Make these 4 LinkedIn profile updates now to get more job offers

By Abhijit Tamhane

Just one of these strategies used on a LinkedIn profile made them discovered up to 27 times more in searches by recruiters. 

 

If you’re on the hunt for a new job, there are few tools more powerful than your LinkedIn profile. It’s a one-stop shop for recruiters and hiring managers to learn more about your professional story, so make sure your profile represents not only your experience and strengths but also your goals and what you want to accomplish.

Here are a few new ways to update your LinkedIn profile to give you an edge as a job seeker.

1) Signal to your community that you’re looking

With the Open To Work feature on your LinkedIn profile, you can quietly signal to recruiters that you’re open to new opportunities, and you can now engage your entire professional community in your search. To let the broader LinkedIn community know you are looking, just add an #OpenToWork photo frame on your profile photo. By doing so, when your profile comes up in a search or shows up in the feed because you comment on or “like” a post, professionals beyond your LinkedIn connections will see your #OpenToWork photo frame and can connect you to job openings they’re aware of or facilitate an introduction to a hiring manager. We know that candidates on LinkedIn are nearly four times more likely to land a job at a company where they have connections, so imagine the possibilities of reaching LinkedIn’s community of 700+ million professionals.

2) Spotlight your skills

Recruiters view skills as critical when looking at job candidates. In fact, we’ve found that members with five or more skills listed on their LinkedIn profile are discovered up to 27 times more in searches by recruiters. That’s why it’s important to list your skills—both hard and soft—on your profile.  If you want to turn it up a notch, you can now validate your hard skills with 95 Skill Assessments that you can test against. Once you complete an assessment, a badge gets added to your profile which highlights your proficiency.
And if you don’t have all of the required skills for the job you want, online learning is a great way to build them and increase your chances of getting hired.

See all 4 updates and the complete Fast Company article