How Important is LinkedIn to Your Job Search?

LinkedIn has become a go-to tool for recruiters and employers to find great candidates who match the skills, experience, and education that fit open positions from entry-level to executive-level. It’s popularity and ease of use make it one of the most important tools for hiring professionals in all fields.

With more room than your average resume, LinkedIn can allow you to tell a complete career story. With more reach than a newspaper ad, LinkedIn can carry your name and resume to employers and hiring professionals around the world. And you can extend your reach from just the network contacts you already know, to everyone THEY know, and so on.

How Important is LinkedIn to Your Job Search? Here are 6 reasons Step Up Recruiting urges job seekers to join and use LinkedIn as a great tool for your job search:

1. Professional medium. LinkedIn was built for professionals to display their skills, expertise, experience, and education to market themselves for jobs and career advancement. Unlike other social media that was developed for maintaining and enhancing social connections that can also be used for job searches, LinkedIn was built for precisely for the job seeker to reach out and connect with employers and hiring professionals!
2. Professional marketplace. Hiring professionals and employers now consider a premium LinkedIn account a crucial tool for candidate searches. They can plug in all the elements of the perfect candidate and search hundreds of thousands of LinkedIn profiles for great matches in a very short time. LinkedIn is a tool almost everyone uses; if your profile and resume are not there to be searched, you’re essentially invisible.
3. Greater reach. LinkedIn allows employers from all over the world to search for job candidates by credential, education, skills, and experience. No matter the profession or region you’re seeking a job, LinkedIn can help you connect with recruiters, hiring managers, and employers searching for someone with your qualifications.
4. Fewer errors. Since you can add all the information from your resume, a full profile, and even recommendations for your various skills, everyone involved in the process; candidates, recruiters, employers, hiring managers; all know ahead of time you’re a likely fit for the open position, interviews become a matter of fine-tuning whether it’s a perfect fit.
5. More connections. LinkedIn allows you to build a network of contacts quickly. As you connect with people you already know, you become connected to their network. As you become visible and known to those new connections and they see your qualifications, you build your reach and reputation. You never know when you’ll get recommended for a position that hasn’t even been advertised!
6. Vetting tool. Even after you have landed an interview, LinkedIn can still be useful. The same hiring professionals who search for candidates on LinkedIn, use it to help them vet the candidates they choose. 

Now that you know why LinkedIn can be such a useful tool in your job search, make sure you’re putting all its features to work for you.

Want to know more? Contact Step Up Recruiting.