6 Ways To Boost Your Job Search With LinkedIn

By Alex

Although we still have resumes and cover letters as well as traditional interviews, wouldn't you agree that the whole process has become more complex (no, not difficult) involving so many different tools that a candidate has to master quickly in order to achieve goals in a job search.
I can tell you that it is most likely that your dream job is not waiting for you on one of the numerous job boards. Nowadays it is far from being real that after applying for a position on a job board a candidate will be invited for an interview for many reasons. Statistics shows that only about 4% of available positions are being filled through job boards.

Moreover, I have heard opinions of many career consultants who do not even recommend having a candidate's public profile on job boards. Instead, they advise using social networks to showcase your skills and to find and to follow the companies which potentially could have a perfect job for you.

Here is what Dan Schawbel, recognized as a “personal branding guru”, says in his book Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (this is Amazon affiliate link).
 "Job boards are black holes. Stop submitting your resume to them and praying that a machine finds it and delivers it to a hiring manager. You should spend more time meeting people at companies you want to work for at networking events and through social networks."

Totally agree with that recognizing that professional networking has been spread out way beyond the real world into the virtual universe.

The great thing about online social networking is that it became a "one-click" easy way to create and expand your professional network which ultimately might land you a dream job.
Ok, maybe not literally, because you still need to do your part minding some established good practices such as the "do's and don’ts" in building a quality professional network.

LinkedIn is definitely the best place to start.

Before revealing the best ways that LinkedIn can be used as an effective career building tool, let me share with you some interesting statistics which I have come across recently on Jobvite.com.

The Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2010 was conducted online between May and June 2010; over 600 human resources and recruiting professionals participated in the survey.

The results of our 2010 social survey show that social recruiting has become a mainstream channel for companies who are hiring, with 83% now using or planning to use social media for recruiting.

• 46% of respondents plan to spend more on social recruiting in 2010 than 2009.
• 36% will spend less on job boards.
• 38% will spend less on third party recruiters and search firms.
• For candidate quality, respondents rated social networks significantly higher than job boards who landed in last place, just above search engine optimization.
• 92% of those hiring in 2010 currently use or plan to recruit via social networks.
• Of this group, 86% use LinkedIn, 60% use Facebook and 50% use Twitter for recruiting.
• In addition, 50% of hiring companies plan to invest more in social recruiting while only 17% will spend more on job boards and 36% will spend less on job boards.

Those are just current trends and it is your choice whether you want to ignore them and to continue playing according to “old rules” or to adjust your job search strategy.

If you would like to have a look at the full results of the survey, click this link for a free download (you will need to provide some of your personal information in order to get the report).

Based on what I have just discussed, below are the ways you can use LinkedIn as a part of your job search strategy and career building in general.

Register on LinkedIn now if you haven't done so and fully complete your profile immediately after signing in.

Have your profile completed so visitors and your network can see who and what you are. This is a must! There are tons of resources out there on the Internet explaining how to do this. As a quick reference you can download this Checklist.

Otherwise, a half-filled profile or misleading and controversial information in your profile might cost you a valuable job lead. Also you will find it harder to build up your quality professional network with your incomplete profile.

Wouldn`t you agree that spending an hour or two of your valuable time is well worth not loosing a chance of being noticed and possibly approached in your career endeavours?

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