Top Business Uses for LinkedIn →

About UsingLinkedIn RSS

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

Using the LinkedIn Skill Endorsements section effectively →

About UsingLinkedIn RSS

You can include 50 skills on LinkedIn, so you should list 50. The algorithms search for matches on job postings, and often, the job posting only asks for ten or so skills in their posting, so if you have 50 listed, you will have a much better chance to match the ones wanted in the posting.

You may find that the skill requests for job postings that you often see requested are ones you don’t have or are not in your skill section under that name. Update your LinkedIn skills as you search for postings using better word descriptions and adding missing skills that you do have as you study the postings. Check out someone who has a job like you are applying for and go to their profile and check their skills. This can remind you of skills you may have but didn’t list when you see them in another person’s profile.

Ask your connections to endorse some of your skills so that anyone looking at the list will see that others agree that you have these skills. If you can show a broader range of skills, that will also help.

Soft skills are essential, as are technical skills related to your industry and work. Interaction with HR, accounting, and customer service, should be shown in related skills even if you are a technical employee. Also, leadership is essential no matter what your focus is.

Don’t take the skill list lightly. They make an impression through the algorithms and show the breadth of your skill set.