Five Steps Toward Successful Job Hunting

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starting your workinglife, looking for a new job or considering an entirely different career, useful connections and helpful tools are at yourfingertips. For example, there are more than 10 million job listings on LinkedIn. Helpful Hints Nearly all professionals at the most sought-after companies found their way in throughtheir professional networks. Herearefive suggestions to help you find your wayin. 1. Improve your LinkedIn profile. With more than 20 million profession- als includingrecruiters, hiring managers and decision makers using LinkedIn search every week, making simple improvements to your profile can make a big difference. Use the profile completion meter to see personalized recommendations on which profile sections you should add to increase your chances of showing up whena recruiter does a search. And take the time to share more on whoyouare. For starters, make sure to add key skills you've acquired, suchas project management, teamwork and communication. Hint: You're morelikely to find your way in to opportunities if you list more than five skills. Also, don’t forget to add a pho- to. This will help your connections recognize you andit helps boost yourvisibility with employers, too. LinkedIn members with a profile photo get up to 21 times moreprofile views and nine times more connection requests than those without. 2.Search smart. Job search filters let you drill down into the aspects of a particular role that matter to you such as location, company, experience level, industry, and job function. Set alerts for the companies and jobs you're interested in and update your career interests with what you're seeking. You'll get daily personalized job recommendations, some of which you can applyto straight from your phone. You can also search jobs where you have connections, and Keep your connections open and you mayfind the job opening for you. message them ifyou want to know more or if you want to ask fora referral. 3. Signal that you’re open to new opportunities by turning on Open Candidates in your career interests, which are found on the LinkedIn jobs page and on yourprofile page. This lets you privately signal to recruiters that you're open to new opportunities.It also increases your chances of showing up in searchesbyrecruiters. 4. Check your connections. Seventy percentof peoplegethired at a company where they have a personal connection. Your connections or mutual connec- tions can be key to finding your next job. If you need a conversation starter, check for career milestones such as a job change, connections in common and similar insights to break the ice. Now is the time to message your network and catch up. You never know whowill help you find your way in. 5. Don’t bury the lead. When you reach out to a connection in your pro- fessional network, Adam Neumann, co-founder and CEO of WeWork, rec- ommends not overlooking the importance of the subject line. A few catchy wordsthat hint toward the conversation can spark a great relationship and get the person on the other end immediately engaged. Learn More For further job-searching suggestions, go to http://blog.linkedin.com or go to wwwlinkedin.com/jobs to start searching!