LinkedIn for Job Seekers.

I've done the job search thing a few times, and one of the first places I start is with LinkedIn. It's how I found my last job. Here are a number of hopefully useful tips that I've picked up over the years stemming from my own discoveries to advice from professional job search advisors.

• Copy and paste most of your content over from your resume. You can even use LinkedIn as extra space for stuff that doesn't fit on your 2-page resume.
• Connections are important; they're how you widen the net of people who can search for you. So do make connections with folks that you've met in your professional dealings. You don't have to accept every request that you receive. I skip those "LIONs" (LinkedIn Open Networkers), and folks I've actually never met. (Unless it's a recruiter working for a company I'm interested in.)
• Always personalize the connection request. Remind the person how they know you.
• Keep those email addresses from old jobs tied to your LinkedIn account, and verify them.
• When you start a new job, connect with your co-workers. They will later become your past co-workers.
• When you leave an old job (or begin a new search), write a few recommendations about your previous co-workers. Hopefully they'll do the same for you.
• Fill in every profile field that LinkedIn asks you to.
• Log in once a day on weekdays. LinkedIn prioritizes active users in search results.
• Consider setting your current title or description blurb to include "currently seeking next opportunity".
• Follow companies that you're interested in. You'll be prioritized in their recruiters' search results.
• Look at people who work at those companies. What technologies and acronyms do they share? That's probably the company's development stack, which is what you should consider either featuring in your profile or learning.
• If you go to meetups, connect with recruiters you find at those meetups. (Recruiters will pretty much always accept a connection.)

Other links about job searches:

• 6 Ways to Attract Recruiters to Your LinkedIn Profile
• The resume gap: Are different gender styles contributing to tech's dismal diversity?
• Job Search Retrospective by Julie Pagano

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Tags: jon-search