Thursday, September 01, 2011
How to Use LinkedIn to Increase Your Hirability
LifeHacker: LinkedIn is the social network of choice for hooking up with people and companies professionally; in fact, one survey found that 86% of companies that use social networks to recruit talent do so with LinkedIn. Just being on LinkedIn and participating in relevant groups has helped open up freelancing opportunities for me, and the service offers a great many features you may or may not know about that can help support your own networking, freelancing, or job search needs.
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4 comments:
Every impression you can give a prospective employer is a positive, as long as you make sure it's a good impression. LinkedIn had the advantage of being specially designed to help you to make that positive impression and it has a lot of additional features that make it easier for you to set it up. You can still do most of the same things on any other social networking site, or even on your own web page, but it might not be the place that employers are looking if they don't look they habitually.
Networking sites are without a doubt making an impact on the employment market. Not only LinkedIn, but more friend-based sites such as Facebook and Twitter are being scouted by employers in order to get a read on their prospective employees. Although some advocate leaving no trace at all, I believe that one may actually be represented in a positive light by using these platforms. Showing that you can behave professionally in a workplace as well as in a social setting will most likely be seen as a positive.
That being said, having an easily searched resume on career oriented sites like LinkedIn is all the more important. It is a convenient place to start building connections with institutions in one's field, and can build a base for further research by employers provided the pieces are well put together. The key words and phrases expressed in this article are an important insight to what it means to be in an era where the hiring process is becoming increasingly more digital.
I wonder how often employers in this industry, particularly when hiring freelance designers and crew members, use LinkedIn. It seems to be a lot more word of mouth, and I've noticed a lot more professional sound people on facebook than on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has benefits over the traditional résumé as described in this article, i.e., data that says more about what your abilities and accomplishments are than just a list of names, so perhaps it'd be nice to see résumés evolve to have a more casual format.
Additionally, creating a LinkedIn profile and failing to keep it up-to-date consistently could come across as sloppy to a potential employer.
Like Daniel, I wonder how much LinkedIn (or a similar site) is used in our industry. I reluctantly made a LinkedIn profile when my friend asked me to, but I haven't done much with it. This article has made me realized that using the site is not hard and can be helpful somewhere down the road. I like that you can fit more information about yourself throughout every section of your LinkedIn profile than you could on a basic resumé. Another aspect of the site that I really like is the ability to find out the kind of people that are in a company and what kind of people the company is looking for. Last year we talked about the importance of really knowing the company you want to work for, and LinkedIn seems like a great resource for that kind of research. This article has helped me realize that LinkedIn might be more useful for me than I thought.
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