How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out & Get Better Opportunities in 2020?
LinkedIn is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. It currently has 706 million users and out of these 63 million of the people are in the decision making position. LinkedIn is used by freelancers, both big and small businesses for services, hiring, marketing, etc. This makes it extremely crucial for every job seekers to have a fully pledged professional LinkedIn profile. If you are a new developer or engineer in LinkedIn, I would recommend you first check out the Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile — New Developers article.
Introduction
2020 changed the game for everybody. The time we’re in now, it is almost impossible to meet anybody in-person to network. This makes it even more important for us to stay connected or network on LinkedIn, regardless of you have a job or not. Assuming you already have a LinkedIn profile, here are a few ways to stand out from other job seekers, network, and find the right opportunities for yourself.
Display your Projects
Provide evidence of your work samples on LinkedIn. It is a great way to show the projects you worked on and the skills you gained. It can be added to the project section (part of the accomplishment section)or the experience section. Make sure you are connected with the people you worked with on this project and want to include them as team members. You can add as many teammates as you want.
Now, in order to display the projects, you can simply add the URL or create a video showcasing the project you worked on. Let’s say, you’re a web developer and build an application that you would like to include in the project section. Adding the URL will allow people to actually visit the site and try each feature. If you do not have a URL or if you prefer to talk about your project in-depth, you can create a video demoing how the application works.
Network building
LinkedIn is clearly the best platform to build a professional network. While connecting on LinkedIn it is very crucial to have meaningful connections. Try to connect with like-minded people, those who are in your field of study, those who are in the field you want to be part of, and people who work in Human Resources or Recruiting. LinkedIn shows the companies where the employees work and how you’re connected to them. This is a great opportunity to get an introduction through mutual friends. It is often recommended to have at least 50 connections, I would say try to get pass 500 connections. It will increase the appearance of your profile in the search result, increase your credibility, audience, invites, and views on your post. If you want to learn more about the importance of have 500+ connections check out the following article by Madison Mussio.
Stay Active by Growing your Engagement
Now that you have all these connections, the next challenge is to stay in touch and active on LinkedIn. Engage with people you’re following and that are following you, it can expand your reach in the long term. You can stay active by updating your status with relevant industry news, sharing your opinion or asking for an opinion on certain topics, by keep adding meaningful connections, participating in a LinkedIn discussion group through comments or likes on articles posted by another member; you can also stay active by liking and commenting on your friend status updates. When you log in to your account, your home page will show you what all your connections are doing, it’s a great way to be active on LinkedIn.
#OpenToWork
A new LinkedIn feature that seems to be trending now days is #OpenToWork. It is for job seekers, who want to let everybody know that they’re open to new opportunities. This keeps you from cluttering your headlines with taglines such as ‘actively looking’. Many are cautious about it; it is up to you if you want to inform everybody that you’re looking for jobs. To include this feature, go to your LinkedIn setting and privacy, find job seeking preferences, find Let recruiters know that you’re open to opportunities, and click on Learn more. On that page, you will see Enable or Manage #OpenToWork button. Clicking on it will open a new tab, it will allow you to add job titles, you can up to 5 titles. You can also add locations, start date, job types, and choose who sees you’re open. For the Choose who sees you’re open option, you can pick either Share with recruiters only or pick Share with all LinkedIn members, if you choose to inform the LinkedIn community. It will add the #OpenToWork photo frame on your profile image.
Conclusion
LinkedIn hosts an endless array of opportunities to network, connect, and showcase your work or projects to potential employers. Take advance of all this opportunity to show your work, reflect your personality, provide social proof of the work you had done.
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