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Job hunting using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is probably the most important social networking tool for job hunting professionals looking for a new position or hoping to be found for one!

Companies actively use LinkedIn as part of their internal recruitment process and most recruiters proactively use the network to seek out potential candidates. So if you don’t already have a profile, now is the time to set one up!

Increase your chances of being found and when you are found make sure that your profile reflects your experience and career aspirations. If your profile shows 100% completeness you will come up higher on search results.

Creating a great LinkedIn profile

To create a profile that gets you noticed you will need to:

  • Add a photo, but do remember this is a professional networking site. What type of impression do you want to give? Use a photo that reflects this depending on the type of job you are looking for.
  • Use the headline to make it easy for someone to see at a glance if you could be relevant eg Project Manager or Business Objects developer available for new contract opportunities. Don’t use ‘company director’ if the only employee of that company is you!
  • Recruiters searching LinkedIn do so with keywords. Keep in mind what you actually want to be found for and make sure all relevant key words, industry, job title and technical, are present, and repeated both in your ‘summary’ and ‘experience’ sections .
  • Use the summary as a brief explanation of your experience and key skills.
  • Fill in your work experience with dates. Recent and relevant jobs should have a paragraph explaining your role with important keywords in there. Jobs from a long time ago or jobs that are not relevant anymore can be kept to job title, company and dates.
  • Add skills to the ‘skills and experience’ section.
  • Get recommended and make recommendations. Apart from the obvious benefit of showing that other people value your work, this is also a good way for your name to show up on other peoples’ profiles.

What are your top tips to creating a great LinkedIn profile? Let us know in the comments below.

KDR Recruitment is the home of the best data, technology and analytics jobs. For more career advice follow KDR on LinkedIn.

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