Wonder why you should have a profile on LinkedIn, leave alone a perfect one, in the first place? You need to understand certain facts about LinkedIn before realizing how you miss out on the humongous opportunities that your profile on this social media platform. LinkedIn is arguably the largest business-savvy networking online platform, catering specifically to professionals. Having in excess of 500 million members, spanning across 200 nations, the reach of LinkedIn is seamless. If you have a professionally composed LinkedIn profile, you are rather creating a virtual professional brand, which can eventually open the floodgates to vast opportunities and networks, which otherwise, you might not have been aware of.
In addition to the ability it offers you to display your profile, experience, recommendations, and connections, your profile gives the first impression of you when potential employers use this platform to scout for talents. Having a LinkedIn profile also highlights your credibility in your industry, in addition to demonstrating your achievements. Here are a few reasons why using LinkedIn can add value to your profile.
Gaining Exposure
Almost 93% of recruiters use LinkedIn to research and recruit resources. Visibility is the key, as LinkedIn allows you to have an online personal brand. Your profile will be visible to the HR personnel of various organizations. If you create your profile on LinkedIn, your name will be put into search engines like Google and Bing. Once your name is crawled by the search engine, your online personal brand will also be activated, as your name will appear in search results! Like how you make your personal CV, you need to create a professional profile on LinkedIn, thus ensuring that the content on your profile is selling you in the best possible manner!
Demonstration of your Qualities
Creating a profile on LinkedIn is building trust with employers and recruiters, as they will be able to see your recommendations and connections, which are pieces of evidence of where you have added value.
Research Tool
Having a LinkedIn account helps you to use the platform to do extensive and exhaustive research on employers, interviewers, recruiters, and HR managers, for this will help you to understand the company and its personnel firsthand before you submit your application.
Excellent Job Board
In contrast with traditional online job boards you come across, LinkedIn gives you ample opportunities throughout the website. LinkedIn has the apply button. Using that, you can apply directly to the companies you wish to work for. You can also save your job searches, flag to recruiters stating that you are interested to hear about opportunities.
Proof for your Skills and Talents
Another great feature in LinkedIn is the recommendation section, where others can recommend and endorse you for your skills and past work. Your previous employers, colleagues, and managers will be able to recommend your skills and achievements. So, any recruiting person who sees your profile can see these recommendations that corroborate your claims when your former colleagues back you up. This is really powerful, which helps you build your credibility in the form of endorsements and testimonials.
Follow Companiesm
You can follow companies, and you can use this to target those people within your network that you really want to work for.
