How to use LinkedIn and receive invitations

LinkedIn is one of the best social networks for professionals and recruiters, which allows you to develop a personal brand, find vacancies and expand business contacts. Here you can write articles, comment on posts, search for useful acquaintances and attract the attention of employers.

When looking for a job, many people sooner or later encounter LinkedIn. This is the main professional social network on the Internet, which really helps job seekers find the right job, and employers — the right specialist. At the same time, the LinkedIn device can scare off an untrained user: you need to know too many nuances and subtleties to attract the recruiter’s attention.

How to use LinkedIn

What is the special feature of LinkedIn

This is a hybrid of a social network and a job search service.

LinkedIn was founded by Reed Hoffman, a former Apple developer and PayPal vice president, in December 2002 and launched in May 2003. As of 2011, the company was led by Jeff Weiner, who previously served on the board of Yahoo! Corporation. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. LinkedIn also has offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York, and London. The company’s activities were financed by such investment funds as Greylock, Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital, Bessemer.

LinkedIn was launched at the dawn of the social media boom and became “Facebook for Entrepreneurs”: the company was assigned the status of a professional social network, where there is not so much space for entertainment.

While Mark Zuckerberg’s audience was making up their first memes and adding friends to each other around the same time, LinkedIn was looking for jobs and making connections. For 2020, the total number of LinkedIn users reached 675 million, of which 310 million are active. In 2016, Microsoft acquired the service for a record $ 26.2 billion at the time. In 2019, LinkedIn launched the global Open for Business feature, which allows you to find freelancers on the platform. LinkedIn Events was launched in the same year.

More than 70% of LinkedIn’s users are located outside the United States and approximately 25 million are registered in Europe. 57% of LinkedIn users are men, 43% are women.

Initially, LinkedIn was mainly looking for top managers — CEOs, CFOs, and other senior managers. Now the social network has become a window into the global market for specialists of various levels and professions from 200 countries.

The social component of LinkedIn is not lost: users actively share their professional success, companies publish vacancies, and corporations and the world’s best universities talk about the inner kitchen.

LinkedIn users can use the contact list for various purposes:

• Publish professional resumes and search for jobs;
• Recommend and be recommended;
• Publish vacancies;
• Create interest groups;
• Discussion of working points;
• Evaluating new companies;
• Study competitor profiles.

Regular users talk about their work and share their career achievements: according to the service’s statistics, 75% of users report a job change in their profile. This is a storehouse of professional knowledge. Many top managers, CEOs, and opinion leaders from various industries-from marketing to engineering-use the platform as a working blog.

How to create an account

• Go to the LinkedIn website from your browser, enter your email address, and create a password for your account. In this case, the country is specified automatically. You can change it in your account settings.
• Enter your phone number.
• Get the sms code and enter it in the field.
• Complete the registration process.

So, registration is over, now we start creating a profile and adding friends. After filling in all the fields, select communities based on your profession and interests.

At first glance, LinkedIn looks like a classic social network. There is a list of friends, a built-in messenger, a publication feed, users can subscribe to company pages, comment and like posts. But there are a few differences. In LinkedIn, friendships are built on the principle of “social circles”. You can subscribe to the page unilaterally and receive notifications about publications — this is especially useful if you follow companies and opinion leaders. You can also “make contact” — add a friend to the list.

Next to the user’s name, LinkedIn marks the” level “ of acquaintance. Those who have accepted your application become “first — level” contacts, their contacts become “second — level” contacts, and those you know through a handshake become “third-level” contacts, and so on. This helps you make business contacts: users who are friends with your colleagues are more trustworthy than strangers.

Author mode is a feature for those who want to become a blogger on LinkedIn and attract additional attention from users and employers.

The LinkedIn feed is formed from posts from friends and companies whose updates you have subscribed to. Author mode is a feature for those who want to become a blogger on LinkedIn and attract additional attention from users and employers. Setting up author mode opens access to additional tools that others don’t have. For example, you can create mailing lists, conduct live broadcasts, and hold audio conferences. LinkedIn also recommends quality authors to others, which can help you promote yourself as a professional or expert in your field.

• Post relevant content, such as blog articles, industry updates, and research. Don’t just repost memes, jokes, and motivators. It is better to write your own texts.
• Share your opinion and participate in group discussions.
• Get recommendations from colleagues and clients.
• Translate your Profile Language into the most popular languages.

In many social networks, you can purchase a paid account, and LinkedIn is no exception. A premium account becomes more visible in the system and gives the owner more opportunities.

A premium account becomes more visible in the system and gives the owner more opportunities.

Paid accounts are not available to everyone, but only to certain groups of users. For example, purchasing an extended status is available to members in employee search, as well as business accounts or distinguished experts. Premium profiles open up additional features:

• Get complete information about all network members.
• Additional filters when searching for employees.
• Information about the number of users who visited your profile.

On average, it takes a recruiter less than a minute to view a page. Therefore, even such seemingly minor elements as an avatar or a brief profile description become important.

The recruiter searches for candidates in four main ways::

• By professional field, such as engineering.
• By company, when you need specific specialists with a specific background.
• By keywords.
• By skill level.

They pay special attention to the companies where the person worked: if the brand is well-known and the work experience is decent, this is trustworthy.

The first thing a recruiter sees on LinkedIn is the user’s name, company, and profile title, i.e. the current position. First and last names should be written immediately in Latin, for example, as indicated in your documents. When creating your LinkedIn profile, try to imagine how it will be viewed by the recruiter of the company you are trying to join. In the profile header, specify “standard” posts and common abbreviations.

There are no special requirements for photos, but there are recommendations that will help you win over your employer from the first picture. Here are some tips that are most common::

• You are the center of photography. There should be no other people on it. Ideally, your face should take up about 60% of the avatar: the full-length image will not be displayed on the thumbnail.
• Choose a semi-official photo in casual clothes. You don’t have to upload a photo from your documents, but you should also leave the “me and my six cats” card for another social network.

Optimize your profile. The user’s page is divided into several sections. There are seven main blocks:

• The profile title is a brief description of your professional activity. It should reflect your position and skill level. Think about what your potential employer might be interested in. How many years have you been in the industry? What programs do you own? Do you know how to do one thing or can you lead projects in different roles? Have you ever been in charge? How many people were on your team? If you’re a freelancer, remember the companies you’ve worked with: sometimes the brand name speaks for itself. You should not go into details, one or three paragraphs will be enough.
• General information. This section is intended to provide a brief but compelling description of your personality, qualities, and skills.
• Favourites. You can add author’s content to this block: articles, links, and photos.
• Work experience. Here is your professional biography. Data is filled in in stages, for one place of work: one company — one block. It is important to specify all places of employment, including internships and projects.
• Education. It is important to indicate all the educational institutions where you studied and the degrees you received.
• Skills. It is important to indicate all the skills that you have acquired in the course of your work. Ask your colleagues to recommend you and confirm your skills. This will increase your status and add weight to your competencies.
• I will also mention the “Projects” section: it allows you not only to show off successful cases, but also to mention other team members. This affects the algorithm: if the recruiter is interested in one of the project colleagues, your profile will be in the first place among the recommended ones. In addition to the text description, you can attach a file to the project: for text documents and presentations, the standard DOC, PDF, and PPT formats are suitable, and for images — JPG, PNG, and GIF.

Recruiters pay attention to the contacts listed in the profile. It is important to specify all communication methods, including email and phone number.

In general, recruiters pay attention to all the elements of the profile that allow you to get a complete picture of the candidate.

Don’t be afraid to write first.

Don’t be afraid to write and make contact.

You can add a personalized message to 3–5 InMail monthly contact requests (with a limit of 200 characters for each message). LinkedIn invitation limits have been narrowed to about 100 invitations per week. If you have a LinkedIn Premium subscription, the number of such messages is limited to 15 InMail messages.

How to add a message to an invitation

• Go to the member’s profile.
• Click Set Up Contact in the Basic information section.
• Click Personalize.
• Add a message.
• Click Send Invitation.

Here are three examples of phrases that can be used in this situation::

Hello! I noticed that you were viewing my profile. I have experience in [your industry], and I would be happy to discuss how I can be useful to your team.

Good afternoon! Thank you for your interest in my profile. If you have any open positions for engineers, I will be happy to share my experience and examples of work in [your industry].

Hello! I saw that you were studying my profile. I have considerable experience in [your industry], and I am ready to discuss possible cooperation or answer any questions.

Use LinkedIn to build a network of contacts in your industry. Subscribe to groups related to your specialty and participate in discussions-this will help you find potential clients. Find people you know by email Managing syncing is a great way to find people you’ve already met who might be useful to you in the future.

Using job search tools:

• Use LinkedIn search to find jobs that match your skills and experience.
• Set up job notifications to receive alerts about new job openings.
• Contact recruiters and hiring managers directly with personalized messages.

Many companies do not post jobs on LinkedIn, and recruiters themselves are often actively searched. If you are confident in your abilities, find the profile of an HR specialist and offer your candidacy.

LinkedIn for companies

On the LinkedIn site, you can find official accounts of major brands or companies that are recruiting employees for new branches. However, in this social network, the profile owner will not be able to actively promote the business through ads or branding.

LinkedIn for companies

If you actively try to advertise a product or service, administrators can block your account.

In corporate profiles, you can post company news or press releases of articles, events, and holiday celebrations. Here you can also mark the data of employees listed in the company’s staff, as well as vacancies indicating the requirements and future salary. You can’t send a personal message to the owner, but you can follow the company’s news when subscribing to the page.

This feature is used not only by specialists in job search. Information from profiles helps many competitors build their own style, and partners make decisions about cooperation.

Search for employees on LinkedIn is made easier for employers thanks to a convenient filter system. You can use them to filter out candidates who don’t meet certain criteria. However, sometimes the information provided in your resume doesn’t match the information provided in your LinkedIn profile.

Applicants try to provide truthful information on their personal page, as the employer’s decision on hiring depends on the degree of accuracy.

Remember that using LinkedIn to get job offers is a time-and effort-consuming process. By following these tips, you can increase your visibility, expand your network, and increase your chances of getting your dream job.