Top Business Uses for LinkedIn →

  1. Networking: Whether you’re looking at companies as potential customers or for a job, you can search and find those people you are already connected with or should be connected with using LinkedIn.

  2. Competitive Insight: Finding out what makes your competitor, customer, or customer’s competitors tick is easy with LinkedIn.

  3. Business Development: Ideas for new products, new sources for ingredients or products, or just finding new customers are challenges for LinkedIn.

  4. Finding Employees: Recruiting or getting the inside information on job seekers.

  5. Promotion and Advertising: Keeping your company or even personal name out there for all to see is another excellent use for LinkedIn

  6. Finding a Job: LinkedIn is one of the easiest ways to do a job search, and likewise, it is a way to better understand the strength of your resume and learn what needs to be changed to better fit your ideal job.

  7. Research: Researching new career options, lead generation, content marketing, gaining competitive insight and finding new supply sources

What about the LinkedIn “About Statement” Section? →

The “About Section” can be presented in various ways, and just one way is not necessarily the right way. You could use the About Section Space to:

Describe who you are and what makes you tick. Explain your present or last job, leave titles out, and describe your past career path and successes. You could include your passions and show your outside interests. These traditional approaches are found in writings on LinkedIn in this section.

The approach presented here has made a difference to those many candidates I have coached on this over the last few years. In most cases, it attempts to create a “general job title” that sometimes crosses over to more than one job focus and then states what the candidate can do with that title or label. Examples of this would be:

Enterprise Performance Manager, Software Engineer, and Development Specialist: able to establish market differentiation, enhance customer experience and improve product quality and safety.

Strong Engineering Professional skilled in Business Process, Requirements Analysis, Enterprise Software, Enterprise Architecture, Agile Methodologies, and Functional Safety: able to create efficiency and enhance the performance of……….

These statements show how the experience within the general title it begins with can lead to accomplishing the things found in job postings for those jobs.

If your past job experience has been in multiple areas, you could summarize them in a title. For example, you could say you were an

“Experienced Business Operations & HR Professional”: with a strong focus……

This general title allows you to claim credit as not just an HR person but as able to fit available management positions.

If you know what job you want, then you will need to show in this type of “About Statement” that you know what the functions and challenges of the job are, and then state how you can accomplish those things using relevant vital words trade jargon.

The LinkedIn Headline under your name at the top usually carries your current job title. Some like to add a passionate statement about something in that place. Still, since my focus here is to view this as someone trying to help people find the best job, the most effective approach is to list the job titles you qualify for and would like to get in the headline under the name.

Enterprise Performance Manager | Software Engineer | Development Specialist | Director of IT | VP Technology

This approach reinforces the opening line of the About Statement. The headline and the About Statement opening line should generally point to the job titles you are applying for, and,n the About Statement, you follow the title labels“able to do” statements showing in more detail your abilities.

About LinkedIn Headlines for the Job Seeker →

 Your LinkedIn Headline

Whatever you choose to put under your name at the top of your LinkedIn profile is the “Headline.” The way to approach the decision of what to put there depends on your employment status and goals. Some people use it to express their overall passion in life or perhaps in work. While employed, it is usually the title of your current job. You can use it to list titles for jobs you would like to have, bringing a stronger focus to those areas for those viewing the headline.

  1. A headline while your job search: The headline can be your skills and experience or what value you bring to the job but what I have seen work best over a few years is using this section to list the job titles you would like be considered for. This can open doors and present relevant keywords that might not have any other place to be seen. Since this approach offers several options for your job search, an excellent way to do this is by using the | (pipe) key. Example: Director of Marketing | VP of Sales | New Business Development Specialist |

  2. For independent, self-employed, freelance, or on contract, this is an excellent area to list the focus areas. In addition to the titles under the name, services can also be listed in that area through the “Providing Services” tool, which will lead to a “Request for Proposal” link.

Examples:

JD Smith Animation | Illustration | Video Animation | Visual Design | Graphic Design

Brent M. Jones Author | Writer | Speaker | Career Development Coach | Consultant | Experienced Business Executive

3. LinkedIn, by default, creates your headline based on your current job title and company. This can be overwritten, but if you’re a passive job seeker, changing this title could alert your company that you’re looking? The good news is that the algorithms find matches even when the candidate shows being employed.

4. Other options usually attempt to attract attention. A professional name or title and desired job target or the number of years of experience in the specific field can be used. (algorithms, as well as anyone who reads the background, will, of course, see the number of years of experience) Statements of passion could be considered for this area. Resumes and LinkedIn profiles seem to emphasize different places, and often it is hard to get the same viewpoint from your coach or mentor if you ask, but my experience over several years suggests #1 above is best.

8 Common mistakes in making your profile for LinkedIn →

8 Common Mistakes on LinkedIn Profiles

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1. Bad Photo Don’t overdress but do dress well. This is you, and it needs to be a good photo. You probably don’t need a tie in your image if you don't wear a tie at work.

2. Behind the Photo Banner - This space can be blank, but why not make it a good reflection of your professional image? Type your professional title, add “LinkedIn Banner” to the name, and hit enter on Google. Next, shoot “images” and choose from various possible photos that will emphasize this identity. The background banner photo you choose should reinforce who you are (Who you want to be in your next job) and visually support the written portions of your profile, including the “About Statement.” This image should include communication of your overall value, skills, career focus, and professional identity.

3. Bad Headline - The title of your current job automatically goes under your name if you’re still working, and changing this might tip off your current employer that you’re looking. This may be a logical place to add a passion statement about what you like about your field of work. If you are unemployed, you can list job titles you might consider, which can serve as additional valuable keywords for the algorithms. It can open doors to jobs that even algorithms might not find from your experience section.

4. Weak or missing “About Statement” - A statement capturing your general title and what and how you can do what you do. Rather than saying you’re a “Director of Annuity Insurance Sales,” it would be better to say “Experience Insurance Industry Sales,” for example. Your title should reflect your focus on what could be ahead for you. This title is the total of the many parts over your career years.

5. Not enough skills, no Skills, or Skills that are not updated - Cover all skill options offered: Technical, soft & hard skills, people skills ect.

6. Weak Experiences with no keywords: Examples -Direct Reports Areas of responsibilities. Accomplishments. Results

7. Grammatical Mistakes and Typos

8. Most things unrelated to your work should be left off. Sometimes a person adds some of the things they feel passionate about in this site feeling that it makes them look more like a real person. When they need to find the right job it can be hard to help them understand that being passionate about the environment isn’t going to help them advance a “Senior Engineer Job” as quickly as showing how their experiences are the best fit for the job posting.

Summary Thoughts

The LinkedIn profile is what helps you find a job and what helps the company posting a job to find you. It can be a lot longer and broader than a resume but it is still the resume that gets you a job. The profile brings the job to your attention but the resume goes with the application and should be written as much as possible to be a more exact fit to the job posting.

87% of recruiters use LinkedIn and over 70% of employers check LinkedIn before making a hiring decision.

An important and unique feature of LinkedIn is that it gives you important feedback →

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with 760+ million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The US has 167 million users. These figures are as of 2020.

With that said, I want to list one handy feature of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is unique in how its job search platform works. They have the traditional approach where you put in the job title you want to search for and where (City, State, or even zip code) brings up the jobs. Google does an excellent job of that too. Most job platforms approach the search task this way, remembering what you searched for, and sending you more ideas on-going. LinkedIn will do that on the traditional job search platform at the top of the Jobs page.

LinkedIn’s essential and unique feature doesn’t just remember what you searched for and continue to feed you other similar job matches, but it also uses algorithms to read your profile. It matches the shape of the job posts and finds the best matches based on the totality of your profile. This then brings notifications to you in the jobs section under “Based on your Profile and Search,” showing where your profile matched best. The algorithms find you; in reality, the best jobs also find you.

Working as a Career Coach, I sometimes have candidates tell me that the jobs they see as “best fits” on the lower part of the Jobs page are ones they have no interest in. I then usually tell them that one of two things are the reason for that? Either they are not qualified for what they want to do, or they didn’t fill out the profile correctly.

This is unique for a job search platform to see what job found you by the algorithm’s evaluation of your profile. What you see as jobs sent to you confirms your profile's strength, and you can, in many cases, know that you are not being clear enough on your profile to see the kind of jobs you want. Instead of searching for a particular job, the job that fits you best is searching for you. This is unique, and nowhere else in the other options for job search can you get this feedback.

“If you can’t find what you want in the job section, either you are not qualified for what you want, or your profile hasn’t been done correctly enough to reflect why you would fit the job you want.”