How to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job

LinkedIn is the number one business social network, which makes it a fantastic recruitment tool. It’s used a lot, especially at higher levels of employment. That means it’s also incredibly good at helping you get a job.

Even if you’re already using LinkedIn to some extent, it’s worth checking you’re getting the most out it that you can. I thought today I would share the key points to how to use LinkedIn to find a job.

1. Perfect your profile

The first thing people will see will be your profile image. Ideally, this should be a professional headshot, but if you don’t have one (yet) don’t just crop any old picture of yourself. Use a recent picture with a clear background. The LinkedIn profile image is quite small, so try to wear something bright; this will make the image stand out, and it’ll also make you seem more engaging.

Although a lot of people have a profile picture, the cover image is often forgotten. The default is a blue image with some zigzags. Not very exciting. A good cover image will help your profile stand out and demonstrates attention to detail. Canva is a great tool for helping you get a great, creative image of the right size.

You also need to make sure all your skills are represented in the skills section. This is important because those skills are often what recruiters are searching for.

Once a recruiter can find your profile by searching for the skills, they’ll probably go to your “About” section. That’s where you want to highlight recent experience and key skills, as well as your achievements.

If you’re able to, you also want to let people know you’re looking for a job or that you are open to opportunities. Be as clear as possible about what you’re looking for.

2. Get recommendations and endorsements

Because it’s a business social network, LinkedIn provides tools to write recommendations for other people and endorse them for skills. Recommendations are the more powerful of these two, so you want to make sure you’ve got as many of these as possible.

The best sources of recommendations are people you’ve worked with. They might have been colleagues or bosses, but they could even be clients you worked with.

If you’re asking people to write recommendations, it’s perfectly acceptable to also ask people to write certain things. Perhaps you’d want to ask them to highlight certain skills.

Don’t take it personally if you ask someone for a recommendation, and they don’t provide it. Chances are it just keeps slipping to the bottom of their to-do list. You can make it as easy as possible by writing something for them. Let them know they’re welcome to change it, but otherwise all they have to do is copy and paste.

When people see a recommendation, it implies someone took the time to write something about you, which is what makes them more powerful than endorsements. An endorsement is just the click of a button, but it’s still worth getting as many as you can. The best way to get endorsements is to endorse other people; like it or not, that’s a part of the culture of LinkedIn.

3. Do your research

Be proactive and find companies you’d like to work for. LinkedIn has a powerful search function, and you can try the paid for version for a month for free.

Even on the free version, you can search by location, company size, industry, and more. All the things you need to find the kind of company you want to work for.

Of course, people post job listings on LinkedIn, but you don’t have to wait. If you find a great company you’d love to work for, send them a message and ask if they have any job openings. The worst case is that they thank you politely for your enquiry. But they might also have something coming up in the next weeks and be delighted with your proactive approach.

It can also be worth looking for specific contacts on LinkedIn. It’s often very easy to find key people at the company you want to work for. Perhaps you can find the hiring manager or the manager of the relevant department. Reach out to them, introduce yourself, and express your desire to work with them.

4. Connect and comment

Especially if you’re looking for a job, the more LinkedIn connections you have the better. A good first step is to upload all your email contacts to LinkedIn. This will get you a chunk of connections, and you never know who you might end up connecting with by doing this.

Next, you should be able to search for your school. Have a look at the people you went to school with. You’d be surprised where some of them ended up.

You should also look for relevant groups to join. Try to comment and post in those groups regularly. The more visible you can be the better. Whether you’re commenting on a post in a group or in your timeline, aim to contribute to the conversation. While “Great post. Thanks for sharing” is better than nothing, sharing your thoughts and engaging with the content is much more likely to get you noticed.

And don’t be afraid to do a little stalking if there’s a particular contact you’re trying to get in front of.

5. Create your own posts

Businesses and their employees post regularly, but job seekers often miss this trick. By posting interesting, engaging, relevant content you seem like a more interesting, engaging, relevant person (and you pop up in people’s feeds).

It’s about staying visible and staying front of mind. Although LinkedIn is business-focussed, it’s still social media. Be social. Start conversations. Share interesting things. Be engaged.

Other methods for staying front of mind can be intrusive, such as phoning or emailing regularly, but posting on LinkedIn isn’t intrusive. People want to see interesting things when they visit LinkedIn, and they go on it when they want to.

Ideally, you should be posting something every day. If you’re stuck for what to post, don’t panic! It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be interesting, useful, and relevant. If you’re really stuck, repost something from a contact and use it as an opportunity to connect further with them. You can read my Guide to Social Media for some more ideas on how to do this.

Set aside some regular time to engage with LinkedIn. I guarantee this will increase your chances of getting your dream job.