In just 22 years, LinkedIn has gone from an experimental social media app created in its founder’s bedroom to the world’s stand out digital business platform. Here, we look at how to create a standout profile to build your personal brand and how to use the platform for executive and senior leadership job searches.
With a billion members in 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn has changed the way professionals connect and interact, a development turbo-charged by the lockdowns of the Covid pandemic.
While many see it simply as a live CV/recruitment service, it is a far more valuable resource than that with several functions that can be incredibly useful to anyone in any post in any sector. They include networking, influencing, subtle marketing and branding through delivery of quality content (no spamming or unsolicited sales approaches allowed) and research/learning.
For example, if you need to understand the opportunities and risks of AI in your business, LinkedIn is a good place to start. Companies including our own invest considerable resources in creating high quality, original and free to access content on topics like this, relevant to their target audience.
In this first part to our LinkedIn blog series, we will explore how to create a brilliant profile to build your personal brand and project a polished, professional front to support your career transition or development.
Part two will explain how to use the platform for executive and senior leadership job searches and ensure recruiters & other key stakeholders find you. Later in the year, we’ll show you how to grow your followers, promote your personal brand and increase your influence by posting relevant content to showcase your talent.
Knowing how the LinkedIn algorithm works is key to getting the best use out of it. Unlike other social media sites, it is designed to avoid posts going viral, focusing instead on relevance, quality of content and meaningful connections between individuals with common interests and similar profiles.
The more time you spend using it, the more it can understand your needs, refining its selection of content and connections to organisations and people that will prove increasingly relevant and helpful.
Today, the first contact any potential new business partner/employer/employee is likely to have of you will be digital, most probably through LinkedIn, which is why you need to be skilled in promoting yourself on it.
In person, it is said that we make 1,000 computations about an individual within seven seconds of meeting them. We read appearance, body language, personality – we respond through experience, instinct and chemistry.
Online, there are only visuals and words to go on. In some ways, this makes it easier – we can control how we present ourselves. In other ways, it makes it harder – with fewer readable clues, a single mis-step could carry far more weight than all the positive signals being sent out.
Think about what happens when you cast an eye over a LinkedIn profile. Your brain whirrs into gear, scanning for clues to build a picture. And, yes, you will form a fairly instant opinion based on what you see. You may even decide whether you want any further contact based on this first, rudimentary judgement. Without even realising, people who have not grasped the importance of this may be denying themselves the chance to make a better second impression in real life once the LinkedIn verdict is in.
Every day, people are doing the same to you which is why it is essential to get it right and fully exploit the power of this global connectivity.
Once your profile is sparkling and complete – check your rating, you want to be at all-star – it’s time to optimise it and start networking to get closer to that dream position. To learn more about this read part two to this Blog series, which explains how to use the platform for executive and senior leadership job searches and ensure recruiters and other key stakeholders find you.
Later in the year, we will show you how to grow your followers, promote your personal brand and increase your influence by posting relevant content to showcase your talent.
There’s no getting away from the fact that LinkedIn is now an essential tool for anyone in business. Whatever stage of your career, it’s worth investing your time and energy in it. First, ask what you want from it and dedicate your resources to that end. If you want to fully harness its many features and use it to offer a refined and finely-tuned personal brand, it’s worth getting professional support, particularly if you are seeking a senior role with a competitive salary in this difficult market.
Rialto can help you use LinkedIn effectively as part of a strategically structured, personalised executive career transition and job search. Contact us for a free initial consultation.
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