LinkedIn is the largest network in the world for professionals. A platform that you have to be on if you are interested in looking for work both nationally and internationally.
Knowing how to use LinkedIn to search for a job as well as having a good profile prepared on this platform will be the two fundamental keys to get the job you want.
If you want to find contract work on LinkedIn, you should optimize your profile, know how to search for the best opportunities for you, and how to stand out from the competition. If you want to learn how to achieve that, here you will find all the necessary information.
1. Optimize Your Profile
LinkedIn is an online curriculum, you can show all your information so that companies know you and know your career when visiting your professional profile.
Perhaps, this is the most well-known functionality of this network for professionals, but it goes far beyond a simple online resume.
If you are going to look for work through LinkedIn, make sure you have created your profile properly since this is your resume, your visible face for companies.
A LinkedIn CV is very powerful since companies will be able to access its updated information, you no longer have to send dozens of CVs and even hand-deliver them, just visiting your profile will be enough.
Source: PaymentGenes
Complete Your Profile
Spend as much time as necessary filling out your profile information. It is true that it can be a tedious task, but the more information you provide, the greater the chances that a potential recruiter will find you.
This does not mean that you should make an endless profile that nobody will be able to read the whole thing. It is simply about providing all the relevant and necessary information.
Make sure all the information is perfectly up to date, especially the contact details.
Recommendations to Increase the Visibility of Your Profile:
What is the purpose of having a good professional profile if no one can find it? Here are some recommendations to increase the visibility of your profile and optimize it for search engine positioning:
- Configure correctly the options regarding the visibility of your profile and make sure it is public, the more people see it the better. In the configuration menu, there is a section called communications. Check the option that indicates that you are open to receiving job offers.
- Configure a custom web address for your profile (friendly URL), instead of using the URL provided by Linkedin by default. In your new web address, you must include your name and a keyword that describes you professionally, such as “Mary Smith Graphic Designer”.
Source: Insider
- What kind of keywords would a recruiter use to search for a profile similar to yours? Again, choose the most relevant keywords to position your profile and use them frequently throughout the different fields of your profile (although always within a natural language context).
- Pay special attention to the professional title, since it is the first thing that anyone who visits your profile will see, and practically the only thing that recruiters will see in the search engine results. Choose a clear, concise, and descriptive headline. If you are unemployed, enter a generic description of the position you want to find.
2. Be Proactive
Now that you have your profile correctly configured, your work has only just begun. Remember that Linkedin is a dynamic social network that you will have to manage as such, and not a static web page where you can upload your resume and sit and wait for them to call you.
With effort and hard work you will achieve good results, but not quite the next day. What this means is that you need to be persistent and not give up if you want to get contract work. Set a good LinkedIn strategy, follow it, and be patient. The results will come in time.
Be consistent. It is not about updating your profile ten times in a single day, and then not visiting it again for a month. Think about how much time you are going to dedicate per day or per week and establish a work plan with clear objectives.
To take advantage of Linkedin you must generate, advance, produce, and make things happen. You have to be proactive and take responsibility for your search process on Linkedin.
3. Be Clear About What Services You Offer
If you are looking for work on LinkedIn, you have to be clear about the services you offer so potential clients will know what type of contract work you want to find.
Think about what company you would like to work for, what functions you would like to perform, etc.
You can even make a list of companies where you would like to work. Then, by segmenting your search on LinkedIn, you will be able to get in touch with those responsible for these companies.
Think about your ideal job position: in what type of company (size, sector), department, functions that you would like to perform. The clearer you are, the more focused your search will be on LinkedIn. Make a list from the most general (sectors) to specific companies.
The easiest way to make it clear what type of job interests you is by writing in the title of your profile what role you usually play, such as: “Your Name, Copywriter”. That will let your potential clients know immediately what your niche is.
You can also give a small review about yourself in the “About” section and say what types of projects interest you. It is also good that you talk about what you specialize in and what types of work you usually do.
And of course mention your different work experiences, which will also make it clear what services you offer.
Edit your profile, add skills and knowledge that identify you in your area. This option also has an added advantage because your contacts can search for you for your skills, which will give you more possibilities when they search for you.
4. Connect With Potential Clients
Before starting a LinkedIn strategy to attract clients, you should be clear about a few things:
- Who is your ideal client (buyer persona)
- What goals do you have
- What are you selling (services, products)
If you offer services, what you should do first is to identify who your client is, who makes the decision to hire services in a company.
If you go to freelancers, it is easy because they are the only person in the company, but if you go to a company where there are different positions, you will have to know who is the decision-maker to hire a profile like yours.
Once you know this, you can do a search on LinkedIn for those users to add them to your network of contacts and then be able to interact with them.
Remember that you can also search by countries and cities. Locate your favorite companies and those that are hiring. Follow the most relevant companies in your sector and interact with them through their posts.
Most of the companies with a presence on Linkedin publish job offers on their profile, so be on the lookout to be the first to find out.
Besides, through the Linkedin search engine, you can filter the search results based on the companies that are hiring on Linkedin, which allows you to easily locate those companies that have published job offers.
Send A Personalized Message
You can send a personalized message to each of the people you contact. This is your choice. Sometimes it is better to wait for them to accept you and then you will send them a message since the personalized message is very short and is still a greeting.
If you want to take the time to make a personalized message, go ahead! If you take the time to personalize these messages a bit, such as greeting the person using their first and last name, you can generate more closeness and trust.
Be Thorough
Always customize the text of your LinkedIn invitations. Everyone likes to feel special. This detail will exponentially increase the chances that it will be accepted by the receiver. If it is a person whom you do not know very well, you can get inspired by the information in their profile to write the text and, if necessary, explain why you would like to connect with them.
5. Network
It is very important to work and take care of your network of contacts because new opportunities can arise from there and LinkedIn allows you to be in contact with almost anyone.
However, you do not have to contact everyone, that is a mistake. You must work on creating a network of valuable contacts.
You can locate human resources personnel, headhunters, recruitment companies, companies where you would like to work, or people with whom you would like to work.
When you send your invitation proposal to connect with that contact, remember to personalize it appropriately.
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Expand Your Amount Of Contacts
Accept the contact requests that you receive and do not hesitate to send your own invitations. Pay special attention to those people who belong to the Openlink network, since they are premium users -generally recruiters- to whom you can write directly even if they are not within your network.
Identify the super connectors in your sector, which are those with the highest number of contacts in their profile (you can identify them by the “500 + connections” sign in the lower right part of their profile headline).
The more contacts your contacts have, the greater your network will be and, therefore, the reach of your profile.
Take Advantage of Your Contacts’ Contacts
Research your contacts’ contacts. If there are any that you would be interested in connecting with, for this you can use the presentations option, a free Linkedin feature that allows you to ask one of your contacts to introduce you to another person on their network.
Use Linkedin as an Advanced Database of Your Professional Contacts
When you meet someone who is professionally interesting to you, do not hesitate to add them to Linkedin. Below the profile picture of each contact, you have an option called “relationship”.
In this menu, there is the possibility of adding a note about each contact, a note of how you met them or who introduced you, or set a reminder about that person.
You can also classify your contacts by tags. These are private annotations that no one but you will be able to see, so do not hesitate to take advantage of their full potential.
6. Apply for Jobs
If you want to find contract work, you should keep an active search. Periodically use the LinkedIn search engine to have access to job offers in your network of contacts or in the platform.
You can look for those offers that best suit your profile or a personalized list of offers. If you are looking for a job and the LinkedIn search engine shows you many interesting results, you can save all the jobs that you consider that suit your needs to review them in detail later.
Filter Preferences When Looking For A Job
If when you do a job search within LinkedIn you see that the results do not match your interests or work skills, you will likely have to filter the job preferences to adjust those results to what you are really looking for.
LinkedIn allows you to select the places and the sector where you would like to work, adjust your degree of experience, among others.
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Participate in Groups
Join groups related to your professional interests and participate in them frequently, but always through quality contributions.
There you can also make professional contacts that can help you in your job search, and bear in mind that job offers are frequently published in many groups. Also, there are groups specially created to publish job offers in specific sectors.
LinkedIn is a Powerful Job Search Tool
You must know how to use it and position yourself as an expert to be selected. To do this, take care of your profile, make contacts, participate, and look for opportunities that you are really passionate about.
Prepare yourself well, make relationships, talk, show your worth and everything will come.
In general, finding a job is not easy, but LinkedIn makes things much easier so that this process can be simpler and more effective, and so that you can access job offers that perhaps in your city or environment you could not.