6 LinkedIn Insights for Job Seekers, Inspired by UpLift Live

LinkedIn helps me connect with folks who are looking for some support in their job search or career development. It's my marketing platform of choice.

As part of my coaching practice, I help job seekers get the most out of LinkedIn, using it to network more effectively, get noticed by potential employers, and ultimately land a new role.

In the past, I've also used LinkedIn as a hiring manager to find, research, and contact candidates for the open roles on my team.

I recently attended UpLift Live in Birmingham, UK, a conference that primarily (but not exclusively) focused on the business, marketing, and social selling aspects of LinkedIn.

Every single person I met was lovely, kind, and the kind of person I hope to keep in touch with. Within the first ten minutes, it hit me: "These are my people."

All eight of the speakers were phenomenal, and I got SO much out of each one. Forty-nine action items later (including re-watching the talks to make sure I didn't miss anything), I'm writing this article to share a slew of LinkedIn tips with a spin on helping job seekers use LinkedIn more effectively.

The marvelous thing is that regardless of the target audience and topic for each talk (marketing, sales outreach, customer research, branding), there were nuggets of wisdom relevant to job seekers throughout.

In this article, I'm including the most interesting tidbits from six of the eight speakers that can help people who are looking for a new job.

1) Courtesy of Kevin D. Turner , go through your profile and make sure every field is using the auto-completed version of that value.

When a recruiter is searching for candidates, they can filter candidates by using LinkedIn's database of existing skills, locations, industries, and job titles.

LinkedIn lets you use "free-form" skills by typing in something that doesn't autocomplete, but that means recruiters might miss you. If "golang" isn't in the list of existing skills, then recruiters can't filter candidates based on the word "golang." Instead, use the existing auto-completable skill of "Go (Programming Language)"

LinkedIn frequently updates its database, removing and adding terms. So, even if you originally entered your data only using pre-existing terms, double check. Make sure all of your key skills, your current location, your industry, and your job title are all in the autocomplete list.

2) TIINA JARVET shared a few pieces of information that surprised many of us:

• Recruiters don't see your banner when they're looking at you through LinkedIn Recruiter. Make sure your Headline speaks for itself.
• "Open to Work" and the concept of "actively looking" has a time window. To show up as a still-active job seeker to Recruiters, toggle this setting, reply to your InMails, apply to jobs, and update your profile often.
• If you're connected to just one person at your target company, you'll show up on the first page of results when you match a recruiter's search query. You don't need to be connected to the recruiter, just any individual at the recruiter's company.

3) LinkedIn search is... decent, at best. Nigel Cliffe did a deep dive into using Google as an external tool to find people on LinkedIn. Taking that a step further, and after some tinkering, I plan to cut back on helping my job-seeking clients fight with LinkedIn (and, for that matter, Indeed and Monster) to find opportunities and companies. Give it a try and see if you get better results with Google's advanced search features.

site: linkedin.com/jobs AND ("software engineer" or "software developer") NEAR/3 ("lead" or "senior") AND " * years experience"        

I'm already working on a how-to guide to get better results while using Google as a sort-of aggregate job board. Follow me and ring my bell to get notified when I publish it! ??

4) This advice from Mark Williams is absolute gold for every job seeker:

Before you reach out to someone on LinkedIn, read the recommendations they wrote for other people.

This will tell you what impresses them. When you send them a message, you can introduce yourself in a way that touches on exactly what they value.

What they say while recommending others tells you everything you need to know about what they're looking for in a candidate or future colleague.

5) A fantastic prompt from John Espirian :

"What's the biggest promise you can make? Reinforce it every time you show up."

This lines up beautifully with my oft-shared advice about knowing your superpower.

How will you contribute to your future employer? What will you help them accomplish? If only they hired you, what's the most significant thing you promise will happen?

When you figure that out, put it everywhere: in your headline, as the first sentence in your "open to work" posts, at the top of your resume, and in every cover letter.

6) Richard van der Blom recommends that when you add a comment to a post, always make it at least 12 words. While this is grounded in Richard's research into the LinkedIn algorithm and how LinkedIn "rewards" you for engaging, commenting with a little more substance is simply the better practice regardless.

When a recruiter or manager visits your profile, they'll see your recent activity. If they're met with short comments like "I agree," "Thanks for sharing," or "Inspiring," you're missing out on an opportunity to impress. Viewing your activity, you don't get the context of what you commented on.

Instead of "I agree," consider writing out the full sentence. "I agree. Using a full sentence to comment shows you really thought about it and paid attention, which can make people take notice and think highly of you."

Now, I only covered 6 of the speakers that I could relate back to job seeking, but I also have to mention two of my favorites: Louise Brogan covered all things Company Pages (and I think a solid one-third of my action items started here), and Gillian Whitney spoke about going live on LinkedIn (something I currently do monthly , but her advice will help me do it better and with a lot less stress).

Neither of these talks were particularly relevant to job seekers, but they'll both help me reach, serve, and help more folks who need a bit of extra support navigating this brutal market.

This won't be the last you hear about everything I learned while attending UpLift Live. These are merely a few of the highlights, and there's definitely more to come!