It may surprise you that LinkedIn has been a professional social media site for longer than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook combined. However, it’s more useful now than before.
Why? Because it houses over 600 million professional profiles, providing an almost limitless pool of contacts and employment prospects. These days, using LinkedIn is essential to being a full-fledged professional in any area, from looking for a new job to managing your personal brand.
These are seven essential reasons to open a LinkedIn account or revive one you’ve had for a long time.
1. You can use its effective job board.
What advantages does LinkedIn offer? This list contains several explanations, but let’s start at the beginning: Job seekers can search its extensive job board and submit applications for positions using the networking platform.
Look for jobs using location and keywords. You can set up job alerts based on your professional interests, even if you’re not actively looking for work, in order to stay informed and receive email updates regularly.
You might also approach it covertly. If you have connections with managers and coworkers, set your “I’m interested” button to “on” to let recruiters and future employers know you’re interested in learning about new opportunities. LinkedIn will hide this open invitation from people at your present employer.
LinkedIn’s premium account gives you access to even more job opening data. Direct message recruiters and hiring managers use insights to evaluate how you stack up against other applicants and even get immediate access to pay information, which is all available. Although LinkedIn Premium is free for the first month, it’s not strictly essential if you don’t want to spend $29.99 a month.
2. You might establish your brand.
You must establish your online professional brand in the same way that businesses do. What distinguishes you from competitors in your field? Why are you a marketable product? Why should you receive six figures from someone?
Personal websites are excellent for this, but they frequently entail additional expenses and many hours of development and refinement. One easy approach to get your name out there on the professional map is with LinkedIn. Include a polished profile photo and craft a compelling LinkedIn summary highlighting your personality and skills. Upon reviewing your profile, recruiters, employers, colleagues, and managers ought to be able to understand your qualifications and personality clearly.
When you apply for a job, an employer or HR manager will likely look up your name on Google. Emailing a new client could cause your name to appear prominently on Google.
It’s time to Google yourself if you haven’t done so before. What appears on the search results page?
Another advantage of LinkedIn is that, although it can be challenging to rank on Google’s first page, the platform is a well-known and influential network, and Google is aware of this. For this reason, getting your LinkedIn profile to rank on Google is usually easier than getting your website or online portfolio to do the same. Suppose a potential employer sees your LinkedIn profile before anything else. In that case, it might be time to create one or make some edits to make it stand out.
4. It keeps your contact list up to date.
Do you still recall that outstanding young professional you met three years ago at that conference? Or that buddy of a friend who expressed interest in working as a freelancer for your business?
To be honest, probably not.
When you meet someone, add them to your LinkedIn professional network instead of throwing their business cards in your desk drawer or adding their email addresses to your old-fashioned address book. Keep them in your network so that you can get back in touch with them when the moment is appropriate.
5. You can investigate businesses and their personnel
Indeed, many job boards are available, so you can obtain positions from them if you’re applying for jobs. But LinkedIn has additional benefits.
These days, many businesses keep up-to-date LinkedIn sites where they highlight current employees, provide news and insights, and update company information. Before beginning the interview process or accepting a job offer, you should have a strong sense of the company’s culture and personnel, whether it is a reputable business.
6. You can use it to get industry news.
LinkedIn compiles a timeline when you log in, just like other social networking sites. You may find news updates from your organisation, groups, and relationships there. Following news and market trends is wise and enjoyable.
7. Networking.
LinkedIn is a handy professional networking platform.
You can cultivate deep LinkedIn connections even if you’re an introvert and detest networking events. You may establish relationships with people in your field, with people you don’t know well, and even with your biggest role models via LinkedIn.
