Increase your chances to be spotted on LinkedIn

Please keep in mind that this article is addressed to readers who have already well defined their professional project and the organizations they are targeting for their job search.  Ideally skills and profile strengths are known and a powerful personal branding is already in place.

I will develop here bellow two approaches you can use to increase your chances to be spotted on LinkedIn (LI)

One is more passive and consists in utilizing the LinkedIn search algorithm feature to your advantage and let others find you.

The second one requires a more proactive attitude on LinkedIn

Let’s get started and kick-off this blog with a few questions:

• In which type of search would like to be spotted?  Perform by whom? Recruiters, hiring managers, potential clients?

• What are the key words a recruiter is going to use when performing a search to find the professionals he is looking for on LinkedIn?

• What could make people click on my LI profile?

Approach number 1:

You can make the LinkedIn algorithm works in your benefit in two ways:

1. by appearing in the right search through the repetitive usage of keywords
2. by increasing  the "relevance" ranking   

1. Here you’ll find what is the official LinkedIn recommendation for optimizing chances in searches

“More keywords aren't always better. Our advice would be to only include the keywords (including repeated keywords) in your Profile that best reflect your expertise and experience. If you integrate an extended list of keywords into your Profile, you are likely showing up in a high number of searches. The question you need to ask yourself, however, is whether members consider your Profile relevant to their search. If not, their behavior as a collective group may be influencing the algorithm used to rank you in search results.

Readmore

2. Increasing the search relevance sounds interesting: How does it work?

You have probably noticed that LinkedIn set an order when presenting profiles to answer to your search, this ranking is not set randomly and follow the following rules:

  

    Profile who come first are:

1. 1st level connections with profiles that are 100% complete (or close to it) and have the most in-common connections / shared groups, ranked in descending order.
2. 1st level connections with the fewest in-common connections / shared groups, ranked in descending order by profile completeness.
3. 2nd level connections ranked in descending order by profile completeness.
4. 3nd level connections ranked in descending order by profile completeness.
5. Shared group members (outside of your network), ranked in descending order by profile completeness.
6. Everyone else (those outside your network), ranked in descending order by profile completeness.

Therefore, to appear on the top of the list, here are the concrete actions you can take now:

• Complete your profile, Read more

• Increase your LinkedIn Profile Strength up to “all star”. The meter is on the right side of your profile and gauges how robust your profile is. The strength will increase as you add more content. ( my profile is all star, feel free to check what I included to reach that LI status) ch.linkedin.com/in/sandrinevandenoudenhoven

• Increase the size of your network but please ALWAYS customize your invitation to connect and only invite people with who you have some form of common ground.

• Join groups.

Approach number 2

The purpose of the second and more proactive approach is to get attention of a targeted audience:

I listed here bellow actions you can take to develop your LI visibility at your targeted audience:

• Visit hiring manager profiles, they will see you checked their profiles and may check yours too.

•  “Like” the LI discussions or posts of your potential hiring managers.

•  “Like”discussion topics which add positively on your branding

•  Deploy an active, positive and smart participation on LI group discussion topics.

•  React to people’s invitations by asking them to elaborate on their interest.

•  If you notice that someone in your field of interests or a recruiter has looked at your profile, send him/her a message/invitation saying you saw they looked at your profile and include something nice about shared interests and/or explain why you are interested initiating a contact without asking for a job.

•  Post on your own activity broadcast: share news and information with your network

•  Start your own LinkedIn group or offer to co-animate an existing LI groAlways introduce yourself (without referring to your job search) when joining a new group, thank the group owner/managers for providing the exchange place

Why not giving these 2 approaches a chance?

Write down your today number of appearance in LI Search result and views and monitor the progress after each implementation of the initiatives listed above so that you can understand what has the most impact and set your own activity priorities. 

If you liked this blog, please share this article with your network and register on the blog for email alerts. 

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven
job4U2, "relocation is a project for both"



Related posts:  

How to use LinkedIn for your job search in Switzerland?
Social Media for your job search: Expert interview with Sarah Santacroce from Simplicity

Career support: A linkedIn group for the accompanying partners

A selection of English written books to get to know Switzerland better

Knowing all the touristic places, B&B and best restaurants in Switzerland is probably great and is part of the relocation experience in this beautiful country, however our selection focuses, first, on books, which serve a career project purpose.

No job-search or career books either as we value, for its efficiency, the qualitative approach that a personalize support with a career coach or a consultant does bring, but you will discover here a selection of books to better understand the Swiss system, culture and most importantly people:

Beyond Chocolate -understanding Swiss culture, by Margaret Oertig

ISBN  978-3-905252-23-1

Xenophobe's Guide to theSwiss, by Paul Bilton

ISBN 978-1-902825-45-8

Going Local - your guide to Swiss schooling, by Margaret Oertig

ISBN 978-3-905252-25-5

Swiss Watching -inside the land of milk and money, by Diccon Bewes       

ISBN-Nr.: 978-1-85788-548-4

Living and Working in Switzerland, David Hampshire

ISBN: 978-1-909282-63-6

Keep also an eye on the offer of Bergli as they are specialized in publishing books mostly in English, that focus on the cultural diversity, rich history and cultural attitudes and values of the Swiss and international people living in Switzerland.

If you liked this blog, please share this article with your network and register on the blog for email alerts. 

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven
job4U2, "relocation is a project for both"



Related posts:  

Short introduction to Switzerland Economy for Jobseekers
“Dual Career”: A “way of life” in Switzerland?

Studying in Switzerland

The purpose of this post is to provide resources to facilitate your orientation in the Swiss tertiary education world.

In Switzerland, there are 3 types of tertiary education:

•         Traditional Universities (12 universities including EPFL and ETH)
•         Universities of Applied Science and arts
•         Professional training and Education schools.

Additionally, several MBA programs are offered in Switzerland:

Some interesting links:

- Explaining the Swiss tertiary education system, including continuous education:

The swissuniversity.ch page

- An interesting search engine to find the Swiss education offer in the subjects and language of your choice:

See the Swiss universitycontinuing education page.

- Master studies taught entirely in English:

Visit the crus.ch page

- Swiss Learning presents Swiss third degree education offers sorted by establishments

- Rate and ranking of the main Swiss education establishments (in French and German only)

- Swiss university global ranking:

http://www.shanghairanking.com

- Vocation education system in Switzerland explained in English, and information about the vocational education offers for a specific profession (not available in English)

To get a complete picture about the entire Swiss education System, we can recommend the book of Margaret Oertig “Going local, your guide to Swiss schooling”

Should you know some additional interesting sources of information, please share them in the comment section.

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven

job4U2, "Relocation is a project for both"

Job search: Switching priority from applying to networking

Because of the increasing amount of applications per job posting, companies do not have time nor resources to properly review all submitted applications and even tend to avoid posting openings. The trend is to an increasing, so called hidden market, and to a decreasing probability to receive any form of feedback when applying to a job advertisement.

Since the chance to be selected for an interview, when a job advertisement is published is getting smaller, it is making more and more sense to invest the largest part of a job search activity in networking.

 This is the reason why many discussion topics, both on the job4U2 circle on LinkedIn and on the blog, are about networking:

• How do you make sure you follow-up efficiently?
• Networking in Switzerland...when located outside the biggest Swiss cities
• Several references to networking events all across Switzerland
• Which networking event did you recently attend and that you found interesting?
• Growing your network
• Pitching?

The 4U2 programs offered by Swiss based companies in partnership with job4U2 to their employees’ partners are placing networking centrally in the job search process, bringing support, method and practical tools to the partner to accelerate the creation of a comprehensive network in Switzerland.

If you have interesting information and tips to share about networking in Switzerland, or if you are simply interested in gaining more information on this topic:

• Subscribe to the job4U2 blog email alert
• Join the job4U2 circle on LinkedIn ( open only to expat's spouse or partners)

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven

job4U2, "Relocation is a project for both"

Some related posts:

Who is hiding my job market?

The unspoken rules of networking 

Networkingfor expatriate partners