Best ways to use LinkedIn

Build your profile so that you can get noticed

• Add a Profile photo and a background photo and title.
• Update your personal details, contact details, and LinkedIn URL.
• Insert a summary of your career highlights in bullet points.
• Detail your professional experience to date and give examples.
• Update and reorder your skills. Input any that aren’t already there.
• Include your education and qualifications, along with any professional training.
• Join groups of interest and groups relevant to your sector.
• Ask for recommendations from colleagues, clients and previous employers.

Reconnect with your network

• Make a request to connect with people you know.
• Give an endorsement to someone in your contacts.
• Give a recommendation to someone in your contacts.
• Write a message to reconnect to a person whom you haven’t spoken to recently.
• Send a video, post, picture or blog to start a conversation to reconnect.
• Like, share or comment on a post that a contact has shared.

Model other professionals

If you don’t know the next step in your career, model what others have done. Find out what they did and how they did it. It may help you to take the next step. You can search for them using a relevant keyword and then view their profiles to see what their education, qualifications and experience are. This can be really useful to find out when you don’t know the best way to get into a new industry. 

Apply for jobs

You can also use LinkedIn’s job search engine to find suitable jobs and apply for them. It allows you to see how many people have applied, what their qualifications are and even to contact the person who is making the listing. Therefore, you’ll be able to contact them and ask questions or if you have a contact in common - ask to be introduced. But before you start applying for jobs on LinkedIn, make sure that you profile is up to standard!