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You’ve entered a very critical stage in your professional life – college is over, and you’ve started the job hunt. Job hunting now is much easier, a far cry off from the old days where you had to jump from office to office to drop off your resume, and scour through the newspapers and the phone book to randomly call (read: spam) potential employers.

Yet, despite the ease of communication and the plethora of platforms available for students to look for jobs, most students feel lost at this stage, unsure how to start the process. It is absolutely vital to start off with the right job, suited to your strengths and interests to start off your professional career. Certainly, you don’t want to be one of those settling for a job where you’re unhappy or overqualified for.

LinkedIn gives job-seekers a platform to search for jobs as well as to market their profile by networking with other employers and highlighting your knowledge so that they don’t come across as a frantic unemployed job seeker, but as a unique person with a diverse set of strengths and skills.

Hence it is vital to optimize your LinkedIn experience in order to get noticed and get exposed to the right job. Here is a list of 13 useful tips that’ll help you create a good LinkedIn Profile that the recruiters cannot overlook –

1) Use The Right Keywords To Attract Employers

If you’re looking for a job and hoping that your profile is seen by more recruiters, then you need to use the right keywords at the right places in your LinkedIn profile.  With a little effort, you will greatly boost the number of visitors to your profile.

Also, a keyword is relisted in the headline carry much more importance and help you rank higher than other users for the same terms.

For example,

Instead of ‘Digital Marketing Associate at ABCCE  company’, adding ‘Digital Marketing Associate. Worked in Facebook Advertising, SEO & SEM campaigns, and Email Marketing. Google Analytics Certified’ will help you rank for keywords such as Facebook Advertising, SEO, SEM, Email as well as Google Analytics.

Adding keywords to your Job Title, Summary, Projects, Certifications, and Honors & Awards will also significantly boost your ranking. So start off by identifying the words you want to be found for when people use LinkedIn search and use them in your headline, summary, and profile in general.

2) Write an Eye-Catching Summary

Considering that the Summary section is the first section that people see in your profile, it has to dazzle the reader. Hence you can write a strong summary to create a fantastic first impression for the viewer. No matter how brilliant your profile is, if the viewer isn’t impressed with your summary, he/she will not bother to look at the rest of your profile.

Here are a few things you should follow:

The first sentence must accentuate who you are and what skills you possess that will help you add value and contribute to the company.

Your summary must briefly explain the work you did and then contain your professional achievements, following which you should reveal a side of your personality by talking about your soft skills and interests.

3) Highlight Your Recommendations

Recommendations that highlight your work, personality, professionalism and character traits, which really make you shine, are much more effective than a disorganized recommendation, with facts scattered haphazardly.

Giving a proper structure to your recommendation is as important as getting recommendations from the right people because then, recruiters know that they can bank on you when given a task.

4) Use ‘PULSE’

Getting featured on Pulse opens a wide array of opportunities with more profile views and connections outside of your network. Also, the articles published can be shared on your LinkedIn profile as well as on other social media.

For the articles, follow these tips to create a trending topic

  • Title must be short and concise
  • Add a few images to make the article attractive
  • Pulse has numerous channels where each channel is dedicated to Science, Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management etc. Get featured on these channels by writing trending content.
  • To make your article stand out, tweet to LinkedIn editors about your writings so that they can have a good look and decide to publish it or not

5) Actively Participate in LinkedIn groups

Add yourself to industry-specific groups where you can post and talk about interesting news happening in your domain. You can increase your visibility in the group by asking and answering questions. Doing this shows that you’re interested in learning things from your domain and also that you’re are knowledgeable in a particular subject when you solve someone’s queries, which make you more attractive to other people.

By doing this, you will be exposed to people working in different companies who may be impressed with your activity and could send you a connection request. Who knows, maybe you will get a job from a very reputed company because of this.

6) Use Boolean Search

What many fail to realize is that LinkedIn is a social media network containing over 530 million profiles, 10 million jobs, 9 million companies, nearly 70 million SlideShares. You will be flooded with numerous profiles when you are looking for a particular recruiter, so using BOOLEAN operators helps you sort through profiles and find exactly who you are looking for.

Linkedin currently supports the following search operators:

  • title:
  • company:
  • school:
  • first name:
  • last name:

linkedin

So frame your search keywords accordingly to get the desired results.

7) Use LinkedIn Alumni

If you have moved to a new city and looking for a job, you would lack the necessary contacts and the network of employers who can help you get the job you want.

This is where LinkedIn Alumni comes in handy. Using this, you can connect with any members of the alumnus that are residing in the same city. He/she could introduce you to a fantastic job that they know of, or another employer.

Linkedin Alumni also helps when you’re planning to change careers, but don’t know anyone in the new sector. Reaching out to someone who’s an alumnus of the same university you went to means you instantly have something in common, which makes the networking process much easier.

8) Reorder Your First 12 Endorsements

LinkedIn ranks your skills based on the number of endorsements that you have received. Also, LinkedIn displays the most recent people who have endorsed your skills in the first 12 endorsements

Choose the right order of endorsements when you are arranging your profile to highlight your important skills. Endorsements from important people like your colleague or your boss would certainly add value to your profile.

9)  Personalize Your Connection Request

Getting the same “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” request can be irksome. Instead, send them a personalized email to show a part of your personality which will help you stand out from the rest. If you are looking to connect people you know, you can use this opportunity to remind them of how you met.

Personalizing your connection request helps in many ways.

For example,

If it’s a recruiter, you can talk about where you saw his/her profile and how you’re interested in what they have to offer. You can also mention what you’ve done in the past and what kind of opportunities you’re looking for.

If it’s someone you admire, start by referencing projects they’ve worked on or achievements they’ve made. You should also mention the reason you’re reaching out. Maybe you want an informational interview, or a way to see what he or she is working on, or the opportunity to help him or her with a project.

10) Status Updates

The status update is at the heart of every social media network, including LinkedIn. A single status update can occupy up to 80% of the feed screen.

And more importantly, job seekers get noticed when they share status updates regularly. LinkedIn reported that job seekers who updated their status weekly were 10 times more likely to be contacted by recruiters.

11) Use A Professional Photo

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn is a professional networking platform. Hence you need to show off your professionalism throughout your profile, starting with your photo.

Some recruiters say they don’t go through a profile if it lacks a professional photo.

So what exactly counts as a professional photo?

  1. Your photo should resemble the way you look.
  2. 60% of the photo must contain, only your face. Your neck and a little of your shoulders must be seen.
  3. Wearing a formal dress is essential. It adds to the overall professionalism of your LinkedIn profile.
  4. Your photo should include only you. (And not your pets, friends or parents)

12) Go Through Similar Profiles and Jot Down the Best Accomplishment Bullets

Your LinkedIn profile is always online, always visible. So when recruiters are looking for talent, make sure that your profile showcases the best in you.

You can considerably improve your profile by implementing a number of things, namely-

  • Completing your Linkedin Profile.
  • Keeping a professional profile photo.
  • Writing an attention-grabbing headline. Also, a summary that highlights achievements.
  • Having recommendations on your profile that highlight specific strengths.

13) Use LinkedIn Salary

Knowing how much your peers are being paid will give you a clear picture of whether you are being paid the right amount for your work. Using this tool you can filter out information on your peers based on location, years of experience, educational qualifications, etc.

In order to get all this information, it is mandatory to share how much you are getting paid. Don’t worry, LinkedIn promises to keep your data encrypted.

Be aware that the data that is shown might not be all exact, as this is a new tool and information is being gathered. Also, this data is dependent on the information that is given out by the users of LinkedIn. Even if a handful of the users have lied about their salary, the results can show a false picture.

By following these tips, you can showcase your professional identity in the best manner possible. Your LinkedIn profile will now help you kickstart your career by exposing you to the right jobs and the right people who may know a company which requires someone just like you.

Interested in more topics like this? Check out this article ‘Top 33 LinkedIn Profile Tips for jobseekers in 2017’. This is a comprehensive guide containing more information and procedures to optimize your LinkedIn profile.

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