Getting yourself a new job in today’s climates pretty difficult and traditional sources might not be enough to make sure that you get a position, more importantly the position you want. Traditional sources including papers both national and local, on-line recruitment boards amongst others are ones I have used for many years (like everyone else looking for work). A method of job search which is growing in popularity and a way to expand your reach when looking for work or just browsing possibilities is LinkedIn.
Did you know that LinkedIn is one of the best tools for a recruiter to find potential candidates? It is an natural choice for those looking to get themselves a new career using the Internet and the boom in social media. LinkedIn has a really interesting primary user base; the most common user is already in employment and (unsurprisingly) an adult.
LinkedIn can connect you with 35,000,000 users in 140 plus professions, from Doctors to Dockers from the self-employed to the managing directors of top companies with more gross income than the GDP of some countries!
I’d like to share some tips with you, 6 in total – I hope this might help you in your hunt to find a job using the social networking site LinkedIn. If this is useful or you know someone who is looking for a new job, why not e-mail them this useful list and invite them to use LinkedIn today?
Linking links
Obviously you will need to pop on over to LinkedIn, a quick web search will revel them as the top hit, populate the forms and away you go!
One quick piece of advice: Be sure to put only things you want to be seen on your public profile!
My first tip is to use their connections service; you can hunt for people you know from electronic address books such as those used in e-mail and other contact repertories to find people already using LinkedIn, who you are in contact with. A good start would be to locate a minimum number of ten potential contacts or more,
By default LinkedIn assumes you are ready for work, I would ensure that all the details here are correct and that you have filled out the information you want to disclose to all of those potential recruiters and peers.
Use Company Profiles to find a pattern between people who have worked for a company you are interested in. These profiles provide a really useful insight into what the employer might be looking for when hiring new staff members.
Scour businesses for people that have the job you want, or people with similar qualifications, use this information to establish the possibility of employment for this position.
You can check if a business might be looking to interview or not by browsing the ‘new hires’ page, now this doesn’t guarantee that a business is looking to hire but at the very minimum your able to contact people who have recently been employed, summarise their experience and qualification or flag them as not currently employing.
Lastly, network, network and network more – the trick is to make many good contacts and then should something go wrong in the future you have a fall back.
