Grow Your Online Network
LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site available today, reporting more than 500m users in over 200 countries and territories in April 2017. But the popular platform offers more than just a means to connect and stay in contact with millions of users; it is also a leading tool for helping individuals to expand their networks, exchange knowledge and ideas – and find relevant jobs in their field.
LinkedIn allows you to:
- MARKET YOURSELF LinkedIn helps you to reach a much wider audience and publicise your experience to recruiters, organisations, existing connections and specialist groups. Make sure you aim for an ‘all-star’ completed profile. Recommend and endorse your connections’ skills, past work or projects; it’s a two-way system.
- STAY UP TO DATE LinkedIn helps you to find groups and experts to learn from and engage with. By joining groups that you are interested in, you can ask questions, share knowledge and experience and learn more about current news and thinking in your industry. Follow companies and influencers and let the information come to you. Use a learning library to enhance personal development (only available with Premium access).
- RECONNECT As well as searching for jobs and opportunities to support your career development. You can use LinkedIn to find people by keyword, title, industry, location, company, function, experience level and more. You can also reconnect with people by searching for your school or university. Tip: when sending an invitation to connect, always include a note explaining why you want to connect and how the other person can benefit from your contact – it can reduce your chances of being ignored.
BUILD YOUR PROFILE
Introduction
This is your chance to let connections, employers or recruiters know more about you. It’s an opportunity to market yourself, attract interest and make someone continue reading about you.
• Write a professional and personable summary of yourself
• The profile you have already prepared for your CV may be helpful to use in this section
• Make sure it is tailored to what you are marketing about yourself, your career goals or experience
• Recruiters and hiring managers search by keywords, so add as many relevant ones as possible e.g. Manager | Change | Project | Financial Services or Head of Global Sales and Business Development | Financial Services | Mentor.
Photo
Always upload a professional, but personable, photo. Avoid group photos; it’s best to upload a picture that is just of you.
Contact information
• Include as much contact information as you feel comfortable sharing. Ideally include a personal email address
• Change your LinkedIn profile URL to a personalised URL (go to ‘Privacy & Settings’, then ‘Privacy’) so it reads uk.linkedin.com/in/firstnamelastname. You can add this URL to your email signature and on your CV
• Do not add your full date of birth. Month and date is fine, not the year you were born.
Experience
• Add an overview or one or two sentences about your position at each company you have worked with. In some cases, you may also want to explain what the company does/did • Be sure to add correct dates as well as connect each employment to the right