Creating a Linkedin profile

Linkedln is the world’s largest professional network with over 120 million members and growing rapidly. Linkedln connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.

What Linkedln does

• Establish your professional profile
• Stay in touch with business colleagues and friends
• Find experts and ideas
• Explore opportunities

Step-by-step guide

Create your profile

Like most social networks, Linkedln hosts your personal profile, a page on which you may list information like job experiences and professional skills. However, unlike many other social networks, it’s important to complete your profile to the best of your ability - especially if you’re using Linkedln for the job hunt. Linkedln measures your ‘profile completeness’ from 0-100%. The higher your profile completeness, the more likely you are to appear in search results.

To ensure that your profile is 100% complete, LinkedIn recommends including the following information.

• Industry and postcode
• A current position with description
• Two more positions
• Education
• At least five skills
• Profile photo
• At least 50 connections
• A summary

Get Connections

Perform a basic search to find people you know by name. (See the search box at the top of each Linkedln page) click the ‘connect’ button next to people’s names to add them to your network. Once you have made several connections head to the ‘My network tab’ and here you will find the section ‘people you may know’. Linkedln algorithm will likely have begun determining additional suggestions based on your connections’ networks. Linkedln labels these connections by degree. People you’re already connected to are ‘1st degree’ connections. People you’re not yet connected to, but who are linked to your 1st degree connections, are 2nd degree connections. And so on. You’ll see a blue icon that says ‘1st,’ ‘2nd’ or ‘3rd’ next to their names.

Groups (join relevant groups or create your own)

LinkedIn groups are spaces in which professionals and experts can share content, ask for advice, post or search for jobs and network with others. Groups are tailored to brands, associations and societies, support groups, causes, publications, and industries in general. With over 1.3 million groups to choose from, you’re likely to find a few that fit your field and interests. Keep in mind that many groups require authentication before the manager permits you to join. However, nearly one-third of groups don’t require review, and are labelled “open.” Once you’re familiar with group functions, you may choose to create your own group. That means you’re the group owner, but you may also appoint a group manager and moderator, who are responsible for supervising discussions, subgroups, settings, etc.

Companies

Just as you have a personal profile page, many companies choose to represent themselves on LinkedIn, too. Like Facebook brand pages, you may choose to follow the activity and updates of companies on LinkedIn. Company pages contain general information, such as a business overview, list of employees and press mentions. Many companies also choose to list job openings on their pages, and some even encourage applicants to apply through LinkedIn, a very handy tool of the network.

Jobs (if you want to find a job or find a recruit)

Job search and recruitment tools are among LinkedIn’s most valuable features. More and more companies are encouraging candidates to apply for jobs via LinkedIn, due to the social network’s credibility and ease-of-use. Head to the “Jobs” tab, where you’ll find options for applicants. Perform an advanced search for available jobs by keyword, title, location, company, salary, and industry.