Make LinkedIn work for you

With more than 300 million existing profiles and two new members every second, LinkedIn is changing the professional landscape and making it easier for recruiters to interact with you. No longer is a paper CV enough to sell your skills – an effective online professional profile is essential to encouraging great opportunities to come to you.

Here, the Manager of our Engineering desk at our Kuala Lumpur office, Benny Tan, gives you five ways to get the most out of your online professional profile:

Update your profile

Complete your profile, from the summary to your education, and update it once a month. The more content you have the more likely you will be to pop up in recruiter searches. Including a professional photo will also significantly increase the chance of your profile getting viewed.

Whatever your industry, joining and actively participating in LinkedIn groups will put you in touch with other experts in the field.

Connect with everyone

You might think you should only stay connected to those you already know, but this is a rule better applied to more personal networks like Facebook. With LinkedIn, it’s in your interests to connect with as many people as possible and to help them connect with each other. The more direct connections you have, the larger your overall network will be, creating more opportunities in the long run and increasing the chances that your profile will be seen.

Recommend others

The more you give, the more you will receive. An impressive employment history will always help to draw recruiters in, but it is the recommendations from others that will really convince them to meet with you. Recommend others as much as you can, and they are likely to reciprocate. If you do this over time, your job hunt will be much easier when you do start looking.

Join groups

Whatever your industry, joining and actively participating in LinkedIn groups will put you in touch with other experts in the field. Posting intelligently and often in group discussions will establish you as a thought leader in the market, widen the reach of your message and help you to connect with key people you might not otherwise have interacted with.

Optimise your search rankings

Recruiters search for keywords, so optimise your ranking by incorporating industry terms into your heading, summary and work history. Keep it light on the overused buzzwords, such as visionary or guru, and make sure your language is clear and concise, avoiding industry jargon that might be hard for those outside your business to understand.

So just remember, a great resume on it's own probably won’t get you into your next great big role. The vast majority of candidate sourcing techniques include LinkedIn, other social media channels and of course, personal networks. When it comes to getting noticed, a professional social presence is essential.