LinkedIn is a social network that focuses on professional networking and career development and it can be use to display resume, search for jobs, and enhance your professional reputation by posting update and interacting with other people. LinkedIn is free, but a subscription version called LinkedIn premium offers additional features like online classes and seminars, as well as insight into who’s searching for and viewing your profile.

Also, LinkedIn is quite similar to other social media sites like Facebook, and is based on principles like connecting to friends, posting, updates, sharing and liking content and also instant messaging fellow users.

LinkedIn also puts a professional spin on ideas you know from Facebook. Your profile, for example, becomes a resume, complete with work experience, accomplishments, recommendations, and referrals from colleagues. The site also offers things you won't find in other places, like a full-featured career board, where you can search for and apply for jobs.

Related: The Perfect Job Application: How To Increase Your Chances Of Getting Hired

LinkedIn being built on a simple but effective premise of professional networking, making it the perfect place to reach out to professionals of all ages and backgrounds all over the world, have the following importance.

1. Networking

There is an astonishingly high number of users across more than 200 countries at your fingertips. Once you have a strong professional profile, you will find more and more of these professionals will begin to connect with you. Like all social networking sites, LinkedIn has a dedicated algorithm that will begin recommending posts and profiles that are relevant to your interests.

Take advantage of this algorithm by reaching out to and building relationships with people in your desired industry. You may find you often keep stumbling across the same people in the discussions and groups you’re visiting on LinkedIn, which illustrates that you must have similar interests and work in similar industries. Why not reach out to them? LinkedIn is no place to be intimidated, reaching out and connecting with other professionals from around the globe is its primary function, and it enables its users to do this easily.

2. Job opportunities.

By creating a standout profile and building the right network, you are also opening yourself up to career opportunities.  Your LinkedIn profile becomes a version of an online CV and it is common for employers to search for and view this during the recruiting process. Seeing a highly engaged professional with connections in the industry is going to come across well. It can also be a means for potential employers to find you without you even applying for a position.

With the help of the algorithm and keyword searching, recruiters use LinkedIn to scout for talent. There is even an open work feature designed for this purpose.  During the COVID-19 lockdown, professionals made redundant went one step further than this and used a specific open work frame on their profile pictures to help them find job opportunities. You can also take advantage of your network to bring in opportunities. You can reach out to employees or even hiring managers at the company you want to work for and get some great insights into their recruitment processes.

Related: How to get a self-fulfilling job + Examples

Core Benefits of LinkedIn

LinkedIn being the largest business-oriented website geared specifically towards professional, it has over 500 million members, I over 200 countries. A professionally written LinkedIn profile allows you to create an online professional brand which can help open doors to opportunities and networks that you may have been aware of without help of social media.

It also gives you the ability to showcase your profile, expertise, recommendations and connections, not only is your profile the first professional impression of you when recruiters and employers use LinkedIn to search for candidates but it also demonstrates credibility in your industry and highlights your achievements. People still underestimate the importance of LinkedIn in their job search and are sometimes reluctant to embrace social media. Below are the core benefits of LinkedIn.

1. You get exposed to hiring managers and recruiters. 93% of recruiters use LinkedIn to research and recruit candidates. LinkedIn allows you to have an online personal brand which makes you visible to key decision makers and recruiters. This means when your name is put into a search engine such as google, you have an online personal brand and you are appearing in search results. It’s for this reason you need to make sure you treat your LinkedIn profile in a similar way to your CV and you ensure what is on the profile is selling you in the best way possible.

Read: Why you may be failing at getting a new job

2. It helps you Demonstrate your knowledge, credibility and leadership expertise. Here, having a LinkedIn profile helps build trust with employers and recruiters as they can see your recommendations and connections and evidence of where you have added value.

3. You can use LinkedIn as a research tool. Having a LinkedIn account also means that you can use the site to research companies, interviewers, recruiters, and hiring managers, this is helpful before submitting applications and researching who’s interviewing you and conducting interview research.

4. You can use LinkedIn as a great Job board. New opportunities exist throughout the LinkedIn site that may not exist on traditional job boards. You can directly apply for roles using LinkedIn apply, save job searches, as well as flagging to recruiters that you are open to hearing about opportunities.

5. You can use social prove for your skill and talents. Let others recommend and endorse you for your skills and past work. When others recommend or endorse you, anyone who sees your profile can see these and it shows you have other experts backing up your claims to have certain skills. This is very powerful in making connections. You can build your credibility through the endorsements and testimonials that LinkedIn allows your contacts to leave on your profile.

6. You are free to follow companies. LinkedIn is a brilliant tool for researching organisations and people that work at them. You can use this to target people within your network that work for organisations that you really want to work for.

7. You can join reasonable groups. Groups are a brilliant way to meet people with similar professional interests and expand your network from other graduates to professionals already working in your industry. Groups allow you to take part in discussions. This is a great way to exhibit your knowledge on topics related to your industry, ask questions and start conversations with key people in key organisations.

The benefits of LinkedIn are almost endless with no downside to having a LinkedIn profile. Get involved in forums, join groups and meet like-minded individuals like yourself. Best of all LinkedIn is totally free. Job seeking is a tough business and applying for online jobs each and every day is a job in itself!

How to write a profile summary that gets you noticed.

1. Making a strong impression LinkedIn

You need to make the most out of it by creating a detailed, comprehensive LinkedIn profile including a profile summary. Also considered your ‘About’ section, your LinkedIn profile summary is the space on your profile where you introduce yourself to the digital world. It is your opportunity to share who you are as a professional, what makes you unique, important accomplishments and even some of your personality.

You can also take advantage of key search terms that will increase the likelihood that your profile will turn up in search results. You can consider it a less formal version of the personal statement you include on your CV. Because your LinkedIn profile summary is your first chance to make an impression on the social networking site, you should make it the best it can be. Take these steps to create an introduction that makes you can stand out.

2. Target the audience you want

A hundred different people may end up reading your LinkedIn summary, but that doesn’t matter if they’re not the right people. Ask yourself a simple question: Who do you want to read your summary and, crucially, what do you want from them?  if you’re on the hunt for a new role, you may be targeting recruiters and business owners. In that case, you should be writing a LinkedIn summary that sells you and your skills. Much like your CV, this brief overview needs to show people that you absolutely have what it takes to take the next step in your career.

Before you even dream of writing that first sentence, consider who will be reading it. Having a clear audience will help you find a core message and avoid a long-winded, boring description. Instead, you’ll be able to write something truly compelling.

Related: How to Write a Cover Letter That'll Get You the Job You Want

3. Be Authentic, honest and concise

It should go without saying that lying on your LinkedIn profile summary is a recipe for disaster. For one thing, everyone can see your page and someone can easily call you out on those little ‘white lies’ you’re telling. there’s the fact that you have to back everything you write up with facts and evidence. So be yourself! It might sound cliche, but it works.

When writing your LinkedIn summary, it’s important that you are authentic and honest about your experience. Avoid writing too much though, no one wants to read your life story. Save those minor details for your autobiography instead. 

4. Let Your Personality Shine through

The recruiter reading your LinkedIn profile summary has not met you face to face. They have no idea of who you are or how very charming you may be. This is where your LinkedIn profile summary differs most from your CV, because you can let some of that award-winning personality shine through in your writing. This technique is used in the best LinkedIn profile summaries, and it can really work wonders when you get it right.

5. Explain what you do Briefly

What exactly are you into? Your regular job duties may cover a whole range of things, but you shouldn’t babble in your LinkedIn profile summary. Instead, condense what it is that you do down into a manageable paragraph. Be concise and clear. The best summaries give a taste of the person’s expertise and previous roles without getting too bogged down in the everyday, nitty-gritty details. Dedicate just a couple of sentences to your role and be clear.

6. Show off your talents

You know your profession better than anyone else, right? Well, then show that to those who look at your LinkedIn page. For example, Prof. Benson does an excellent job of showing off his talents and knowledge in his LinkedIn summary: 

‘I am a professor passionate about leveraging podcasts to improve listening skills and narrow educational disparities. Research shows that we spend up to 90 percent of our time listening but only 10 percent of us listen effectively. This has serious consequences on students’ long-term educational attainment and career readiness.

LinkedIn profile summary is a way through which you introduce yourself as a professional. On LinkedIn, that means a careful balance of professionalism and personality, all in the endeavour to make someone interested in learning more about you. With the right LinkedIn profile summary, connecting with HR managers and industry professionals alike will be a blast.

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