Long gone are the days, when job seekers directly showed up at the office with CV a.k.a Curriculum Vitae in hand. Thanks to this billion-dollar business ‘LinkedIn’ it paved the way to approach employment-oriented services through online and mobile apps.
Earlier finding an appealing job and submitting a resume was enough but now companies are looking for personalized approaches and require recommendations from the network. According to Forbes, “LinkedIn is, far and away, the most advantageous social networking tool available to job seekers and business professionals today.” As of 2020, there are over 690 million LinkedIn members.
LinkedIn came into existence in the early 2000s with an aim of linking employees, providing a place for individuals to post resumes and offer referrals, and for employers to post current job openings. By 2008, LinkedIn developed its own mobile version for easier access and targeted advertising. With this giant leap, LinkedIn witnessed global access and has even changed the way one finds jobs, collaborators, or potential employees. In 2016 tech giant Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion which remains the largest acquisition made by Microsoft to date. According to the Alexa Internet Ranking LinkedIn ranks 57th for the most popular website(May 2020).
LinkedIn is the high-tech equivalent of going to a traditional networking event where one goes and meets other professionals in person, talks a little bit about what you do, and exchange business cards. LinkedIn helps its users find the apt jobs and internships through social media based on their skills.
- At present nearly 93% of recruiters use LinkedIn to research and recruit candidates. It allows candidates to have a distinct personal brand which makes them visible to key decision-makers and recruiters. The reason why recruiters ask for your LinkedIn QR code is the above reason.
- Startups can extensively benefit from LinkedIn, being the world’s largest professional ecosystem it offers an unequaled concentration of target audiences to make relevant connections and gain credible awareness.
- With LinkedIn Sponsored Updates and service, budding entrepreneurs can now pay a fee to have LinkedIn sponsor their content and spread it to their user base.
- In LinkedIn, one can gain social proof for their skills and talents through recommendations and endorsements from their network which in turn builds credibility.
- Updating an online resume is more appealing than continuously updating a paper resume. The formatting tools in LinkedIn help create a professional resume.
- The content in LinkedIn is not just job postings but emerging industry trends, finance, updates from your connections and network keeps you updated about the industry.
- LinkedIn helps us follow our dream companies. It is an excellent tool for researching organizations and people linked with it.
- LinkedIn is your professional face to the corporate world. Your LinkedIn profile helps you to brand yourself to recruiters around the globe.
- One distinct feature of LinkedIn is that one can directly apply to roles using Linkedin apply, save job searches, as well as flagging to recruiters that you are open to new opportunities.
- LinkedIn helps you build a relationship with mutual connections, folks in your field, and even your greatest role models.
- This is a global platform, if working in foreign countries excites you one must have a LinkedIn profile as it helps you to reach out for positions beyond borders.
- In addition, peer groups and interest groups in LinkedIn provide a good learning opportunity likewise helping you to reach out to the professionals and get valuable suggestions from them.
Apart from the above benefits, LinkedIn Premium, a subscription version of Linkedin offers online professional development classes, the ability to instant message anyone on LinkedIn, and other additional features.
The COVID-19 outbreak has led to an uncertain future for job seekers today. Most firms have paused hiring and many startups have announced pay cuts. To survive this COVID era, Linkedin has come up with various initiatives in LinkedIn Learning- an online learning portal to learn skills required for professionals.
In the current scenario where the in-place interviews are being replaced by video interviews. Job seekers require a LinkedIn profile to en-route these opportunities.
LinkedIn has surely changed the way we look at our careers and the ‘hunt for the perfect job’. Now, we need not be hunting like our caveman forefathers, as Linkedin has simplified our job seeking.
