Ever wonder how you can use the social media for job search?

Although increasingly more job seekers are employing Facebook and Twitter to find new job opportunities, LinkedIn continues to be the social media platform of preference for both employers and job applicants. When it comes to finding career opportunities, using social media for job search, research crowned LinkedIn the King.

Before we start looking at how to use LinkedIn, let’s note: Anyone considering LinkedIn jobs should create a LinkedIn profile before starting a search, notes Chuck Hester, a LinkedIn consultant, speaker and trainer. An updated, well-written LinkedIn profile is an important tool in presenting your best professional face to potential employers.


How to use LinkedIn for job search

Don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet? Not sure how to create a polished one? Or how to use LinkedIn for job search? Here are eighteen LinkedIn jobs search tips to get a leg up on the competition. Practice These Killer Tips To Land Your Dream Job – You’ll thank me after your next job search.

1. Be proactive. Many people set up a LinkedIn profile and “wait for opportunity to knock,” says Donna Serdula, a LinkedIn profile branding specialist and author of LinkedIn Makeover: Professional Secrets to a Powerful LinkedIn Profile. “To be successful, be proactive. Research the opportunities. Network with other people. Develop a LinkedIn profile that showcases who you are, what you do, and why someone should take note of you.”

2. Make your online network reflect your offline connections. Once you set up your profile, start connecting with everybody you know: current and former colleagues, past employers, people in your industry, neighbors, family, friends, former classmates, says Serdula.

3. Use keywords that hiring managers and recruiters are searching for. In your LinkedIn profile headline, don’t simply list your job title unless it’s extremely descriptive of the work you’re looking for, notes Nick Parham, a career counselor and executive coach who helps clients develop their LinkedIn profiles. Instead, look for keywords in the job descriptions you’re going after and, if they apply, incorporate them in your headline. This helps your profile turn up in LinkedIn job postings searches for those terms and shows your suitability for the positions you’re seeking.

4. Make your headline read like a newspaper headline. Along with keywords, your headline should “summarize who you are and the benefits you deliver,” says Serdula. “A successful headline compels people to read your profile.” She provides visitors to her website with access to her free LinkedIn Headline Generator.

5. Write a compelling background summary. Your summary should “differentiate you from the hundreds if not thousands of other people competing for the same job,” Parham says. Tell a story. Talk about past and current job responsibilities, achievements, problems solved and passions. Don’t use long paragraphs; be concise.

6. Mention quantifiable achievements. Write a “metric-oriented” summary, Hester advises. For example, if you’re a sales VP for a large corporation, mention that you increased sales from X to Y and developed X number of sales programs contributing to those results.

7. Don’t list jobs held over 20 years ago. The goal is to showcase your career trajectory, not exhaustively list every job, says Serdula. Don’t conceal your age on LinkedIn, but don’t accentuate it, either—and jobs held more than 20 years ago do just that.

8. Add your contact info. Some people hesitate to include their email address and phone number in their LinkedIn profile’s contact info for fear of receiving spam or marketing calls. Do it anyway, Parham suggests. Not everyone likes to use LinkedIn’s email system.

9. Endorse and recommend others; they’ll likely reciprocate. Your LinkedIn profile should include endorsements as well as recommendations of your skills. The best way to receive them is to give them. Endorsements, because they’re so easy to give, don’t hold as much weight as written recommendations, says Parham.

10. Join lots of relevant groups. There are countless topic-specific LinkedIn groups. When you join one, you can interact with others outside your professional network, exchanging ideas, tips and even job leads.

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Practice These Killer Tips To Land Your Dream Job – You’ll thank me after your next job search.