Just where do you start with LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is actually a really useful tool when you’re searching for a job, looking for new opportunities and building your own network of professionals with different skills and abilities.

There are some really useful articles you can find from your contacts and there’s also a wealth of groups that you can join on this platform where you can take part in conversations, leave your opinions and also hear what others have to say.

As a company, we at 9-2-3 don’t source candidates from LinkedIn but we DO see the value in having a profile on here for all the reasons listed above, as well as the fact that you're putting your skills and experience out there, online, for everyone to see which is a great asset for you!

But what do you pop on there?

Once you’ve taken a really good look over the tool you can start to build your own profile - the tool is very self explanatory and will take you through this step-by-step to help you do this.

The most important things to have on there, even if you want a basic profile, are some of the following:

A good head shot of yourself so that people can see who you are; the more professional shot this is, the better
A short bio of who you are, you can list some of your strengths in here and what you may be open to in the future job wise (if you’re looking).
Your location (this can help you to grow a local network)
Your experience - list your job titles and a short paragraph of what you did there (mentioning skills that you picked up too)

These are the basic things you should have on your profile and once that’s done and you’re more familiar with LinkedIn, you can start asking people to endorse you for your skills - so that could be an ex-boss, or previous colleague who would simply click a button and would appear on your page as an endorser for your skills - this is a great way to reassure people that you can actually do what you say.

Once you’re all set-up, visit your home page at least once a day, see what’s new, connect with new people and that way you’ll feel way more confident at building your own network and improving your own professional profile.