How LinkedIn helps your career

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LinkedIn Strategies September 3rd, 2017

How LinkedIn helps your career

Find a job on LinkedIn

How to use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the top professional networking website for jobseekers. As Reid Hoffman, co-Founder of LinkedIn told Charlie Rose in an interview: "Post a full profile and get connected to the people you trust. Because if you're connected to those people and you posted a profile, then when other people are searching for people, they might find you."
 
LinkedIn has more than 400 million registered users as of 2017. The site adds two new members every second, and more than 200 million people visit the site each month. With so many members, the rate at which your network expands on LinkedIn can be truly amazing. A hundred strategic contacts could mean access to millions of people in a short amount of time. You'd have to attend dozens (or hundreds) of in-person networking events to equal the reach you can get on LinkedIn.
 
LinkedIn allows you to leverage the power of your network (the people you know, and the people those people know) to help you connect to the person (or people) who are in a position to offer you a job.
 
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, put it this way: "LinkedIn's core value proposition is to connect talent with opportunity at massive scale."
 
Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn. Recruiters from every discipline and industry are on LinkedIn. More than four million companies have profile pages on LinkedIn.
 
But author Guy Kawasaki puts it best in his book: "I could make the case that Facebook is for show, and LinkedIn is for dough."

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How to find a job on LinkedIn

Once upon a time, attending networking mixers, industry events, and Chamber of Commerce meetings were the best way to make new connections and build business relationships. Now, these activities have moved online within the LinkedIn community. Much like networking in person, professionals interact on LinkedIn with the explicit intention of making business connections.
 
With LinkedIn, you get all the benefits of networking in person, with less of the hassle. Instead of going from business lunch to business lunch hoping to meet people, LinkedIn settings provide a platform for you to specifically search and research individuals who you know will directly add value to your job search.
 
Employers and recruiters use LinkedIn to locate both active jobseekers and those who aren't necessarily looking (passive candidates). They also use LinkedIn to vet job candidates before making an interview invitation or extending a job offer. LinkedIn also allows candidates to create an online portfolio of their accomplishments, has a strong visual emphasis, facilitating embedded video, links to content posts elsewhere on the Internet, and the ability to create highly shareable, long-form content in the form of LinkedIn's "Publishing feature".
 
It's a good idea to invest some time in learning how to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to identify, research, contact, follow-up, engage, and maintain your contacts in one place. Its ability to facilitate business networking is unmatched by any other social network. Essentially, your LinkedIn profile is a résumé, business card, and elevator speech all rolled up into one.
 
However, your LinkedIn profile is not your résumé. LinkedIn is a personal branding page. You need both a résumé and a LinkedIn profile, and they should be in sync with one another, but not be exact copies. The information on your résumé should match your profile (in terms of positions you've held, your educational credentials, etc.), but the content (the wording) you include on your LinkedIn profile must be significantly different than what is included on your résumé. 

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Author

Mandy Fard is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW, CMRW) and Recruiter with decades of experience in assisting job seekers, working directly with employers in multiple industries, and writing proven-effective resumes.
 
Feel free to connect with Mandy Fard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandyfard/
 
Please follow Market-Connections Resume Services on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/market-connections-resume-services.com​