How To Get More Interviews Using LinkedIn - How to Use Linkedin to Find a Job!

Hey everybody, it's Brian from A Life After Layoff, and today I want to talk to you about how to get more interviews using LinkedIn. If you're serious about your job search, chances are you're using LinkedIn already. But if you're not on there already, what the heck are you doing? Go over to LinkedIn right now and create a profile. Don't worry, I'll wait for you. Now that you've got a LinkedIn profile, let's talk about LinkedIn and how to get it to start working for you. In case you didn't know it already, LinkedIn is actually one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet. It's specifically targeted to job seekers, businesses that are trying to grow, but it's really a platform that you need to be on if you're serious about a job search. As a recruiter on an active search, I would spend up to 80% of my time on LinkedIn looking for candidates. Why do I do that? Because I can find the exact candidate that I'm looking for. You see, recruiters use what's called LinkedIn Recruiter, which is a platform that we can search the back end of LinkedIn looking for specific skills, knowledges, and abilities to target and hone in the perfect candidate. In fact, almost all of my recruiter colleagues and friends are using LinkedIn to the same capacity. We use it to find the qualified candidates. Because you see, the job postings that we put out there almost never result in a hire. Now I won't say ever, because there are times where I have hired a candidate through a job posting, but it's very rare. And then a lot of times, it's simply luck. You happen to be at the right place at the right time, and I find the exact candidate that I'm looking for. But when I work with a hiring manager, they're looking for a specific skill set, and they want it to match as closely to the job profile that I'm working off of. And the chances of you being a qualified job seeker and matching the position that I advertise for are very slim. So I will do my direct recruiting on the back end of LinkedIn by search parameters, and I'm going to tell you what I look for. For example, if I get 100 candidates that apply for a position, I might only be interested in three to five of them. The others are just average candidates, or they just don't fit the bill on some level. And there's been times that I've found candidates that maybe I didn't have a position immediately for them, but I felt like they would be a good fit for a future role, so I made the connection request anyway. So you can see why you're going to want to use LinkedIn, especially for job search, but not only that, also for networking. So let's talk about how I use LinkedIn as a recruiter. Like I said before, LinkedIn is the main tool that I use when I open up a new search. So when a new position comes in, I'm going to create a job posting and put that out there. So you'll probably see something on LinkedIn or some of the other job boards that I might use. But at the same time, I'm also doing my own search, and I'm doing that usually in LinkedIn and a couple of other places, but LinkedIn is the main place. I'll be looking for my own very targeted candidates based on a profile that I worked out with the hiring manager. So how I do this is I set up a search parameter on the backend of LinkedIn Recruiter using certain keywords, skills, knowledge, and abilities. If you've never heard of LinkedIn Recruiter before, it's not something that you need to worry about. It's really a software package that they sell human resources and talent acquisition professionals so that we can search on the backend of LinkedIn in a much more robust way to find qualified candidates. The nice thing about LinkedIn Recruiter is we can search by almost any parameter that you can think of. So I can get very detailed and targeted searches. And as a recruiter, that means that I can hone in on the exact profiles that I'm looking for that would be a perfect fit for my hiring manager. So this is exactly why you need to be on LinkedIn, and you need to make sure that you're optimized. Because if you're not on LinkedIn, you're going to be missing out on all the direct recruitment opportunities that are out there. In other words, recruiters are going out and doing direct outreach to find the candidates that are the perfect fits for them. And if you happen to be the perfect fit for a role, if you're not on LinkedIn, you're not going to get contacted. And I speak from experience. The best opportunities typically are ones that you get reached out to directly from a recruiter. They're not generally positions that you're applying to. There have even been scenarios where I'll recruit a position that I don't have an active job posting or job ad for. So you would never know that the opportunity existed if I didn't come knocking. So make sure that you're on LinkedIn if you want to get directly recruited. So let's talk about how to use LinkedIn to your advantage to get more interviews. The first thing that I would suggest is make sure that you keep an updated and robust profile. This is the most important tip that I'm going to give you. And if you don't do anything else in this video, do this thing. Load it down with industry keywords. So think about what a recruiter would be searching for when they're looking for a role that you might be qualified for. Your LinkedIn profile better have those keywords in it. Now obviously, you need to make sure you actually have those skills, abilities, and qualifications because if you falsify a document, then that's going to be a whole other issue. But if you have them, make sure that you add them in. Make sure everything that you put on your LinkedIn profile is relevant and recent. So that certification that you got 20 years ago and you let lapse isn't going to be as helpful to you anymore. And keep in mind that the more complete your profile is, the more searchable you're going to be. So make sure you make it as robust as you possibly can. The second thing I want to talk about is a LinkedIn profile picture. For your profile picture, this is going to be one of the first impressions that I as a recruiter have of you. You want to make sure that your profile picture is recent, relevant, and professional. Don't use vacation photos, your wedding pictures, pictures with your spouse or your kids, pictures of you on your motorcycle, anything that you had to crop in to feature yourself. Avoid those types of photos. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to go spend a fortune on professional headshots, but the very minimum, you want to have a clean background, good lighting, and a decent pose. And you can actually achieve decent results on an iPhone if you know what you're doing. However, if you have the budget, getting a professional headshot done is absolutely the way to go. The next thing I'd like to talk about is uploading your resume. Did you know that you can upload a document directly to your LinkedIn profile homepage? That's the perfect spot for a resume. I always love it when I see a candidate that has a resume on their LinkedIn profile because then I don't have to go through the back and forth. I can check out their resume and see if they're a good fit before I even contact them. It also shows me that you're a serious job seeker. But if you're going to put your resume up, you've got to make sure that it's solid and well optimized because if you have a bad document, it's not going to help you. And make sure that you set your resume to featured so that it's prominent on your homepage. That way when I drop by, I can see it immediately. The next tip I'd like to give you is to set your profile to allow recruiters to contact you. I can't tell you the number of times where I've been on a difficult search and I finally find that golden goose, that perfect candidate that I know is going to be a home run. When I go to click on their profile to contact them about the opportunity that I have, it blocks me out saying that this candidate has not allowed recruiters to contact them. Oh, it is so frustrating. So then I just have to move on to the next candidate. And for the life of me, I can't understand why somebody would turn down an opportunity to hear from a potential employer. Even if the position is low quality, it just takes a few seconds of your day to consider it and then move on. Unless you're happy with a steady job, and I've got a whole other video about that. Besides, if you're getting bombarded with recruiters contacting you, consider yourself lucky. There are a lot of people out there who are not being contacted at all. You're in demand. And like I said, it's pretty easy to screen out opportunities that don't interest you. So there's no reason not to allow a recruiter to contact you. But setting your profile to private just guarantees that you're never going to get that opportunity to land in your lab. So I would recommend to allow recruiters to contact you, if even only during your active job search. The next tip I'd like to talk about is setting your profile to say that you're actively looking for positions. If you go into the back end of LinkedIn and you look in the settings, there's actually an option in there that allows you to indicate to the world that you're open and looking for new opportunities. Now, this is only visible to recruiters on the back end in LinkedIn, so you won't see it on a public facing profile. Make sure you turn this option on, especially if you're in an active job search. Because when I go in and start my own sourcing search, those are the profiles that I start with first. Because usually I get a better response rate. Now I know that there are some people out there who are worried about their companies seeing that status. And what I'll say to that is LinkedIn does take efforts to try to block profiles from your same company seeing that. So in other words, if I worked at the same company as you and I'm on the recruiting license, I won't be able to see that status from you. But I will admit I have seen people at the companies that I've worked for looking for active positions. But what I will say to that is that as a recruiter, I have never ratted somebody out. I understand that people need to better themselves and that people should be open to looking for new opportunities and that it's actually up to the company to make sure that they're treating people right and recognizing them. So if you're working in a toxic environment or you're blocked at your position, I totally understand that. I'm not going to tell your hiring manager that you're out looking for a new position. Now, I speak for myself. I can't speak for all recruiters, but that's just me. So use your discretion if you want to keep that hidden. Although I will say you will get more opportunities if you keep that option open. The next thing I want to talk about is indicating your relocation preferences. There is an option on the back end that you can indicate where you would be open to relocation. And as a recruiter, that was another target that I used. So if I had a position in a kind of remote area or a place that it was hard to relocate somebody to, I would actually search for candidates that expressed an interest in that area geographically. It's usually a much easier sell when they're already open to the location that I'm recruiting for. So I would suggest adding in as many locations as you would reasonably consider. Again, we're looking for maximum visibility on the platform. The next suggestion that I would give is make sure that you're clearly stating what it is that you're looking for or not looking for. In your bio or in your summary, I would put a statement about what it is that you're looking for as far as a position. I would suggest making it clear what kind of positions that you're really interested in to further your career path. It'll show that you're serious about the direction you're heading in and will establish a game plan to the recruiter. Plus, it's going to help you weed out unrelated opportunities. You want to take it a step further, you can actually also indicate roles that you're not going to be interested in. For example, you could say something to the effect of, as a seasoned sales professional in the medical industry, I've spent the last four years of my career building up a robust territory with 35% year over year growth in sales. I'm now ready to test my skills in a regional or director role in a similar type of industry. So basically what you're saying is that you've already done the position that you're in currently and you're not interested in that anymore. You're really looking for growth opportunities. That's going to help give a recruiter a better understanding of what it is that you're looking for and the likelihood of you coming back with a positive response to their inquiry. I'd also recommend that you take some time to find some industry connections that would be relevant to you. So find some hiring managers and or recruiters in the companies that you're most interested in and just say, Hey, I noticed that you're in the same field. I'm very interested in your company or your industry and I'd like to just make a connection. You're not asking for a position, you're not asking to be considered. Essentially what you're doing is you're starting to establish a longer term networking strategy. Now, if you're going to do this, make sure you've got the right person. If you're targeting a recruiter that focuses on marketing and finance roles, yet you're interested in sales, they're probably not the right recruiter. You're just going to waste everybody's time and it's just going to make more work for the recruiter to route you to the right person. So take a few minutes, do the research on LinkedIn, click on their profile or bio, see what they do and then make the appropriate decision. The last major thing that I would suggest is to be active on the platform. After all, LinkedIn is a social media platform to begin with and so it is really designed to be social. So engage on posts that you find interesting, like a comment, write a post of your own. Show that you're actively involved in the community. Not only are you going to look more engaged as a member of that community, but you're also going to have a wider net because when you engage on somebody's content or somebody engages on you, it broadcasts that out to their networks. So there's a better chance of you getting noticed. You never know who's going to see you that way. So let's keep in mind, LinkedIn is a social network first and foremost. In fact, it's one of the world's biggest. Every two seconds, somebody's signing up with a new profile on the platform. If you're not on there yet, you got to go in and create that profile. That's the first step. Try to implement some of these steps. Before you know it, if you've got an optimized profile and you're doing all the things I suggested, you should start to see a difference in the amount of engagement that you get. If you're in a job search and you're struggling to get noticed, that's what I specialize in. I've got a website called alifeafterlayoff.com. I'm going to leave a link below. Make sure you head over there and check it out. I've got a lot of free information and resources for job seekers and people that are recently unemployed. If you like the content, give it a thumbs up because that actually helps other people who are struggling with a job search to find the right content for them. Also consider hitting that subscribe button because I've got a lot more videos planned on how to maximize your chances to get noticed by recruiters. I'm here to help you land your dream job. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.