6 Ways to Be Active on LinkedIn: Participate to land your next job faster!

As a career management coach, one of the projects I collaborate on with jobseekers is writing LinkedIn profile narrative. We develop the narrative and assist with posting the information to their LinkedIn profile. Then, nothing happens. The jobseeker makes few, if any connections, does not post anything, and is active in no groups. As a result, prospective employers and industry contacts don’t find them although LinkedIn considers their profile “complete.”

It’s easy to be active on LinkedIn so you can increase your chances of being noticed. Start by taking these actions once you have completed your initial LinkedIn profile:

1. Make connections,
2. Prepare posts,
3. Write articles,
4. Contribute to collaborative articles.
5. Join groups, and
6. Give recommendations.

These efforts will save you time and effort rather than taking up an excessive amount of job search time.

Make connections.

Social media is about connecting virtually with other people, and LinkedIn is no exception. The platform has two basic ways for communicating with people you know—invite them to connect with you or invite them to “follow” you. As a jobseeker, focus on establishing connections rather than accumulating followers. Find profiles of people you want to communicate with, and then click “connect.”

It is essential to establish LinkedIn connections. Recruiters have told me they do not see jobseekers in their search results unless the jobseeker has 50 connections or more.

It’s easier than you think to build a network of LinkedIn connections. You may feel that “I don’t know anyone.” Start with schoolmates, add friends and family, and then include current and former coworkers who are already on LinkedIn. You will probably have your 50 connections once you’ve done this.

Accept LinkedIn’s “add a note” option when you send each request. This has at least two benefits. First, it will give you the opportunity to begin a meaningful dialog with them. And, when these people are interested in what you have to say they will read and then share your posts. This will further increase the chances that your profile will be seen.

Prepare posts.

LinkedIn, like other social media platforms, encourages you to post updates for your connections to read and share. The site is business social media, not entertainment, so presumably you are a busy person. No one is going to expect you to post constantly unless your job is to be on LinkedIn all day.

Your posts can be up to 3000 characters in length, and you can include links in addition to media. Connections are more likely to stop scrolling and read your posts when you include media in addition to text.

My favorite kind of post is related to blog articles I have added to my website. LinkedIn algorithms, though, are designed to encourage members to remain on the site. Fortunately, there are options for posting more information without leading readers to other sites.

Write articles.

You may not want to create your own website and blog for sharing your expertise when you are seeking employment. LinkedIn will give you the option of writing an article or even creating a periodic newsletter right on their site. Your articles can include images, links, and hashtags, much like your own blog.

And there is another LinkedIn option for those that do not want to write entire articles themselves. You can collaborate with other experts on articles.

Contribute to collaborative articles.

Recently, I learned that it is not necessary for me to create entire articles of my own for LinkedIn. Instead, I can contribute to articles started by LinkedIn editors. When I tried this feature last evening, I found the maximum length for a contribution was 750 characters, so it is an opportunity for exposure to a wider audience with relatively little writing.

Look at LinkedIn’s page on collaborative articles, and then pick some topics to get started. You may get a “top voice badge” added to your profile by LinkedIn once you have made several contributions.

Join groups.

There is an even easier way to get more visibility on LinkedIn—join groups. Normally, I encourage clients to join the group or groups on LinkedIn for alumni of their schools. Career coaches consider alumni connections to be among the strongest most people have. And alumni typically help each other even if they did not know each other in school.

My most productive connections on LinkedIn and other social media platforms have been those with former coworkers, so look for groups related to organizations you have worked for in the past. Some years ago, a fellow coach helped me land a job where he worked. Then, I recommended him for a job where I worked.

Give recommendations.

Yet another way to expand your reach is giving recommendations to people in your network. There’s a good chance that those who receive recommendations from you will reciprocate. As a result, both of you will have “social proof” of expertise. It also helps you “show that you care,” and not just “show what you know” when you help others with recommendations.

Concluding comments Experts call LinkedIn a large database. But if you treat it as a database by merely creating a LinkedIn profile and then forgetting about it, you will miss out on the real power of the platform. It’s social media as well as a big database. And, when you are active, LinkedIn can help you get that new job sooner.