LinkedIn 101: Using LinkedIn to Land Your Dream Job

This blog post is offered to Public Libraries and written by LinkedIn to assist community members with job search. We gladly post it here in our business blog at Naperville Public Library to inform local job seekers and entrepreneurs.

LinkedIn is helping job-seekers from around the world tap into their professional community—whether they realize they have one already or not.

Trying to land your dream job is a tall order. But here’s the good news: There are roughly 11 million job openings per month in America at any given time. Sure, you don’t want all those jobs, but you want some of them—and some of them want you!

LinkedIn connects qualified candidates with companies and organizations that crave top talent. With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to snagging a seat at the professional table.

• 80% of LinkedIn members consider professional networking to be important to new job opportunities and career success, according to LinkedIn research
• 70% of people were hired at a company where they had a connection
• More than 20 million professionals including recruiters, hiring managers and decision makers use LinkedIn every week

With 530+ million professionals in the LinkedIn community, there is no other place where you can access such a wide range of knowledge, skills and resources to help you reach your goals.

More than a quarter of professionals say they have no time to search for a new career.

But worry not, with search alerts you can get notifications and updates to a saved search via email or shared with you on LinkedIn. Use advanced search filters to narrow down opportunities by industry, location, experience level and more. Once your filtered search is set, simply create the alert.

Let recruiters know you’re open to new opportunities by simply flipping a switch on your LinkedIn profile. It’s called Open Candidates, and yes, it’s that easy. Open Candidates is accessible from the "Preferences" tab on the LinkedIn Jobs home page.

By flipping the switch, you privately signal to recruiters that you’re interested in new opportunities. Don’t forget to update your career interests. This helps you appear the search results that recruiters are regularly scouring. Additionally, this helps inform the daily job recommendations LinkedIn sends you and surfaces on the jobs homepage.

LinkedIn tapped into its network of more than 530 million members to give you deep salary insights into the compensation landscape. You can also dig deeper into compensation insights about specific companies you’re interested in so when the time comes to talk money, you’re ready.

This salary comparison tool includes wage, bonus, and equity data for specific job titles, and the different factors that impact pay such as years of experience, industry, company size, location, and education level.

One of easiest ways for students and alumni to make connections is through the LinkedIn Alumni tool. It’s an easy way to explore people who graduated from your same school, where they work now and in what cities. Simply search for your school and select “see alumni” to get started. You can now access your alumni center and view career paths for more than 23,000 colleges and universities worldwide.

• Nearly 20% of freelancers confirmed they'll make six figures or more this year through their entrepreneurship, according to LinkedIn
• More than half of freelancers confirmed that they will never return to more traditional, full-time employment
• 80% of freelancers do not actually have any concern about their freelance work being replaced by technology, artificial intelligence, or automation in the next 10-20 years.

LinkedIn ProFinder started as an idea that has grown into a vibrant marketplace being used by more than 70,000 freelance professionals across the nation. LinkedIn has seen client demand surge with weekly requests for proposals growing more than fivefold in one year.

• More than 80% of professionals on LinkedIn have stated they either want to have a mentor or be one to others
• More than half of these professionals don’t know where to begin and more than one-third have a hard time finding the right person

LinkedIn launched Career Advice, a new feature that helps connect members across the LinkedIn network with one another for lightweight mentorship opportunities. Whether you need advice on your career path, switching to a new industry or best practices for a project you’re working on, Career Advice can help you find and connect with the right person who can help.

• One-third of job-seekers have expressed concern that they don’t have the necessary skills to be competitive in the job market
• Many people who are looking for work from home jobs use LinkedIn learning to gain the skills needed to be an ideal candidate for remote work.

With LinkedIn Learning, you can now access a gigantic database of online courses on topics from coding and graphic design to public speaking. And here’s the best part: each course is typically sliced up into very manageable 5-10 minute learning chunks. Learning a new skill over the course of a week quickly becomes very achievable.

• Make sure you have a profile photo - it will help get you recognized and connect to potential opportunities. Members with a profile photo receive up to 21x more profile views and 9x more connection requests.
• Members with current positions are discovered up to 16x more in recruiter searches
• Members with more than 5 skills are 27x more likely to be discovered in searches by recruiters
• Including the city where you are based makes you stand out up to 23x in searches

Bonus: Check out Resume Assistant, a new integration from Microsoft and LinkedIn to act as a resume builder and help you craft a compelling resume directly within Microsoft Word.