Why You Should be On LinkedIn (And How to Do It)
With 92% of employers checking out potential employees online, creating and maintaining a LinkedIn profile is a necessity if you are trying to find a job in the apartment industry. But the benefits go both ways: just as employers may be checking you out, you can likewise research them before applying for a job to get a leg up on the competition.
Why Should You Be on LinkedIn?
There’s really 3 main reasons to join the site:
1.) Employers will be looking for you on LinkedIn
If the 92% of employers who are researching candidates on LinkedIn look for you online but can’t find you, this may be a disadvantage in your job search. Compared with candidates who have complete profiles highlighting their skills, if you are absent from the site you will lose a chance to make a good impression.
2.) An increasing number of jobs are advertised on LinkedIn
Over the past couple of years LinkedIn has been making job searching through their site easier and easier. LinkedIn will now recommend jobs that you may be interested in, as well as those that are within you network of connections. As the number one way to find an apartment job today is through referrals, knowing which jobs are in your professional network is a huge advantage.
3.) Career Development
The last benefit to LinkedIn is not only true for when you are job searching, but over the course of your career. With a vast number of career-related articles, 8,000 professional groups created weekly, and 300 million total users, the opportunities for professional networking and growing your industry-related knowledge are limitless.
How to Make the Most of LinkedIn:
Hopefully by now we’ve convinced you that you should be active on LinkedIn, and the next step will be to fill out your profile to maximize what it has to offer. Here’s how:
- Add a picture: profiles with pictures are 11x more likely to be viewed.
- Complete your profile information: the more information you add, the more likely you are to show up when employers are searching for candidates
- Make connections: LinkedIn suggests you need to have at least 50 connections for the site to be effective. If you don’t know where to start, begin by searching for members of your high school, college, or previous jobs.
- Stay active: In order to make the most of LinkedIn, it’s best to be on the site often. 40% of users check LinkedIn daily—and we’d suggest doing so too.
If you are looking for an apartment job, one of the most advantageous tools at your fingertips is LinkedIn. While this shouldn’t be your only means of job-hunting, if you use it right it could be the one that ends up getting you the job.