Recruiters Turning to Linkedin - Time to Update Your Profile
Careers coach Penny Strutton is writing a weekly column for This Is Nottingham with advice for job seekers. This week she looks at using Linkedn to raise your profile...
Good news! Employment is on the rise, there are 50% more jobs being advertised now in comparison to this time last year. It's a perfect time to start reassessing your career and looking around for opportunities that meet your aspirations. We all know that during the recession job seekers had to change the way they approached their job search to stand out from the crowd. However, it's not only job seekers that have had to change, businesses have adapted their approach to recruitment too. The social network Linkedin has risen drastically in popularity and is now becoming one of the most significant methods of recruitment.
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Penny Strutton is a Performance & Career Coach based in Nottingham. For further information on her coaching services visit www.pennystrutton.co.uk
I attended an event at Loughborough University last week which was geared to train business and recruitment agents on the benefits of using Linked in to run low cost but effective recruitment campaigns. What does this mean for you, the job seeker?
If you want to be found by companies looking for your skills you need a Linkedin profile, which is up to date and written in a way which sells your skills and experience. Linkedin is a fantastic form of promotion, you can include a whole host of information which gives employers far greater insight into you as a person than a bog standard CV. Most importantly, it allows you to have recommendations from past employers, clients and colleagues which act as references for you. This builds your credibility and makes you more employable to a business looking for your skills!
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Linked in is also a great tool for you to use to access company details which meet your own criteria. Only about 70% of jobs are advertised, that means that if you can make contact and develop your profile with companies of interest to you, you might just be the person they turn to when they need yours skills to fill a position. Linkedin allows you to search for companies; it details employees who work for the company, and if in your network, you're able to contact them directly. If they are connected to one of your contacts you can ask for an introduction. Personal approaches are always more effective and being proactive will work in your favour, demonstrating a real commitment and interest in the company and your career.
So, good news for everyone – Linkedin provides an up to date database of companies and candidates, making recruitment easier and cheaper than ever before. If you don't have a profile and need help making it stand out from the crowd, please get in touch or take a look at my online career coaching session "networking and the hidden job market".
Best of luck!
4 Comments
by smshogun
Monday, March 04 2013, 6:15PM
“The way figures are collated has come under fire as being grossly distorted and misrepresentative of the actual vacancies that exist. This is because the same vacancy can be advertised many times across several sites, but only be one job although it shows as multiple jobs as they measure the number of vacancies. If ten agencies are contacted by an employer and they each advertise this across ten websites its recorded as ten vacancies, if they all advertise it across five sites each then it becomes fifty recorded vacancies, even though its only one vacancy.”
by fredro
Monday, March 04 2013, 3:30PM
“Since posting the above, I have received another email from LinkedIn; someone 'has accepted an invitation' I never sent. I immediately complained to LinkedIn; but I'm not holding my breath for an explanatory reply and/or apology.”
by soraya
Monday, March 04 2013, 2:09PM
“Most of the 50% extra jobs advertised at jobs.gov.uk are spam.
e.g. Commission-based utility or charity sales, scams, pyramid schemes and other such rubbish and what's more the each scam is advertised multiple times on each page.
I would say only 1 in 50 are actual jobs.”
by fredro
Monday, March 04 2013, 12:37PM
“Being basically retired, LinkedIn is for me a bit academic. While essentially in agreement with it as a useful professional marketplace tool, I think it needs to be used with caution. Two examples: (i) I was asked, via LinkedIn, but not, I later learned, by him, to 'Recommend', effectively give a reference on, a former 1960s fellow-student I've kept in touch with over the years. Before I could do so, I had to give some relevant personal professional info; and cited 14 years I'd spent (since knowing him; he returned to the US 1965) as a college lecturer in the relevant field; then I gave my Recommendation. In due course this was confirmation-emailed to me: but gave the impression I had been a lecturer when my friend was a student, when in fact we had been FELLOW-students 2 years before I even began my lecturer-post. So my reference gave a slightly false impression. An email to LinkedIn asking what I could do to correct this yielded no response. I didn't want to make matters possibly worse; so it has stayed as it was. (ii) From a friend of a friend I scarcely know, a LinkedIn email requesting me to 'Connect'; suspicious, I emailed her direct to ask whether she'd sent the Request. No; LinkedIn must have made the connection electronically via our Facebook entries. So a kind of electronic 'pimping', or being introduced to comparative strangers at a huge party and asked to tell other strangers what you think of them. Perhaps better than total mutual ignorance; but as I say: be careful!”