How well do you market yourself on LinkedIn? Can potential clients identify your skills, strengths and experience?

In our last few newswires, we have looked at how contractors can use social media platforms, like LinkedIn, to find new work for themselves.

Now we take a look at the improvements you can make to your profile and activities you can undertake to get noticed and secure new work.

Introduce yourself

One of the most important parts of your profile is your summary and ‘about’ section. These are the first things that appear below your name when it appears in searches.

The summary should do exactly what it suggests, sum up your areas of expertise. When searching through a list of candidates, this is the first thing potential recruiters see and it can sway a decision – first impressions count.

Below the summary is the ‘about’ section, where you can talk at more length about your skillsets, interests, passions and experience.

Try to keep this concise and engaging, focusing on your core skills and expertise. Don’t be afraid to get a little creative, as it will help you stand out from the crowd.

Update your skills and experience

It is amazing how many LinkedIn profiles are out of date or simply do not contain any real information about a person’s skills, experience, education or expertise.

Although adding new skills or job experience may seem inconsequential, for those seeking out contractors and consultants, it can give them a clearer picture of who you are.

LinkedIn has a highly advanced search algorithm, which allows recruiters and the engagers of contractors to look for the most minute details.

This covers everything from skills to accreditations, membership of networks and even a person’s interests.

That is why it is important to check your current skills listing and add to it if there are gaps. It might be that you have gained new skills or perhaps there were some skills that you missed during the creation of your profile.

Seek recommendations and endorsements

LinkedIn allows you to accept endorsements of your skills and recommendations from your connections.

If you are coming to the end of a contract, why not reach out to your main points of contact within the business and ask them to give you an endorsement or recommendation on LinkedIn.

These can boost your position within the search algorithms and are also a great way to promote your expertise to those landing on your profile page.

Join networks and groups

You can join a wide number of groups and networks on LinkedIn. These are small forums where people can share posts and information. They can be a useful resource for finding work.

However, being part of a network or group also allows recruiters and engagers to find you more easily, as they can search by network or group to find people with similar skillsets or interests.

This can be a great way to get yourself on to a shortlist of candidates, where businesses are using LinkedIn to find potential contractors.

Be active

The personal accounts that achieve more on LinkedIn are the most active ones. If you are creating content and sharing and liking other people’s content, you are going to build connections quickly and be seen by more people.

Try and set yourself a target of liking or sharing five posts a week and try to create at least one new post a month. You may be wondering what you can post about…

With LinkedIn, there is a wide range of things to consider posting about from topical news in your industry to personal achievements or even interesting anecdotes from your career.

By creating engaging content and being more active, businesses will find you more easily and you can quickly expand your connections.

We hope you have found our recent series on LinkedIn helpful. It is a great tool for securing new work and with a few simple steps, as outlined in this and our previous articles, you can achieve much more with the platform.