keeping in touch with your network and getting recruiters to come to you.

1) Follow your favorite "Influencers" in Pulse.

2) Share relevant articles with your network, and consider writing your own.

3) Weed out connections that are no longer useful.

More on things 1-3, things 4-11, and the complete Business Insider article