13 LinkedIn hacks for job seekers
LinkedIn is a social networking site that is not very common among people, but is highly important for people into business, be it job seeker or job recruiter. It is a site specially designed for official people. While looking for a job, LinkedIn can never be ignored. So here are a few tips to make your profile the best one in the market:-
1. It is way much easier to publicize a profile with a personal, customized URL (probably linkedin.com/yourname) rather than having one that is a combination of number, letters and special characters. But LinkedIn provides you some when you Sign In, so how to get one? Basically, on the Edit Profile screen, you will see a Public Profile URL. Click 'Edit', that will be available next to the URL, and specify what you would want your address to be. When you are done, click Set Custom URL.
2. Another great aspect to keep in mind while creating a profile is a profile photo. Choose a clear, friendly and appropriate professional image and upload it. To get your photo more appropriate, see what your target company's working people wear and match that.
3. Your Headline is another important thing that job recruiters check. It does not have to be your job title and company, especially if you are a job seeker. Instead, add text that shows your expertise. The more specific you can be about what sets you apart from the competition, the better chance you have of getting into your desired company.
4. Take a look at the job descriptions of positions you are thinking to become and put those in a word tool like Wordle. Now you will see the words stand out. This is likely what recruiters are searching for and make sure you have these words throughout your summary and experience.
5. Be wise in utilizing your summary space. It should be 3 to 4 short paragraphs and you should prefer having a bulleted section somewhat in the middle. It should make the reader know your passion, skills and unique qualification etc.
6. Generally, all of us fill up the summary space with our past achievements written entirely in text. But along with just text, make sure to include numbers highlighting your achievements. This makes your text standout and look more interesting because a person will see the numbers and read the line after and before it. This way, he reduces his time spent and gets to know about you proficiency also.
7. If you consider the summary of most of the people signed in to LinkedIn, you will come across words like responsible, creative, effective, analytical, strategic, innovative. These are the words that fill almost everyone's summary. So DON'T use these words, be innovative, the more innovative you are, the more you stand out from others.
8. Recruiters spend endless hours, searching through all the profiles at LinkedIn, waiting for to see the perfect employee for their company. So, make to include all your achievements in your profile, especially the time when you out of many people have been specifically selected or time when you have been promoted though many people were there who were to be promoted. Just make the recruiters feel that you are the one for their company.
9. Your summary should always follow the proverb A picture is worth a thousand words. Instead of just adding text in your summary, add pictures, add videos, add various multimedia files that describe you. At last, Be Creative, Don't Follow The Old School.
10. Just like you update your Facebook status, update your LinkedIn status too!!! But make sure you are doing professionally, don't add where you are going, what you are eating and other things like that, rather write things like your opinion on a major issue or a new thing that you just discovered that could be helpful for many users and things like that. Update it once a week or once in two weeks.
11. Feature your posts and blogs if you have a website. Doing this will not only make you stand out of others in the line but will also improve the way people think about you. If you have a WordPress blog, you have the better part, simply use a plugin such as WP LinkedIn Auto Publish to automatically publish your new posts to LinkedIn.
12. Along with your description NEVER FORGET to add how people can contact you, be it your email address, your Twitter account link or any other social networking site's link that you are active on. Most of the people leave it empty and reduce their chance of being contacted more. So, BE SURE TO WRITE HOW PEOPLE CAN CONTACT YOU.
13. Being a person who is paranoid about connecting with more and more people is always helpful in LinkedIn but MAKE SURE you connect only with those you think are certified and not unknown. If your request gets rejected too many time and people say they don't know you, LinkedIn has the authority to shut down your account.
At the end of the day, there is only one suggestion BE CREATIVE. If you aren't, you loose majority of chances of being selected. DON'T FOLLOW THE OLD SCHOOL, NOT IN LinkedIn AT LEAST. BEING CREATIVE INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING HIRED.