How to use LinkedIn to search for jobs

When you are looking for a job, your LinkedIn profile must be updated and to the point. But it also pays to use your LinkedIn profile actively when you are in a job you enjoy.

By being visible in the right way, you make yourself interesting to headhunters, and you expand your network, which you can draw on - both now and in the future.

Here you can read more about how to build your LinkedIn profile and use it actively.

Your LinkedIn profile should be targeted

Before starting to build up your profile, you need to consider the following:

• Who is your target group?
• Which companies or individuals do you want to look at your profile?
• Who would you like to network with?
• Which job types do you want to be offered?
• How can you, through your profile, make it visible that you can create value in such a position?

Your target group analysis will be the foundation for what you choose to tell about yourself, your positions and your education. All the information you make public needs to be relevant for the target group and should lead to an increased interest in you.

Remember that your key competencies in your CV should be identical to your skills on LinkedIn.

Seek inspiration from peers and find your strengths

Look for profiles of people with jobs similar to yours or who have positions that you aspire to have or would like to include in your network.

Look how they use their profiles. Use them for inspiration for how to create a good profile.

Analyse your own strengths and weaknesses in relation to the competences of others and find out what you need to accentuate in order to be competitive and attractive in comparison to them.

Create your LinkedIn profile in a relevant language

You do not know if head-hunters and others are looking for candidates in Danish or English. But your also need to maintain your LinkedIn profile, so you should be realistic in terms of how much time you want to spend updating your profile in multiple languages. 

If you decide to have a bilingual profile, you can adjust your settings on your profile page by choosing “Create profile in another language”.

But first and foremost, use the most energy on your LinkedIn profile in the language you see as the most important in your professional life.

Capture the reader with your headlines

The purpose of your headline is to attract interest and create a picture of who you are and what you can bring to the table.

It needs to make sense even if detached from the rest of your profile.

Your headline needs to consist of the words you think a recruiter would write as search words in order to find relevant candidates for a position.

Use few words to describe yourself as accurately as possible. For instance, replace “Project Manager” with “Lean Project Manager, HD”.

Help the reader with a descriptive summary

Your should see your LinkedIn profile summary as an elevator pitch in writing, where you say the most essential things first.

Your target group should be able to quickly decipher how you create value.

Make sure that the receiver gets the most important points even if he or she skips the rest of your profile. It might be a good idea to write down your core competences in bullets so it is easy to get the full overview.

The summary needs to answer the following questions:
• Who you are
• What you can do
• What you want
• What is your passion

Bring out relevant professional experience

Note down your positions and places of work.

Also write a short description of your areas of responsibility in each job along with an outline of your tasks.

Tasks need to be prioritised according to what a potential new employer needs to know. Do not try to explain your entire job content but rather a prioritised description in relation to the job you are looking for.

Each job description should also contain your experiences. If you are a manager, you can emphasize the results you have achieved in each job. Highlight your competencies rather than who you are. Why do your skills make a difference? Why are you an asset?

Use a professional and accurate photo

Most people are well aware that they shouldn't use their holiday photos on their LinkedIn profile. But there are a few other points to keep in mind.

Your portrait should first and foremost look like you and be of a high quality. It also never hurts to look approachable, although you don't have to smile more than you normally do.

Many people also recommend using colour photos to create contrast to LinkedIns blue/grey colour scheme. 

Keep your profile alive

Make sure that your profile is updated with your newest competences, be active and contribute on LinkedIn.

You can be active in groups like The Danish Society of Engineers or by commenting on posts from your LinkedIn network.

You can also share insights from your industry or your personal thoughts and experiences.

When you are active and visible on LinkedIn, it is much more likely that others will see you.

Expand your network through relevant groups

The three best reasons for joining relevant LinkedIn groups are:
1. You expand your visibility with the group’s participants and the people, who can search and find you, as well as those you can search for.
2. Groups have signal value and your memberships show the reader that you have a strong professional network.
3. You show that you keep yourself up-to-date

Avoid spamming your network

LinkedIn is first and foremost a network, so there's no need to keep secrets from your contacts, whether they are strangers or your close colleagues/manager.

But if you're doing a thorough update of your profile, you might want to hide your activity as you do so. That way your network wont receive an update every single time you change something.

Go to ‘Accounts and settings’ under ‘Privacy and settings’ and use the ‘Turn off your activity broadcasts’-function. Then your network will no longer receive information about your changes to your profile.

They will still see your updates though.