If 86 per cent of those recruit­ing tal­ent using social media do so on LinkedIn, then it’s a good idea to make your pro­file as attrac­tive as pos­si­ble – par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing for media jobs.

Of all of the social net­works out there, LinkedIn is undoubt­ed­ly the most cru­cial when it comes to enhanc­ing your career or grow­ing your busi­ness, as it allows busi­ness­peo­ple to con­nect to, and net­work with their peers and peo­ple who can help them achieve their career goals.

Sim­ply hav­ing a pres­ence on LinkedIn and par­tic­i­pat­ing in groups can attract recruiters and free­lance clients, so imag­ine what can be achieved if you explore LinkedIn’s func­tion­al­i­ty in more depth. By pol­ish­ing your pro­file you can make your­self instant­ly more appeal­ing to poten­tial employ­ers, but that’s a bit of a giv­en. Delve a bit deep­er and you can har­ness the pow­er of groups to com­mu­ni­cate with like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als – you can even speak to peo­ple you’re not direct­ly con­nect­ed to with­out the need for an intro­duc­tion and you can use the myr­i­ad of inte­grat­ed apps to pull in infor­ma­tion from across the web to keep your posts and pro­file as up-to-date and rel­e­vant as possible.

Pro­file Power!

Your pro­file acts as a win­dow to your world and it’s the first thing that recruiters, for­mer col­leagues and poten­tial clients will see when they con­duct their search­es, there­fore it’s vital that it looks as good as it can, and func­tions as well as it can.

By per­son­al­is­ing your URL and use the LinkedIn resume builder to make sure your per­son­al infor­ma­tion is col­lat­ed prop­er­ly and that you are easy to find, is a great way to start; and by mak­ing sure your sum­ma­ry is key­word rich; fea­tur­ing words and phras­es that are com­mon­ly searched for by recruiters in your sec­tor, you are already on your way to becom­ing a high-pro­file candidate.

App Attack!

By util­is­ing the many plug-ins avail­able on LinkedIn you can real­ly begin to make your­self attrac­tive to employ­ers. The Tweets app can pull your Twit­ter feed into your LinkedIn pro­file and you can even spec­i­fy to have only tweets fea­tur­ing the #in hash­tag show up on your pro­file page. This can help you fil­ter the pro­fes­sion­al from the non-pro­fes­sion­al tweets.

The Word­Press tool allows you to pull in your own blogs and web­sites, which again, will give recruiters an idea of what you’re about as well as a feel for your per­son­al­i­ty. GitHub can help you show off your cod­ing work, while Box.net allows you to share white papers and eBooks with your net­work, while the Cre­ative Port­fo­lio Dis­play enables mem­bers to show­case visu­al work such as videos, in an easy-to-nav­i­gate portfolio.

Go for Groups

The val­ue of groups on LinkedIn can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. They can be used to con­nect to a myr­i­ad of busi­ness­peo­ple and are invalu­able for net­work­ing and free­lanc­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. For job hunters, groups – par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are indus­try spe­cif­ic, can be a ver­i­ta­ble gold­mine of oppor­tu­ni­ties as, if oth­er mem­bers know you’re on the look­out, you’ll get to know about open­ings much more quick­ly than if you were scour­ing the job boards and by using these spaces to hunt for jobs, recruiters will see you know what you’re doing.

By active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in group dis­cus­sions and con­nect­ing with those that are well-con­nect­ed them­selves, your cred­i­bil­i­ty will creep up and you’ll find your­self gen­er­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and devel­op­ing ideas. By being well con­nect­ed, by fol­low­ing the right com­pa­nies and by keep­ing in touch with your net­work, you’ll allow your­self to be found, and when you’ve been found, your pro­file then has to do the work for you…