You Won't Land That LinkedIn Job Expect You Follow These Methods

Yeah, our major reason as job seekers for downloading the LinkedIn app is to find jobs! There isn't a need to be ashamed of that fact. Linkedin pours in millions of dollars in ad spend to place itself in the Number 1 position as a go-to platform where people find jobs, every other feature or functionality here on LinkedIn is just an addendum, just to keep the job fair/party lively.

If I am to redefine what this platform is, in a simple sentence, I will say: Linkedin is just an online job fair, where everyone is trying to sell themselves to the neighbour next door with the hopes of getting a job.

So if LinkedIn, barebone, is a job fair with hundreds and thousands of companies participating in these parties. Why then do we have a scenario where a typical job seeker will apply to at least 500 jobs and get 499 outright rejections and 1 interview which at the end of the day will still turn out to be a waste of time, energy, money and other resources? Why.

Looking at the dynamics of recruitment from my 7-year analysis. I have got to discover that there are binding rules and precepts that govern the interactions here, even in a jamboree job fair like LinkedIn. The very first precept is that there is no exclusivity, what I mean is that the job available to applicant A is also available to applicant B, therefore, this causes overcrowding, in fact, it is that bad, that people who don't qualify for a role can still apply to that role and create "an invisible blockade" for those who the jobs are applicable for.

For example, the Linkedin ATS tracking software guarantees that for Easy Apply roles only 200 persons can apply for a particular listed role. That's 200 people competing against one another. But for roles that are not bound by Easy apply, the number of applicants can swell up as much as the sand of the sea. The competition is stiff (more applicants chasing a few available open roles) and recruiters also have a low attention span for filtering out the best fit.

The idea here is actually not to think about the crowd but to think about strategies that make you stand out of the crowd, especially if the recruiter's eye finally falls on your profile. In one of my posts on Linkedin, I gave two nuggets:

1. The dynamics of landing a role on LinkedIn are not about what you do but about who you are. How you are able to embellish who you really provide that need curiosity that catches the eye of every recruiter. Most of the time, recruiters are interested in the person, as everyone can do what you do, if given the same resources and dynamics, but no one can actually be you.
2. You have to keep applying. Only quitters quit after hundreds of hours digging to reveal a diamond mine. Footballers keep kicking until they put the ball at the back of the net. Persistence is also a strategy.

Your ability to set yourself apart, that is, revealing you of you, here on Linkedin really counts as a plus if you are going to secure your next job.

Now you should put the axiom above at the back of your mind, let's head over to the key LinkedIn features that the platform actually provides for you to make yourself different, and how you can play the a-game to secure a role on Linkedin.

The "Open to Work" Ribbon

There are only two kinds of profile ribbons on LinkedIn, "Hiring" and "Open to Work", well one of these defines the two classes of people here in the job fair. The open-to-work ribbon is toggled on and gives you the feature to able to select a number of roles that you actually have the skills to engage with or are interested in. Carefully select closely related job roles that match the kind of jobs you will be applying for on Linkedin. The features help the algorithm to curate closely tied roles to display on your job feed. You have a better chance of being previewed and your resume downloaded if this is properly done. Call this first step a +1

The "Open to Work" Post

The fastest way to get a job on Linkedin is to create an open-to-work post and tag as many people and recruiters as possible. A lot of people are shy and wouldn't dare to do this. They would always think "what would the community think about me if I post a desperate "I need work post" well, let me shock you "nothing!" Linkedin is not a community, I repeat, Linkedin is a job fair! And in a trade fair, the loudest person easily drive attention and ultimately makes sales. You are driving positive attention and energy to yourself when you create an open-to-work post. When you get the job from referrals from your connection, your pot of soup will thank you (pun intended).

Your LinkedIn Intro

What is this section saying? Except you are on Linkedin for business lead generation. Your intro should show your expertise, you should portray that you have a unique and single skill set and also share that you are open to using this skill in an active work setting. You do not need a title of a job here in your intro.

You need something that sells you as the person to hire immediately, something that blows the mind of the passerby recruiters. Let me give you statistics: on average, six or seven recruiters peruse every Linkedin profile daily and they may or may not be actively recruiting, that's no big deal, but if they are, your Linkedin intro may get them to send you a message.

Look, if a recruiter reaches out to you to apply for a role, already, you are 75% qualified to get the job. The rest of the 25% hangs on salary negotiation, work setting and other issues arising. Intros have gotten people a lot of jobs and it is still at work today. Your intro is a standby watchman, always ready to answer the curious recruiter at your door. Let it lead them in.

First 10 or Last 10

Every invitation for a job on Linkedin will be duly subscribed for, and there will be no empty seats. The recruiter will have more than enough to feed their eyes with. But here's the dynamics. The LinkedIn ATS segregates applicants with the LIFO (Last-in-First-Out) and FIFO (First-in-First-Out) methods, invariably the last 10 people who apply for a Linkedin role, would be the first ten to be arrayed before the recruiter when they are making their first sweep at the profiles summited for the application.

Except the recruiter changes these dynamics tomorrow. The Array of applicants the recruiter is supplied with will always look like this order: Z, Y, X, W, U...to A. "Z" being the last applicant and "A" being the first applicant.

If "Z" has a profile that cuts the eye of the recruiter, "A" may get rejected, after three days, as set by Linkedin's "automatic rejection" model. If the recruiter decides to work fairly, rewarding the first-come-first-served principle, he may start previewing from "A" which also gives the first ten sets of applicants a fair chance. The point to take home here is: Be early to the party, and if you are late don't suck, apply! Reverse engineering may work in your favour. It always does.

Do you have "enough" experience

Screening questions have been popular nowadays to help with filtering applicants. Linkedin suggests this to every recruiter, however, they may decide to add or subtract this from their application bundle. The minimum years of experience set are 1, especially for an entry-level role, sometimes, there is no maximum. But recruiters will always favour anyone with 5-10 years of experience in a particular job role. It's human nature and there's nothing you can do about that.

Recruiters want to acquire someone with more experience in a role so that they can cut down on Learning and Development costs. Recruiters have less and less budget every year and they are trying to maximize and optimize their recruitment process to save them more money. The margin of difference between paying extra for an experienced hire is lower than that of taking an entry-level staff and training them to become the best fit for the role. Note that, a lot of job applicants underscore themselves at this junction. They fill in only the number of years that they might have handled a particular role similar to the one they are applying for as the year of experience, which would usually be below the minimum that was set by the recruiter. This results in automatic disqualification. Worse!

Love to read more? Part 2 of this article will be made available shortly. I post daily articles in my Growth Strategies on Linkedin newsletter, you can subscribe to be the first person to be notified when my articles drop. Thank you for reading. Cheers!