How You Can Use LinkedIn to Secure Your Next Position

6 months ago by Harry Preen
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With over one billion users worldwide, activities in making new connections, exploring new organisations, and developing your personal brand, LinkedIn has become an important tool in helping you to secure a new job opportunity.

We explore how you can maximise your efforts, to use LinkedIn to secure your next position.

Main takeaways

Use LinkedIn's job search features to explore new opportunities; you can even personalise your search or create job alerts for roles to come straight to you.
Proactively use LinkedIn to research any companies that may be of interest and connect with relevant people - you may find they are hiring in future!
Start engaging and immersing yourself in the LinkedIn community by sharing insights, commenting on other posts or start your own LinkedIn conversation.
Take the time to enhance your LinkedIn profile to demonstrate your career journey and skills to future employers.
Build your recommendations on your LinkedIn profile; having people voucher for your work can demonstrate the true impact you can bring to a company.

How effective is LinkedIn in searching for a new job?

In 2023, LinkedIn revealed some interesting statistics about job searching and hiring strategies:

Over 61 million people search for jobs on LinkedIn every week.
Every minute, 6 people are hired through LinkedIn.
Every second, 140 job applications are submitted on LinkedIn.

As shown by these statistics, LinkedIn should not be missed in your job search, with activities on the platform being so high, with many seeing it as a great tool for new opportunity discovery.

Check your settings and alerts to ensure you never miss a job

LinkedIn has great features to directly help you with your job search. Right on top of the website, you will be able to find a jobs tab which is already catered to you! Using your profile’s career history, skills, recent search activity and job title, LinkedIn offers a personalised job search where the platform will feature roles that may be of interest to you. There is also a search option where you can select certain preferences such as location, flexible working and job titles to go further with your personalised job hunt.

If you find it challenging to put time aside to find new opportunities, then LinkedIn also has preferences for ‘job alerts’, where potential jobs of interests can be notified to you via LinkedIn or your email.

Research and online networking

Unlock more opportunities by doing proactive research into the types of organisations you would like to work for. Many organisations have a LinkedIn page to give insights, news, company culture as well as if they are hiring. By following these organisations or connecting with people who work there that are relevant to your field, you can passively learn more about what projects they are working on, what impact they are making and how they may align with your career aspirations. You may even find out that they are hiring for a position that suits what you are looking for!

As well as this, LinkedIn has great opportunities to connect with Recruiters who proactively use the platform in finding potential candidates. If you identify any Recruiters who specialise in your field, reach out and connect with them. Even better, ask if you can talk to them, to describe what you are looking for; if they remember you and your experience, they’re more likely to come to you first before other candidates.

Be part of the conversation to show your expertise and interest

When enhancing your connections, personalising your feed or following new organisations, don’t forget to create a conversation! By engaging in meaningful conversations, you can grow your presence in the market and increase the likelihood of opportunities coming straight to you; whether that’s internal Talent Acquisition teams, Recruiters or Hiring Managers getting in touch!

You can engage on LinkedIn in multiple ways:

Commenting or reacting to the latest industry insights and news on posts that come up on your field.
Resharing any relevant and interesting posts to your network.
Sharing your own posts about your work, news or you can even say that you’re looking for a new opportunity, if appropriate.

By engaging regularly on LinkedIn, you will make yourself known and have the opportunities come to you!

Update your LinkedIn profile

Consider your profile as your first impression - how would you want Hiring Managers to perceive you? Your profile has so many elements to showcase your career, skills and portfolio, much like a CV does, yet more visual.

Put time into enhancing your LinkedIn profile to demonstrate your career journey, under ‘experience’; your CV can help you with this! Future employers should be able to see your skillset and featured projects in each job you have had. LinkedIn profiles also have some great additional features such as adding documents, certifications and ‘skills’ features to make your profile stand out using your achievements. For example, you can easily upload your CV or portfolio to the documents section.

View more about enhancing your LinkedIn profile so you can stand out by reading our separate blog here.

Ask for recommendations

Whilst recommendations are a part of your LinkedIn profile, they are also a great tool to use in your own promotion and job search. It could make all the difference between you getting a job compared to another candidate.

A recommendation is a way for someone to advocate on your work ability as well as how reliable you are when collaborating in a team. If someone can vouch for your work, it only validates the impact you can make in a new position.

The recommendations feature can be built up like a portfolio, with each job role you have. Consider how to make your recommendations diverse so there is insight from every angle of your work, such as positive feedback from colleagues, management or partners that you have worked with. You can also include your recommendations by featuring some in your CV, applications or mentioning them during an interview process.

Frequently asked questions

I don’t want my current employer to know I am looking for a job - how do I still use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has made its job search friendly for those looking for a job ‘under the radar’. You apply for jobs without worrying that your activity is on show to others and even save your jobs to apply to later. Only until you have the ‘Open to Work banner’ profile picture or publicly post interest in new opportunities, will it be transparent that you are currently looking on the market.

I’m finding LinkedIn to be quite competitive, with lots of applicants going for the roles I’m interested in. How do I overcome this?

You can’t control how many people apply for a role, but you can control the likeliness of you being invited to the interview stage. Make sure your LinkedIn profile demonstrates your experience well, and re-visit it regularly to see if there is anything else you can add to your profile to make it look even better, perhaps based on the job descriptions you are applying for. You could even connect with the employer behind the LinkedIn job to show further interest in the opportunity!

I’m unsure how to engage with other posts, let alone creating my own posts! Where do I start?

This is a common thought for many users on LinkedIn. However, you can find inspiration by simply looking at what other people are doing. For example, examine how others might respond to an insightful article, what topics they write about, or what you personally find interesting to read. Start with small steps to get involved with more conversations with simple comments, and then further down the line you consider how you can personalise your engagement with your own thoughts or knowledge contribution.

About Gravitas Recruitment Group

Gravitas Recruitment Group is an international recruitment specialist agency, providing job opportunities for job seekers specialising across Technology, Banking and Insurance. As a values-driven agency, we are committed in delivering high-quality services to everyone that we interact with, developing a strong network built on trust and excellence. Follow us on LinkedIn for regular new opportunities, or learn more about us here.

About the Author

Harry Preen joined the Gravitas Manchester Office in September 2022, new to recruitment and ready to embark on this career journey. In just 18 months, Harry was promoted to Senior Recruitment Consultant from a true passion for recruiting across the Housing Sector. His work has been recognised with multiple lunch club achievements, holiday rewards and MVP wins!