Make LinkedIn a powerful resource for your job search

Branding is one of the very important elements in the job4u2 dual career support programs. We guide our clients towards the creation or optimization of their branding profile and we show them how to make to most out of LinkedIn for their job search.

In the last years, job4U2 animated online workshops inviting participants to take immediate action and to implement a series of tips to make LinkedIn a powerful resource for their job search.

In this guide you will be given access to the 14 provided tips.

Tip 1
Customize your LinkedIn URL:
By default your LI URL looks like:
ch.linkedin.com/pub/sandrine-vandenoundenhoven4/4a9/637 
You can modify it so that  it looks like mine:
ch.linkedin.com/in/sandrinevandenoudenhoven/

Tip 2
Pay a special attention to the text of your professional headline (what appears under your name), this text is what people mainly see from you on LI (and what will make them look (or not) at your profile.
By default, LinkedIn takes – your last job title “at” your current company–
This might not be what “sales” you best, especially if you are looking for a different kind of job.
It is preferable to write there, either your profession, or the title of the kind of job you are now looking for, or/and a very short profile.
E.g. ♦ Purchasing manager ♦ Engineering background ♦ strategic sourcing & team management ♦ 6 sigma and lean expert ♦
In my case, If I would not have adapted my own title, It would have been ”Owner at job4U2”
This would not tell you much about what I do… Instead, I set it to: Career Coach ♦ Leadership Coaching ♦ Dual Career partners support ♦ Career Transition, Career Reinvention, Entrepreneurship, Job Search ♦

Tip 3
Make sure you set your LI profile country and postal code in the area where you are looking for a job!
The same principle applies for the Industry field: In the drop down menu, whenever possible, pick the industry field the closest as possible of the one you are interested in

Tip 4
Do not make ” Open for a new opportunity” your branding!
You probably have many other things to communicate than the fact you are looking for a job. Being available right now is a good thing, however, a serious recruiting initiative takes into account that a few months are necessary for the right person to become available. There are much more subtitle ways to signify that you are looking for a job, like, writing your next step objective as a headline in your LI profile summary, for example:
Objective: Developing new business opportunities in the luxury area.

Tip 5
Use the summary space to communicate on what is really important. This is the place to paste your career objective and your short profile if you have already compiled one. Make sure you use the important key words.
Key words can be repeated twice to insure a higher ranking in the LI search algorithm. For this purpose, create a tag or a specialty line. Refer to my profile summary (last line) if you need an example.
Remember, Switzerland is an expertise based recruiting market: Even if you are a senior professional more attracted by strategy and management, do not neglect your hard skills.

Tip 6
Turn on your activity broadcasts: All your activity updates will be shared in your activity feed=> If you like an article or react on someone else’s conversation, this will become visible.

Tip 7
How to manage the privacy and setting option:
– Privacy and setting – Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile.
I recommend you tick the LI recommended option: “Your name and headline (Recommended)” because this will allow you to see who has visited your profile.
Change temporary this setting when you are doing an “under-cover” search.

Tip 8
Hide “Viewers of this profile also viewed” box: You do not really wish to give to recruiters a full list of people with similar profile to yours, that other recruiters have spotted on LI!

Tip 9
Grow your network: Beside the obvious advantage that having a large network provides, with an extended Swiss network you also improve your appearance ranking in LinkedIn search results: The more you share connections with the LI researchers, the higher you appear in the search list. Of course if you are a connection level one to the researcher, that’s Bingo!

Tip 10
As we saw, having a large network helps when looking for a job. No need to say that having a big Swiss LI network helps when looking for a job in Switzerland.
There are 2 ways to increase the network:
1- Invite people
2- Accept invitation
Let’s start with: 1- Invite people:
If there would be only one rule, it would be that one: ALWAYS, always send PERSONALIZED LinkedIn invitations!!!

Tip 11
Inviting people, yes, but Who?
Well, if you are looking for a job, start with everybody you know, don’t be picky. Then, make it a, habit to invite on LI everybody you get to know:
Went to an event? => Invite everybody you met.
A friend told you about someone he/she knowns => connect to that person.
Have exchanged emails with a recruiter = send a LI invitation etc, etc.

Tip 12
An other way to connect to people is to proactively invite them: Have you noticed that LI is informing you about your profile visitors?
Sometime “interesting” visitors show up: Recruiters, people in your industry branch. I recommend you take the initiative to invite them with such a customized invitation:
” Thanks for taking the time to look at my profile. I saw you are also in Automotive/IT/luxury goods/etc (or recruiting for X industry) 
Is there anything I can do for you? Kind regards, X”

Tip13
Not only you will invite people to connect but you will also receive connection requests, sometime from people you never heard about and without any explanation or personalized message.
Often, LI users doubt on how about to handle this kind of invitation.
Let me share with you my way:
I reply but don’t accept (yet): Dear X, Thanks for your interest. I am not sure: Have we been in contact before? Is there anything I can do for you? Kind regards, Sandrine 
80% of the time, I do not get a reaction, in such cases, after a week, I simply reject the invitation.
On the 20%, I receive a reply. I have to decide if I have sufficient common ground with that person to accept the invitation and if I wish to share my network.
A good question to ask yourself to know if you’d like to accept someone into your network is: Would I feel comfortable aiming to that person and ask a (reasonable) service one day and would I positively react to a (reasonable) service request from that person.

Tip 14
Do you know you can write a LI message to people even without being connected?!
The only condition is to share at least one group. This is an additional reason to join groups in your areas of interest!

Resource category;

Job Search in Switzerland

Author

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven

Copyright

© 2018 Job4U2. All right reserved