How to fill out a LinkedIn profile and find clients. Instructions for the social network.

The profile picture on LinkedIn can secure a job opportunity, and people get added as friends for business connections.

When looking for jobs abroad, many sooner or later come across LinkedIn. This is the main professional social network on the Internet, which really helps job seekers find a suitable vacancy, and employers – the right specialist. At the same time, the structure of LinkedIn can deter an unprepared user: too many nuances and subtleties need to be known in order to attract the attention of a recruiter.

I figured out what makes LinkedIn network interesting, who it can help and how to find a job using it.

From the material, you will learn:

• What is the peculiarity of LinkedIn
• How does LinkedIn work
• How to correctly fill out a profile
• How to look for vacancies
• What are some services for working with LinkedIn
• What are the alternatives to LinkedIn

What is the feature of LinkedIn?

This is a hybrid of a social network and a job search service

The company was founded in 2003 by former Apple developer and vice-president of PayPal, Reid Hoffman. LinkedIn launched at the dawn of the social networking boom and became known as the “Facebook for professionals”: the company established itself as a professional social network with less emphasis on entertainment.

While Mark Zuckerberg’s audience was inventing their first memes and adding friends to their social media accounts, LinkedIn users were searching for jobs and networking. Almost 20 years later, LinkedIn has around 850 million registered users and is regarded as the world’s largest professional network.

In 2016, Microsoft acquired a service for a record-breaking $26.2 billion at that time.

This is a showcase of corporate life

Initially, LinkedIn was mainly used to search for top managers – CEOs, CFOs, and other high-level executives. Now, however, the social network has become a window to the global market for specialists of different levels and professions from 200 countries.

The social aspect of LinkedIn is not lost: users actively share professional successes, companies post job vacancies, and corporations and the world’s top universities talk about their insider knowledge. Here is a mathematical problem from Oxford professors, and here is a gallery of workspaces of Blizzard employees.

The range of residents is wide: the pages are run by the giant e-commerce Amazon and streaming service Spotify, news outlet Reuters and internet fan curator Buzzfeed. Regular users talk about their work and share career achievements: according to the service statistics, 75% of users report a job change on their profile.

This is a treasure trove of professional knowledge

Many top managers, directors, and opinion leaders from various industries – from marketing to programming – use the platform as a work blog.

In social networks, there are even their influencers: for example, career consultant Liz Ryan, psychologist and publicist Adam Grant and even the founder of Virgin Galactic Richard Branson. However, compared to other blogging platforms, LinkedIn clearly loses in terms of functionality: it is impossible to plan a publication or quickly gain an audience from scratch on a social network.

How does LinkedIn work?

At first glance, LinkedIn looks like a classic social network. There is a list of friends, an built-in messenger, a feed of publications, users can subscribe to company pages, comment and like posts. But there are a few differences.

User page

The user’s page is divided into several sections. There are seven main blocks:

1. General information. It is needed for a brief selling description of oneself, one’s qualities and skills – it is this section that recruiters pay attention to first.
2. Favorites. This is where original content such as articles, links, and photos are stored.
3. Actions. Here is noted the recent activity of the user: likes, comments, publications.
4. Work experience. Professional biography. The data is filled in several stages, separately for each place of work: one company – one block.
5. Education. Here you can list all places of study with degree specifications – Bachelor’s, Master’s, Doctor of Science.
6. Skills. A place for hard skills and unique abilities. Duplicated from work experience.
7. Interests. “Tag cloud” of professional life. This includes companies you have worked for, educational institutions, and corporate pages you have subscribed to.

Network of contacts

The contacts network is analogous to a list of friends, and it is present for every user. Friendship on LinkedIn is built on the principle of “social circles.” You can subscribe to a page unilaterally and receive notifications about publications, which is useful if you want to follow companies and opinion leaders. Or you can “establish contact” – in other words, add someone as a friend.

Those who accept your request become “first-level” contacts, their contacts are “second-level”, and those with whom you are acquainted through a handshake are “third-level” and beyond. This helps to establish business contacts: users who are friends with your colleagues are more trusted than anonymous ones.

It is recommended to regularly expand your network of contacts: follow former and current colleagues, subscribe to other users. The more contacts you have, the higher your profile will appear in search results. If a recruiter visits the page of someone from your friends list, you will automatically appear in the “recommended” side panel – this is how the algorithm works.

Author mode

Author mode is a function for those who want to become bloggers on LinkedIn and receive additional attention from users and employers.

Settings provide access to additional tools that are not available to others. For example, in the author mode, you can create mailings, conduct live streams and audio conferences. LinkedIn also recommends quality authors to others, which can help promote yourself as a professional or expert in your field.

How to properly fill out your profile on LinkedIn

The amount of job offers directly depends on how your profile looks. On average, recruiters spend no more than a minute viewing a page. Therefore, even seemingly minor elements such as a profile picture or a brief description become important.

Let’s consider all the nuances of registration in order.

Name, avatar, and background image

It is better to write your first and last name in Latin letters from the beginning, for example, as it is indicated in your documents.

There are no specific requirements for the photo, but there are entire guides on how to present yourself to the employer from the first shot. Here are a few tips that are often mentioned:

• You are the center of the photograph. There should be no other people in it. Ideally, your face occupies about 60% of the avatar: a full-length shot will not be visible on a thumbnail.
• Choose a semi-formal photo in casual clothes. It is not necessary to post a photo from your documents, but it is better to leave the “me and my six cats” card for another social network.
• Make sure there are no distracting elements in the photograph: seat belts, signs or home greenhouses. The recruiter should notice you first, not the interior of the car or living room.
• Do not give in to the temptation to use palm leaves or a sunset sky as a background image. Let it reflect what you do, such as a photo of your team or a visualization of one of your projects. Another safe option is the logo of the company you work for.

Title and general information

The profile headline is needed to make a statement about oneself to recruiters and colleagues. In most cases, it coincides with the specialist’s position: middle-developer, senior designer, and so on.

What recruiters primarily look for

The first thing a recruiter sees on LinkedIn is the username, company, and profile headline, which is the current position. Usually, it is pulled from the last job held.

Sometimes an employer may give a job title in a clever way, not using the common name on the market. In such cases, it is better to bring everything to the commonly accepted standard. This is especially important for candidates entering the international market: if a recruiter does not immediately understand what you do, he will not open your profile. The simpler, clearer, and more universal the title, the better.

“General information” is necessary for a selling description of you as a specialist. The recruiter will evaluate it in the first place.

Think about what can catch the attention of a potential employer. How many years have you been in the industry? What programs do you know how to use? Can you do something on your own or lead projects in different roles? Have you ever managed? How many people were on your team? If you are a freelancer, remember the companies you have collaborated with: sometimes the brand name speaks for itself. There is no need to go into details, one or two paragraphs will be enough.

Work experience

Work experience on LinkedIn resembles a resume: for each position, you need to indicate the company and its field of activity, duration of work, and schedule. If the company is not well known or has recently appeared on the market, it is worth briefly explaining what it represents.

Recruiters will pay special attention to this block. There is no universal recipe, but here are a few tips:

• Be brief. Remember that your LinkedIn profile is not a resume, so you should write twice as less. Describe your responsibilities for each job: what you were doing, what tasks you faced, and how you solved them. Key achievements can be listed in short points with a few words.
• Add details. Show what components your work consisted of. If you are a programmer, what server did you serve? What tasks did you solve? If the work can be measured in numbers and you can disclose them publicly, indicate those that most vividly reflect the results of the work.
• Avoid clichés and common phrases. Even if you are truly creative and communicative, a recruiter cannot be convinced with just words. Save stories about personal qualities and hobbies for the interview.
• Explain the career gap. If you want to tell the recruiter where the gap in your resume came from, add a “career gap” section. The service will suggest the appropriate reason, such as academic leave, parenting or relocation. Although the options in the drop-down menu are in English, when you add text to your profile, it will be automatically translated into the interface language.

Skills

This section is for professional skills. Here you can confidently list your competitive advantages, from knowledge of foreign languages and expertise in software to public speaking skills. By default, skills are pulled from work experience, but they can be added or edited to your liking. Up to 50 skills can be specified – the more, the better.

Recommendations from colleagues and supervisors will confirm your skill. To do this, the user needs to click “recommend” next to the skill on their friend’s page.

Another way to verify a skill is to take a short test on a discipline from LinkedIn, for example, on programming in Python or working with Excel. The time for questions is limited, but you can practice before starting.

In case of success, a special icon appears next to the skill. Beware: even if you changed the language settings, the questions and answers will be in English.

Licenses, recommendations, projects

Additional blocks where you can share your professional and academic achievements, from completed courses to volunteer work. They are added using a button in the profile header. You can also place recommendations from other users, especially if they already work in the company you aspire to.

Let’s highlight the “Projects” section separately: it allows not only to demonstrate successful cases but also to highlight other team members. This affects the algorithm: if a recruiter is interested in someone from the project colleagues, your profile will be at the top of the recommended list.

In addition to the textual description, it is possible to attach a file to the project: standard formats DOC, PDF and PPT are suitable for textual documents and presentations, and JPG, PNG and GIF are suitable for images.

How to search for job vacancies

Discovering Part-Time Jobs Abroad through LinkedIn: A Guide

We need the “Vacancies” tab to search for jobs. The principle is the same as on recruitment platforms: you specify the position, choose a filter by region or “any country” if the location is not essential, and dive into studying the search results. It’s better to search for vacancies in English – then there will be a lot more options.

Introduce yourself

To find a job faster, you can directly announce your job search using the “Looking for a job” status. Indicate your preferred position, type of employment – office, remote, or hybrid – and regions of job vacancies for office and remote work. You can limit access – then only recruiters will see the status – or, conversely, tell all users about your plans. In the second case, LinkedIn automatically adds a green #Opentowork frame to your avatar.

Refer to your colleagues

LinkedIn marks vacancies of companies where people with similar experience work with a special footnote. It will help you assess your chances before applying: if an employer pays attention to former colleagues, then this experience is important to the recruiter.

Respond faster

For some vacancies, simplified application submission is available. This means that it is enough to leave only the phone number and resume right inside the service – in other cases, LinkedIn will redirect to the company page.

To not miss out on a promising job opportunity, set up notifications for fresh job postings.

LinkedIn from an employer’s perspective

First and foremost, large global corporations such as Apple, PepsiCo, Bayer, General Electric, and others are searching for employees on LinkedIn. Such companies purchase professional accounts for their recruiters. The interface is significantly different from what regular users see: there is a full-fledged admin panel, project blocks, and forms where candidate data is uploaded.

Many recruiters of smaller companies register as regular users and regularly view candidate profiles in this way, albeit with limitations.

Most often, recruiters are in free search: they study the market and look for promising specialists. Moreover, this is not related to published vacancies. Sometimes on LinkedIn there are only two open jobs, but in reality there are dozens. If you are very interested in the company, it makes sense to try to write to the recruiter personally: briefly introduce yourself, describe your motivation, attach a CV and wait for a response. The timing here is the same as in mail, one to two weeks.

The recruiter searches for candidates in four ways:

• By professional fields, for example in marketing, sales, IT, finance.
• In terms of companies, when specific specialists with a specific background are needed.
• By keywords.
• According to skills.

Particular attention is paid to the companies the person has worked for: if the brand is well-known and the length of service is decent, this inspires trust.

What are the services for working with LinkedIn?

Understanding whether you have provided all the necessary details and described your experience well may not be easy. In addition, the structure of the social network and the number of requirements for the page can discourage an unprepared user. Here are a few services that can help evaluate the attractiveness of your profile on LinkedIn and make the social network more user-friendly.

Hiration

Hiration analyzes the page according to seven parameters and gives advice on how to improve: boast of numbers that reflect your efficiency or describe duties in more detail. The service is free, but requires registration – for example, through linking a Google or Facebook account.

Jobscan

Jobscan matches LinkedIn profiles with job descriptions. Some recommendations from the service are given for free, while others are unlocked with a subscription.

Skrapp.io

Skrapp.io allows you to find a user’s email address. This is useful if you want to write directly to an HR manager or department head. Skrapp.io is available for Chrome and Firefox.

What are the alternatives to LinkedIn?

There is no full-fledged analogue of this social network, which is why it is popular. But if LinkedIn is not to your liking, here are a couple of English-language services for job search.

AngelList. The largest portal for business angels – investors looking for promising startups to finance. It is suitable for those who want to work in a startup.

Opportunity. A hybrid of a blog and a recruiting portal. Unlike LinkedIn, there is no open user database here. You can respond to job openings with just one tap directly within the service.

MeetUp. Board of events for professional networking: there are workshops, lectures, and meetups, some of which take place online. You can join the event or announce your own.

Pineapple. Recently launched networking platform with a bright design and vertical photos. Users freely communicate with each other, join thematic communities, and create “gems” – threads for discussing a specific topic or question.

Brief tips on how to use LinkedIn

1. Be versatile. When creating a LinkedIn profile, view it through the eyes of a recruiter from the company you want to join. In the header of your profile, list “standard” job titles and commonly accepted abbreviations.
2. Write briefly and to the point. You can share your achievements during an interview or in your resume. Recruiters on LinkedIn are primarily interested in your skills and the companies you have worked for.
3. Expand your network of contacts. Add other users as friends and subscribe to corporate pages. The more contacts you have, the higher you will rank in a recruiter’s search results.
4. Get support. Ask colleagues to recommend and confirm your skills. This increases the status and adds weight to competencies.
5. Don’t be afraid to write first. Many companies do not publish job vacancies on LinkedIn, and recruiters themselves are often in active search. If you are confident in your abilities, find a profile of an HR specialist and offer your candidacy.