There’s a ton of buzz around LinkedIn these days and I’m sure at some point or another someone’s told you that you have to sign up. Maybe you’re resisting and haven’t done it yet. Maybe you’ve created a profile but aren’t really finding it useful. When I was recruiting, I used LinkedIn heavily to find great candidates- so I’m here to confirm it. LinkedIn can help you get a job. Here’s how…

It can help you get seen by companies (without even applying)

Do you know what recruiters sometimes do when they’re not finding applicants that match the job qualifications? They go find them (on LinkedIn). For those who pay the fees, almost every member on LinkedIn becomes searchable (there is a setting you can use to avoid this, but most people don’t).

That means, if I want to find someone who interned at NBC and studied communications at Syracuse, I can easily just look them up and reach out to them.

That’s why the first key to leveraging LinkedIn to land a job is having a complete profile. That way, without even lifting a finger, you may just get found!

It has high quality job postings (and a person behind the post)

In my experience, I’ve noticed that the jobs posted on LinkedIn are pretty legitimate. Here’s what I mean by that… if you are a company and you have a careers site it costs you nothing to pop a job up there to see which candidates apply. LinkedIn however, charges for that privilege and it’s not cheap.

I find that companies reserve LinkedIn to post the jobs they are really looking to fill, fast. That means you should have a pretty captive audience if you’re qualified and apply for one of those jobs – and that’s a good thing.

Even better, LinkedIn actually shows you who posted the job. That means you can see who is leading the search and reach out to them directly to share why you’d be great at it. Actually connecting with a person versus sending your resume off into the “black hole” is a major plus.

It gives you major access to people who would otherwise be off-limits

On that same note, perhaps you applied for a job that wasn’t on LinkedIn and wanted to follow up. In the past, unless you already had a connection at that company, you probably would have had a tough time getting in touch with an actual person.

Now that’s not the case. If you have some basic information (a department, a job title, or even just a company name and enough time to browse and filter) you can find someone to reach out to cold.

Sending an email to someone the company where you applied for a job, introducing yourself, and giving a few lines about why you’d be great for the role can go along way in getting you noticed… and hopefully in for an interview.

Have you had success using LinkedIn in your job search? Would love to hear in the comments!