LinkedIn and Your Job Search

Your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things that a potential employer sees. Your job search should start by refreshing your profile along with your resume.

It's important to note that LinkedIn has reached a point where it's almost unprofessional not to be on LinkedIn. There are members from all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies. LinkedIn members comprise hundreds different industries, and include thousands of hiring managers, recruiters and employers that are seeking someone with your qualifications. Take a few minutes to search LinkedIn and I'm sure you'll find lots of contacts from your current and prior employers, clients, vendors, and schools. All those contacts have the potential to help you grow your career or find a new job.

With over 350 million members, LinkedIn is the most "grown-up" and professional of the social media network venues currently available. According to the JobVite recruiter survey, the use of social media for recruiting has been expanding, and the trend is expected to continue. LinkedIn is clearly in the lead in many ways.

Hiring: When it comes to hiring, 78% of recruiters have hired through a social network, and the leading network for hiring is LinkedIn by a very wide margin. While 92% of recruiters have hired through LinkedIn, only 24% have hired through Facebook, and 14% have hired through Twitter.

Recruiting: Most of the 94% of recruiters who use social networks for recruiting will be using LinkedIn, and the preference for LinkedIn is significant with 94% of the "social" recruiters using it vs. 65% of social recruiters using Facebook and 55% of social recruiters using Twitter.

LinkedIn is the most popular site for recruiters by far, as the data below reveals. Of the social recruiters, LinkedIn clearly dominates in key uses, according to a recent JobVite survey:

• 95% of recruiters use LinkedIn to search for candidates.
• 95% use LinkedIn to contact candidates
• 93% use LinkedIn to "keep tabs on" potential candidates.
• 93% use LinkedIn to "vet candidates pre-interview" (vs. 32% on Facebook and 18% on Twitter).
• 92% posted jobs on LinkedIn (vs. 48% on Facebook and 39% on Twitter).

Recruiters indicated that they checked a candidates LinkedIn Profile for:

• Profesional experience
• Length of professional tenure
• Specific hard skills

So, investing time in learning how to leverage social media for your job search, and to leverage LinkedIn, in particular, will be time well spent for you.

The world of job hunting is changing dramatically right now, primarily because of social media.  If you haven't been paying attention to social media, and particularly to LinkedIn, you have some catching up to do. You cannot afford to ignore LinkedIn today.

Tomorrow we will be discussing the importance of your finances and knowing where you stand. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step but to know where you are going, you must figure out exactly where you are.

Until then, take time out to update or establish a quality LinkedIn profile before you begin your job search. Visit my website www.dacapra.com for details on how I can help you design an eye catching LinkedIn profile.