Written by Olivia Baker
LinkedIn is the way of the future and is essential for professional networking and career development. LinkedIn acts as a digital resume to highlight your skills, experience, and accomplishments, allowing you to be more discoverable to recruiters and potential employers. LinkedIn also allows you to build and maintain connections with professionals in your field, opening multiple doors to new opportunities as opposed to other social media platforms.
Seek, indeed, Jora and CareerOne were a great social media interface once upon in time to review job opportunities, however, LinkedIn since has skyrocketed into the modern-day era for industry professionals to have a more interactive experience instead of a clinical type of advert environment, acknowledging that a vast amount of companies do not publicly advertise all their job openings, and instead, they engage recruiters to analyse candidates on LinkedIn.
To aid with being a standout candidate to recruiters, I recommend building a strong LinkedIn profile, by way of outlining your career experience, education, skills and adding a professional headshot as this will allow your profile to stand out and to recruiters who are actively searching for talent. Bearing in mind that you can directly apply for jobs posted on LinkedIn and display your profile to potential employers which I think is a fantastically organised and seamless job application approach.
LinkedIn is an impressive way to connect with your current and former colleagues, university professors and other industry professionals which will allow you to build a robust network which can further lead to additional job opportunities.
I have been a member of the LinkedIn community for 7 years, and I have identified that by upkeeping a well-maintained LinkedIn profile, this will enhance your credibility and make your profile stand out to potential employers as I have received a vast amount of opportunities through the platform which I couldn’t be happier with, to further showcase my personal branding with the network of connections I have tailored to my career goals.
Intrinsically, I think by having a strong LinkedIn profile is a valuable tool for career advancement, professional networking, and personal branding as it allows you to manage your online presence, connect with opportunities, and stay informed about the latest developments in your career field, as the platform has provided and continues to provide me with fantastic opportunities.
Charlie blog is a SSAF funded initiative.
