Thus, Fiona Stubbs, Director of Professional Services at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, opened her meeting with a group of students from the University’s College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, which she dedicated to talking about LinkedIn, one of the most popular social networking sites. In the world of employment, and the importance of investing the site in developing the students’ path scientifically and professionally, so that it is not limited to specialists alone.
Salma, from Egypt, a graduate major in English literature, is one of the LinkedIn users and has received three job offers from different companies on the site. About her activity on LinkedIn, she says: “I got job offers after I was interested in my profile, and these offers were submitted by people who are second class in my network of colleagues.”
Salma is not the only one who has received job offers through the site, so far more than 122 million people have received a job interview via “LinkedIn”, 35 million people have obtained a job through people in their colleagues’ network, and there are more than 15 million vacancies whose ads have been published On the site , adding to the millions of functions that users can access using it and waiting for the competition. (1)
All this comes in a context in which the world is rapidly moving towards investing more time and money in recruitment activities targeting site users, which prompts aspirants to keep pace with the development of the labor market by joining the site and competing to reach the best opportunities.
According to LinkedIn itself, the number of users of the site has exceeded 750 million people in 200 countries around the world, and now includes 57 million institutions and organizations (2), and research estimates generally indicate that 92% of operators use social media, including LinkedIn. To find suitable candidates for vacant positions, to explore applicants’ backgrounds, lists of friends or colleagues, recommendations they have obtained on the site, and even to elicit applicants’ personality types and thus judge their suitability for the available positions. (3)
To make the picture clear, we can research the impact of the personal pages that users create on social media platforms on the self-representation of these people electronically, and in this context, a group of researchers led by “Niels van Douven” and “Annick Bogert” from Tilburg University (Tilburg University) worked to investigate The accuracy of the user’s personality traits based on their pages on social networking sites.
The results showed that the person’s page on the “LinkedIn” website provides the user with the possibility of self-representation and building inferences on his behavior in a better way for him, especially if he uses his page to show himself as a friendly person who is easy to deal with, which affects the chances of this person with potential operators, for example using Most companies in the United States use social media to search for candidates’ educational and training experiences, and to build an impression of their personality traits, because they see that these traits affect people’s professional performance, suitability for the job and work environment.
What is more, the personality of the candidates receives great attention. 30% of these companies pay to make personal assessments of the applicants, but with the high cost of performing these assessments for all candidates, some companies resort – especially in the absence of the necessary material resources – to reduce the number of candidates who will be subject to these Evaluations, by searching the candidates’ pages on “LinkedIn” to compare them before the evaluation stage. (4) You may be wondering why they do not search on other communication platforms such as “Facebook” or “Instagram”?
Yes, they can do that, but how much do they use these sites to check who you are? Linkedin provides them with information that concerns them, such as your work experience, and your page is available to everyone, unlike Facebook, where there is little of your professional information, and the ability to make your personal page dedicated to friends, so they cannot search for it.
The most important thing here is that the information that people display on “LinkedIn” is more accurate, because openness on the Internet pushes people to be more accurate in presenting their professional data and not exaggerating their achievements as might happen when writing a traditional resume. In addition, people deal With their LinkedIn pages as a kind of resume, they are more likely to share it with others including operators to get career opportunities, so LinkedIn represents a suitable platform for a large number of operators. (5)
All of the above represents the stage of building impressions, followed by another, more important stage, which is the building of job recommendations by human resources officials, i.e. your choice of the next stage of evaluation for the job, or your exclusion, and whether these recommendations are right or wrong, they affect your career path. (6)
The site provides its users with a set of free features and features that help them strengthen their resume, and we will discuss this in some detail later, in addition to other non-free touches, and the list of available features includes searching in the job list for what suits you, building your personal page, communicating with people, publishing and sharing Your data and the content you want.
On LinkedIn, networking is defined in its simplest form as a communication between two or more people in which information and communication data are exchanged for social or professional goals, but the benefits achieved from this may reach far beyond what you imagine (8), as networking provides You have a space to exchange and market ideas with the people you are interested in building professional relationships with, with the opportunity to obtain long-term professional relationships, and even this space provides you with the opportunity to learn from the experiences and experiences of others, and get their advice to develop your career path.
The matter will always keep you in their minds, making it easier to choose or reach you when professional or commercial opportunities become available, and you will learn about the market need and the type of qualifications or services most demanded, and you will learn from how successful people solve their problems and how to face them.
If you are a creative profession, networking will expand your awareness, and you will learn about various angles to analyze ideas and confront problems, which increases your confidence in yourself and your ability to complete and develop your potential. (9) The thing that will prompt you to act now is that 80% of vacancies are not published in advertisements or on employment sites, but are reached through networking and relationships. (10)
Try to evoke how you built your professional relationships in recent years, where did that happen, what benefits did you get from these relationships, and which ones had the most impact on your career path? It might have happened at a business meeting, a job fair, through your workplace network, or through a friend. It’s a good thing, but you are limited by time or place. What if you had the means to connect and build relationships with anyone in the world at any time you wanted?
You can imagine the world of LinkedIn as a global job market, where millions of companies conduct their operational activities, publish their professional or research achievements, and where hundreds of millions of professionals in all sectors and around the world share their ideas, advice, achievements, and projects, and even invite you to share your ideas, Or even they search for you during their quest to attract talented people in many specialties.
Now you have many tools that enable you to reach, follow up and communicate with these companies or people, for example, suppose that you are planning to study a master’s degree and are thinking about choosing between a number of programs or universities, and you want to know the type of opportunities that you can win after your graduation, you can use With the LinkedIn search for alumni of these universities, the results will amaze you. It shows all the graduates on the site, the sectors they work in, the countries and locations they are located in, and the nature of the jobs they are currently working in. You can now complete the networking journey more easily.
If you are looking for a job with an organization or are seeking advice to develop your capabilities, you have several options, among which we mention here the main “Jobs” menu that enables you to choose the type of job you are looking for, the institution, the country, the type of work, and how The application, and all relevant information, and then apply for the appropriate jobs. You can also search in the name of the institution or on its page for people who work for it within the scope of the job you aspire to, then network with them and ask for advice from them.
As for your contact list, it can include your academic professors, classmates, work, volunteering, and other activities and events, especially those who share your professional or scientific interests, and you can also join institutions in your field of specialization, or the vicinity of your geographical location.
Your LinkedIn page should leave no doubt about the type of job you are looking for, and why you are the most worthy person on this site.
(Melania Pinola, International Employment Writer) (11)
There are several main features that can support the strength of a page on LinkedIn, such as being complete in its data, or containing education data, and in the attached design you can learn about the rest of these very important factors. In addition, users are advised to avoid using general words when describing their job positions in order to achieve a degree of specialization, for example, it is preferable to use (Master’s or specialist in health services management) than to use the position of a project manager, and the site is also characterized by the fact that it allows the user to adopt a personal style to talk about his competence and capabilities Professional, the singular (I) is preferred, the first person can be used, and the third person is sometimes used in cases of high achievers.
On the other hand, users are advised to formulate their speech as if there are people standing in front of them, and to employ the visual element to talk about any achievements, awards or projects by adding pictures and videos with any links that may be important, and adding keywords that operators are looking for, in Skills, summary or work experience pane, easy to find during search, you can identify these words through notifications that will notify you that your name appears in a search list made by people, and tell you their jobs, the words they used, and the organizations they work for. (12)
Linkedin is available in several languages, including Arabic and English, but English is the most widely used language. You have to pay special attention to it.
The first and most important of these sections is the personal photo, and you have to choose a suitable photo for you, and the following infographic shows a number of tips that Lydia Abbott, editor and content marketer on the talent blog on LinkedIn, gives to choosing the perfect image for your page on the site.
Lydia also recommends focusing on your facial expressions when taking a picture. Pictures of smiling people give the impression that they are friendly people who are easy to deal with. You can use a friend to get this picture. In a study carried out by Photofeeler, one of the most popular tools for evaluating people’s photos. On their social pages, more than 60,000 evaluations were analyzed to monitor the impression of impact, efficiency and acceptance resulting from viewing 800 personal photos on social networking sites, including LinkedIn. The one in which the person’s teeth appeared got a double rating for the smile with a closed mouth, as for the background image, you can use it to market your drawing or design skills, your project, or your team. (13)
The image is followed by the part known as the “headline” or “headline”, and the importance of this part stems from the fact that people spend more time reading it than they spend reading any other part of the personal page, which is the source of attracting and persuading them to complete reading the information provided by the page, It is therefore advisable to fill in this section with an explanation of the nature of your business, and the clients you are helping. (14)
For the “About” or “summary” part, you have 2,000 characters to present your story in which it talks about you, your educational and professional background, and your achievements in order to motivate the visitor to complete the reading and learn more (15), and some recommend just three paragraphs with a rate of two sentences To three for each paragraph, to provide a short and smooth summary, in which you market to yourself and answer the question of why you are better than your competitors, and the answer can be about the nature of your experience or skills, for example: “I have 20 years of experience in this field, and I know how to solve customer problems.” .
You can also add something unprofessional, for example, a hobby, but when talking about your hobbies or interests make a special presentation, for example instead of telling them that you love to swim, you can mention the events or races you participated in. In general, if you are hesitant about adding information in any section, ask yourself, will this information give a clearer picture of yourself? If yes, add it, otherwise you can skip it. (16)
You can now go to the Education section, where you are required to add your educational data, such as school or university, scientific degree, field of specialization, and activities. It is preferable to add details about this, such as academic courses, the topic of the research thesis, with grades if possible, this may help you distinguish your page from other pages. other candidates.
As for the “Experience” section, you need to add relevant data and a brief description of the tasks. It is recommended that you focus on the most prominent achievements you have achieved in this job, and not only include jobs related to your field of specialization, but add volunteer experiences to them, and part-time work, and tasks you took on while participating in extracurricular activities (activities that do not fall within the school, college or university curriculum such as joining a sports team or supervising the editing of a university magazine) (17), and if the institution you worked for is not known, it is preferable to add A simple sentence to define it.
You will also need to identify your skills and endorsements, so it is recommended that you adopt the 80/20 approach, meaning that 80% of the skills you will add are specialized or related to your field of specialization (known as hard skills), and the other 20% is allocated to non-specialist skills ( soft skills), and focus on being the first or top 3 skills that are most important to marketing your character, and easiest for people on your contact list to confirm.
As for “Recommendations”, you can ask your colleague in any job you were in, or from your academic environment such as university professors, to write a recommendation for you on your page. (18)
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Interaction aims primarily to keep your image present in the minds of the people you communicate with, to have opportunities when they become available, and it is one of your most important tools for marketing yourself in addition to your personal page, and messages are among the most important images of interaction on the platform, but it requires using them professionally just as if you were in Off-platform work environment.
Therefore, when sending invitations to add a person to your “Connects” list, it is recommended to add a note in a message telling him where you met him or why you want to add him, and it is preferable to check his page before sending the invitation, you may want to indicate common things or experiences that you want to discuss, as for messages And invitations sent to you It is advised not to respond to add requests, messages, or even comments on your posts, and avoid sending general announcements in messages (19), and also avoid writing to human resources officials and asking directly: “Do you have a job for me?”.
It is also recommended to spend some time on the site to stimulate your interaction, and you can check for updates daily for five to ten minutes, where you will find that people in your network share their opportunities, challenges and achievements, and this enables you to interact with them to congratulate them or offer help.
You can interact in a different way as well, such as adding a photo of an event you participated in, reminding appointments, giving tips, or sharing your success story, and you may be asked to recommend or introduce someone on your list, remember that it is related to your reputation, so you can apologize if you are not sure, and preferably Use short and direct messages, posts and recommendations to keep people busy, avoid spelling or grammatical errors, interact as much as you want to happen with you, and balance your needs, that is, give advice and help to those who ask for it, and thank those who answer a question, introduce you to someone, suggest a job or help you with anything picture. (20)
Despite the advantages that LinkedIn offers to job seekers, operators and institutions in all sectors, there are a number of concerns, on top of which is that taking advantage of the site requires investing part of the time to follow up on developments and enhance interaction, which may cause your addiction to the site like other means. Social networking, or spending more time than allotted for work.
The privacy aspect is one of the concerns, as the site includes a variety of information about people, such as their email addresses, phone numbers, and employment history, which may expose them to falling victim to impersonation or any electronic attack, so it may be better not to share mail addresses used in bank accounts, for example, And allocate email addresses to communicate on the site.
People are also advised to verify the identity of the senders of job offers, as operators, human resources officials and talent acquisition officials in different companies attach their messages with contact information, including the official mail address of the organization, and this mail and the person’s data can be verified by searching on the website of the company to which he belongs. (21)
In addition, discrimination according to age, older users are less likely to get job offers compared to their younger peers, and a research study tried to investigate the accuracy of this matter, the study was carried out by a group of researchers led by Francesca Krings from the University of Lausanne, The study compared two groups of people of two different age groups, the first group was teenagers at the time, and the second group were in their forties when the site appeared in 2003.
The study found a clear distinction for the first group in the ease of dealing with the site due to their previous accustomed to using the Internet, computers and electronic interaction, in contrast to the second group who were not used to the Internet, browsing sites and sharing content, which made it difficult for their interested in presenting their data, competencies and personal skills on the site and interacting with it. (22)
But the results of the study showed that the members of the second group make an effort to represent themselves better, and they use images that show them with a youthful appearance, and they have an advantage in communicating with users and a greater number of recommendations compared to the participants, which the researchers explained that there is an incentive for this group to distance themselves from the stereotyped image of their age group. This creates a social stigma that makes them appear less competent and less able to adapt to technology.
But despite all that, they face bias and get fewer job offers than younger people, and although this bias was successfully avoided in CVs without personal photos, the presence of this feature on the site restored the possibility of this bias, which prompted the researchers To recommend the removal of the profile picture section of the site to ensure fair employment practice. (23)