A Beginners Guide To LinkedIn: What Is It and How Does It Work?

LinkedIn is the top professional platform for anyone wanting to advance their career. This includes a variety of professionals, from students to CEOs. 

The platform is continuing to grow with over 740 million users. This blog will give you a helping hand on beginning your LinkedIn journey and hopefully advancing your career. 

How Does It Work?

LinkedIn is similar to any other social network with it’s own way of doing things but it’s fairly easy to get the hang of. The main difference is that LinkedIn users use the platform to post content about their professional life, rather than personal.

Each user on LinkedIn sets up a profile, it is essentially a virtual CV where recruiters or your peers can see your potential in one click. 

Similar to personal profiles, businesses have pages set up with all their information, employees and ongoing content. 

How Do I Get Started? 

Now we know what LinkedIn is, here’s how to get started. 

Create and Complete your profile 

Creating your profile is the first step to developing your professional social media presence. Make sure you’ve completed the profile to maximise opportunities. 

This includes:

• Setting a profile and cover picture
• Adding your location and industry 
• Writing a summary about yourself 
• Adding your experience section, this includes past jobs
• Adding at least 5 skills, the more the better!
• Listing your education 
• If job hunting, turning on ‘Let Recruiters Know Your Open’, also known as ‘#OpenToWork’ 

Build Your Network 

Building your network is crucial to unlocking LinkedIn’s potential. This can be daunting when you’re getting started. So here’s our tips on building your network.

• Start off by adding people from your personal life: friends, family, classmates. 
• Add your coworkers. You can do this by looking at the employees section of your business’ page.
• You can also follow pages linked to your industry and find people to add that share similar interests to you.

Participate In Conversations 

LinkedIn is full of insightful, relatable content for your work industry, when you see a post you enjoy, participate! This can be done through commenting or reacting. 

Post Content

The best way to get started on LinkedIn is posting regular content to get noticed and expand your network. Don’t overthink what to post, this can be anything to do with your professional life, educational or just a funny meme.

Getting A Job

If you’re starting LinkedIn whilst on the job hunt, you can use the jobs section to see what companies are recruiting. 

Another great way to utilise LinkedIn is researching a company you’re applying to, you can even look at your interviewers profile.

Are you a professional looking to expand your circle through LinkedIn?

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