“Are you on LinkedIn?” is fast replacing “Are you on Facebook?”. Why is that so? What is it that makes LinkedIn one of the most sought-after professional networking sites? LinkedIn has more than 50 million users in India now itself, says Indian Express. It reaches more than 200 countries worldwide. Can you imagine the diversity and vastness of the connections you could make? You’ve just graduated and your next task is to get yourself a life-saving job. Enter LinkedIn, to your rescue.
What is the first thing you would do to apply for a job? Email your resumes to a bunch of companies on their career email ids, attend walk-ins, take part in recruitment drives, talk to people you know to get you an interview somewhere. LinkedIn has changed all the dynamics of a job search. Now companies can come to you, search and look for you, get in touch with you, inform you of a recruitment drive, inform you of their openings and you can still talk to people worldwide for guidance and for getting recommendations for your skills! Let’s see why LinkedIn is important and why it is the best job-search site in India.
1. It’s a vast network of Recruiters and Talents
Now, it’s almost a standard practice for all of us to have a profile on LinkedIn. The platform provides a chance for both job-seekers and recruiters to be present together. Any of them can get in touch with one another and can network for professional purposes. You can invite and add as many members as you want as your connections (preferably it could be your college alumni, your juniors, your professors, the dream companies you want to follow, any key influencer you want to follow, role models, startup founders, similar job-seeking professionals, etc.). If you have a profile, means you’re visible to any and every recruiter who searches for skills like yours.
2. Accuracy of Information
Because it’s such a wide network and has so many professionals/students/peers/peers, you can’t get away with lying about your skills. Everybody is looking. LinkedIn will suggest prompts basis of your search activities, for updating profile information and skills time and again. This is one of the main reasons why your LinkedIn profile is more updated than your resume, any day. Recruiters also prefer to go through your LinkedIn profile, hence. The same goes for companies as well. In order to attract a pool of candidates, all companies keep an active LinkedIn profile where they post all trends, news insights, company news, and developments. They also encourage their employees to talk positively about them so as to reflect a good work culture, on LinkedIn.
3. Easy to apply, keep job alerts, and a lot more!
The job applications happen through just a click--’ Apply via LinkedIn’. You don’t even need to upload your resumes to apply for a majority of job openings. Many organizations are now substituting a LinkedIn profile for a resume. Instead of searching for job openings using the same keywords again and again, LinkedIn lets you create email alerts for the keywords and skills you’re looking for and sends all job openings directly to your email id. It is a platform that you can use for your self-marketing. It’s your free tool to market yourself and brand yourself. You can also follow the industries you’re interested in, and get the most recent updates about them.
So how are you convinced about the power of LinkedIn as a professional, job-search tool? It’s free and it will hardly take up an hour’s time of yours to create an up-to-date profile on LinkedIn. So why wait?