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Attract Employers with Your Skills on LinkedIn

Woman sitting on sofa holding linkedin icon

LinkedIn is a unique way for employers to find you based on the skills you offer. Often underused by job seekers, adding your best skills in your LinkedIn profile increases the chances that employers and recruiters will find and connect with you.

What skills should I emphasize on my LinkedIn profile?

Job postings are a good source for ideas on skills to highlight. When searching on job postings sites, or through LinkedIn, review the qualifications listed in the postings you are targeting. If these skills line up with your experience, then add them to your profile.

You will notice that as you add skills to you profile, LinkedIn will suggest others based on your profile. Use these prompts to identify further skills to add. LinkedIn also has a directory of all the skills added to the site. Skills are categories into Industry Knowledge, Tools and Technologies (computer skills), Interpersonal Skills and Other Skills.

In addition to emphasizing hard skills on your LinkedIn profile, also include your soft or transferable skills such as organizational skills and interpersonal abilities. Online tools such as the online Employability Skills Assessment can help you evaluate your abilities, determine skills you are most confident in, and those you might want to improve.

Other helpful resources include LinkedIn’s article, The Skills Companies Need Most in 2018 – and the courses to get them and the Employability Skills reference guide published by The Conference Board of Canada.

Where else can I include my skills?

  1. Your Resume – include your strongest skills here
  2. Cover Letters – emphasis your strongest skills that match those listed in the job posting
  3. Interviews – include key skills that match the job posting when describing your abilities
  4. Show, don’t tell – use your best skills when conducting yourself throughout the recruitment process like your positive attitude, organization skills and interpersonal communication

Now that you’re prepared to share your strongest skills, here’s how to add them into your LinkedIn profile.

Starting from scratch

  • Go to the LinkedIn homepage
  • Click the Me icon at the top
  • Click on the View profile
  • click on the Add new profile section (located on the right)
  • Select Skills from the dropdown menu
  • Type the name of a skill in the Skill text box and select it from the dropdown list that appears. Once selected, this skill will be added to your list

Revising existing skills

  • Go to the LinkedIn homepage
  • Click the Me icon at the top
  • Click on the View profile
  • Scroll to the Skills & Endorsements section
  • Click Add a new skill. In the pop-up window, type the name of a skill in the text box and select it from the dropdown list. If your skill does not appear, type the full skill name in the field provided and click to add.

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Spruce up Your LinkedIn Profile with these 5 Steps

Bank screen of laptop on wooden table with blur background of share space office cafe.

With a reported 11 million unique jobs posted on the site, LinkedIn has become a key source of opportunities for its over half a billion users. The social media platform provides users a myriad of ways to be noticed by recruiters and potential employers. And if you are going to be noticed, you need make sure that your LinkedIn profile is in as good a shape as possible, especially in these five key elements:

1. Career Headline

Your headline is the first line of text a potential employer reads on your profile. It plays a marketing role — it’s your opportunity to tell them what you want them to know about you, your professional skills and experience.

Avoid simply using your job title as your headline, and don’t use the default LinkedIn one. Use this valuable opportunity attract attention and impress the reader. Try adding some relevant descriptive keywords to your job title. You can use multiple short terms to describe yourself, combining professional and personal terms: e.g.” Administrative Assistant | Microsoft Office | Customer Service | Committed to Excellence” or “Accounting Clerk | Bookkeeper | Advanced Excel | Detail-oriented”.

2. Profile photo

LinkedIn tells us that “great profile photo (…) can get you up to 21 times more profile views”. But profile views are not enough; to make an impactful and positive impression, a photo which communicates information about the your professionalism and confidence is best. There’s no need to pay someone to take a professional photo. LinkedIn offer some good tips on taking your own “work selfie”:

3. Summary/About

Your About section is an opportunity to further introduce yourself, explain your employment history, and give potential employers an opportunity to learn what makes you unique. It can be less formal and more wordy than a resume profile — just make sure that the tone is appropriate for your industry.

You can include in your profile:
– your professional title, years of experience and expertise, e.g. “Over 10 years’ progressive HR experience working in the non-profit sector”
– relevant educational achievements and/or professional designations, e.g. “University educated and a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP)”
– core skills and achievements, e.g. “Skilled negotiator, having successfully handled and resolved union disputes; knowledgeable on issues regarding payroll; designed and implemented professional staff development training”
– work values and principles, e.g. “Strong commitment to inclusive non-discrimination hiring practices”
– relevant personal characteristics, e.g. “Highly energetic, enthusiastic and confident”
– knowledge such as relevant languages and computer software

For ideas on what to include, read through job postings you are planning to apply for and identify the qualifications listed by the employers. Use them as your guide — try to echo the employers’ priorities.

4. Background photo

A background photo can brighten up a profile. It shows that you’ve made an extra effort to make the profile stand out.

The ideal photo would be of you at your workplace or job – even better if it’s one of you doing your job. Remember that regardless of what photo you use, you should have permission to use the photo. If you search for an image, make sure it is labelled free for re-use. Google offers clear advice on how to find such photos.

5. Media

One of the features that distinguishes a LinkedIn profile from a resume is the ability to add links or media, such as PDFs, videos and slide shows, Word documents or images, to the summary and to each job. Use this function to share video clips or photos of you at work, slideshows that you have produced, newsletters where you were mentioned, or samples of your work.

For ideas and inspiration to spruce up your resume, use the LinkedIn search bar to find profiles of fellow professionals in your field and review their profiles; find the ones that look impressive and look at their photo, headline, summary, media and background photo, and learn what you can from them. Try something new. Remember, you can always change things up if it doesn’t feel right — no one will judge you for trying new things. That’s the advantage of social media.

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Identify the key person in a company to help you get hired

African American woman using laptop

When I ask my clients who they would like to connect with to help them get a job in their target companies, the standard answer is almost always “Human Resources.” Job seekers tend to believe that the Human Resources (HR) staff make the final hiring decisions or are, at least, in the best position to influence hiring final decisions. This results in cover letters often being addressed to HR staff and LinkedIn connection requests being sent to them.

HR managers receive a huge number of calls, emails and LinkedIn requests daily from people trying to get employment opportunities in their companies. Job seekers might be surprised to learn that it is exceedingly rare for HR staff to be able or willing to influence hiring decisions. In most medium to large-sized companies, the final decision regarding who to hire is not made by HR managers. Most decisions such as these are made by heads of departments or team leads.

What does this mean for the average job seeker? If you are going to address your cover letter to a particular person, you might want to figure out exactly who they are. If that isn’t possible, then use the title mentioned in the job posting. If that is not available, then address the letter to “the hiring manager.”

For networking purposes, the most useful contacts are not necessarily those who make the final hiring decision, because those people are often particularly cautious about not being seen as applying any personal influence on hiring choices. Of course, if you personally know a hiring person well, and you know that they know and respect your work, of course you should approach them. For the rest of us, if you do not know the hiring manager, you may have greater success if you are referred to that person by someone who does know them. Very often, that is the person who does the same kind of job for which you are applying, such as a potential team member. For example, if you are applying for a social worker position, you might have much greater success at getting referred to the hiring manager if you connect with other social workers on the team.

Use LinkedIn to seek out people in your field who do the work that you want to do in your target companies. Connect with them and join LinkedIn groups in which they participate. Initiate conversations with them online, or even better, arrange to meet with them in person for a short information interview. Make a point of connecting with as many potential team members as possible. These contacts are, by far, the most useful sources of employment opportunities.

A referral from a potential colleague can be a very effective way to influence a hiring decision. If you are able to establish strong ties to them, you will find that when job opportunities do finally come up in their companies, you will have the most influential people on your side. They might think of you when employment opportunities come up, and even be willing to reach out to the hiring manager on your behalf.

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How to be easily discovered by recruiters on LinkedIn

LinkedIn icon on smartphone

A recruiter friend recently suggested that LinkedIn has made him, in his words, lazy. LinkedIn has changed how he recruits candidates, making it much easier to find new candidates, using the search bar. LinkedIn allows recruiters to easily search through thousands of potential candidates, regardless of whether they are actively seeking a new job or not, to identify the most suitable candidate and reach out to them.

As a candidate who is hoping to be easily found by recruiters, there are certain things that you can do to make yourself more discoverable:

  1. Strengthen your profile:

Most importantly, make sure that your profile is complete. Fill in all the sections, as recommended by LinkedIn, until the profile is rated as All-Star. The important sections include the photo, summary, your jobs and education, as well as skills and, if possible, any recommendations you might be able to get. Don’t underestimate the value of obtaining recommendations and skill endorsements. Recruiters will make a special effort to review any recommendations you might have, especially if they are about the important jobs in your profile.

  1. Grow your network:

Make sure to have a large network, especially in your own field. It’s important to have a large number of contacts, preferable over 500, but it is also important to have professionals who are specifically in your field.

Connect with recruiters, whenever you can. You will find them mentioned on job postings. Recruiters can also be found by searching for them on the search bar. Remember that recruiters search for candidates from their own profile, which means that the more contacts you have in your field, the more likely you are to share 1st or 2nd degree contacts with a recruiter, and therefore, the more likely you are to appear in their search results.

  1. Include the right keywords:

Once your profile is found by a recruiter, you want to make sure that they can immediately see how well matched you are to jobs in your field. To do this, you need to include all the important keywords in your profile – in your job title, your summary, in the various job descriptions, as well as in the skills for which you are endorsed.

Remember, also, that recruiters search for candidates by skills, so if you don’t have those skills on your profile, you are less likely to appear in a search. To identify the most important skill keywords, conduct a job search and review which words are chosen by recruiters and employers to describe the qualifications and characteristics of ideal candidates. Add those terms to your LinkedIn profile, as well as to your resume.

  1. Search for jobs on LinkedIn:

Utilize the job search tab to look for jobs. Use it fully by searching for jobs, as well as saving and applying to jobs. You can also check the ‘Jobs You May Be Interested In’ and ‘Jobs In Your Network’ sections on the Jobs page, as well as set up email alerts for new postings in your field.

Recently, LinkedIn introduced an exciting new option, titled Career Interests, which allows you to flag yourself to recruiters and thereby make yourself more visible. It allows candidates to specify to recruiters exactly what and where are the jobs that they are seeking. This function is active for 3 months at a time, allowing you to update it every three months and keep it current and in line with your interests.

  1. Participate in Groups:

Recruiters have been known to browse through LinkedIn Groups of professionals in the sector for which they are recruiting, to identify potential candidates. Join groups and take an active role. Remember also, that if you share a group with a recruiter, you are more likely to appear in their search results.

To be more likely to be discovered by recruiters on LinkedIn, make sure to present the best possible, most focused, coherent and easy to understand profile. Growing your contact list, using the job search function, signalling your openness to recruiters and participating actively in groups will also help recruiters find you and be impressed by what you bring to the workforce.

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Use LinkedIn company pages to improve your job search

Laptop Screen with JVS LinkedIn Business pageMost people think of LinkedIn as just a useful way of marketing skills and experience to employers. There are however, many other uses for the platform, including the ability to target specific companies, for the purposes of networking, job search and to gain company information.

What are LinkedIn Company Page and what do they include?

LinkedIn’s Company Pages are a useful tool for you to learn more about your targeted companies. For companies, this is an opportunity for greater online presence to market their brand, as well as a place to announce news and recruit candidates.

LinkedIn company pages include:

  • A detailed description of the company
  • Regular updates from the company (news items, products announcements, developments)
  • Detail about company staff, including details on how you are connected to them and the opportunity to connect with staff
  • A searchable jobs database which includes an opportunity to sign up for job alerts
  • An opportunity to follow the company and receive their updates
  • Some pages include insights into the company, which include items such as languages spoken, causes the company and staff support

To find company pages, type the company name into the search bar and click on the “company” option.

Uses of LinkedIn Company Pages for job seekers

Long before social media, Employment Counsellors such as myself have encouraged job seekers to not rely on advertised jobs, and instead to invest time in networking, because, as many job seekers have experienced, the best jobs come from people you know.

LinkedIn Company Pages can be an excellent tool for job seekers to:

Identify target companies: Use the search bar to search for companies near you that hire certain skill-sets. You can enter the skill set into the search engine (e.g. mechanical engineer or P.Eng) and click on the “companies” option for a list of companies that hire for that skill-set. Follow the company and sign up for job alerts.

Prepare for Interviews: When preparing for an interview, LinkedIn company pages can be an excellent source of detail about the company.

Build your network in the company: Identify potential contacts in your companies of choice. Don’t necessarily go for senior management or human resources contacts – it may be even more effective to connect with people who do the work that you want to do. People who work in jobs like yours are often be the best source of information, tips and referrals to jobs, once they get to know you. Consider reaching out to them, to ask questions and conduct information interviews.

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