How To Create A Great LinkedIn Profile in 20 Minutes
In spite of all the doom and gloom about how everything is tanking right now, there are still plenty of high-paid tech jobs for developers and you’d be stupid not to capitalise on that using LinkedIn.
When I started out as a developer, I did a bit of everything to try and find software development work…a bit of Twitter, a bit of cold email, a bit of LinkedIn, etc.
Some of it worked reasonably well in my quest for a development job but a lot of it was just a waste of time.
LinkedIn is already pretty popular on Medium so I won’t labor the point about the type of people that use it but rest assured, it’s a great way of finding development work.
How To Create A Good LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is actually pretty helpful when it comes to creating a good profile. If you have an existing C.V. (that’s a resume to the rest of you) you can upload it to the site and LinkedIn will attempt to rip out your content to populate your work history.
It’s a bit shit…don’t expect it to work all that well but it gives you a starting point.
When you’ve populated your work history, feel free to dial up your ‘keyword density’. This is an SEO term that refers to how often a particular phrase is used in a piece of content.
LinkedIn is not in the business of building search engines so theirs is a little antiquated compared to Google. You’re also not going to get punished for writing ‘python developer’ 1000 times in your profile like you might on a content site.
What I would say though, is remembered that ultimately whatever you create has to be read by a human being so don’t go nuts. Take a look at my LinkedIn profile if you want a bit of a steer. You’ll notice that I refer to myself in the same way over and over making clear to LinkedIn’s search engine what I think of myself.
If you’re more junior and don’t have a massive history of work, try not to worry too much. Just fill in as much as you can and make sure you put up a nice profile/background picture too.
Time: Spend about 20 minutes…this doesn’t need to be a George R. R. Martin book
How To Use LinkedIn To Find Development Jobs
So, now that you’ve got yourself a nice profile that people aren’t going to hate reading through because it’s clear about the type of development work you do (or want to do), you can start using your profile to find work.
Now, I don’t want to be like that Tech Lead guy on YouTube who seems to believe he can walk on water but I’ve got enough of a profile on LinkedIn and enough of a solid history in enough of a buoyant market that work tends to find me.
I probably get at least 3–4 decent offers for contract development work every week with at least 1–2 offers of development work each day. The daily offers are often permanent roles which I don’t want or from a lazy recruiter who is asking me if I want to do C# dev perhaps.
The most obvious thing to do would be to hit the ‘jobs’ tab in LinkedIn but I’ve never had much luck from this myself. You want to try and separate yourself out from the crowd and it’s quite hard to do that if you’re just another C.V. in somebody’s inbox.
Leverage Connections on LinkedIn To Find Work
Here in the UK, the usual way that you find development work — especially as a contractor — is via a recruitment agent. The likes of Booking.com or The Co-op typically don’t have the time or energy to sort through a load of candidates and would rather outsource recruitment to an agency who can do the legwork for them.
So…how do you connect with the recruiters who have the jobs?
Well, first of all you probably want a decent idea of what you’re hunting for. In my case, I’ll do almost any type of JavaScript development work but I prefer working with React. The more specific you can be, the easier this next part is.
With your profile in-hand, you can start to hunt for job postings. As an example, here’s what I searched for whilst writing this article
In the above example, I’ve searched for “contract javascript ir35” because I want contract JavaScript development work that falls outside of IR35 (Google it).
The first three results look reasonably promising although the rate on the third result is less than half what I’d usually work for.
The good news is that these were just the first three results and this search — for me at least — returned maybe 20–30 such postings all in the last week.
LinkedIn is no different to any other social platform in that it’s power lies in your connections. The more solid connections you have, the more likely you are to see recruiters who are actively looking for developers like you to fill a vacancy.
Approaching development job hunting this way makes the ‘sales’ process of convincing them and the end client to hire you is usually very straightforward. You know what the client wants and how much they are prepared to pay so it becomes pretty easy to position yourself as a great fit to their problem.
Time: Spend about 10 minutes on this every few days if you are actively looking for a development job
How To Apply For Jobs On LinkedIn
Since you’ve got a half-decent profile, just message the recruiter explaining that you’re interested. They’ll scan your profile and get in touch if they think you’d be a good fit.
I’d recommend connecting with them at this stage. Recruiters are usually pretty happy to connect with you as developers usually know other developers.
I’d also recommend leaving them alone if they don’t come back to you. They are paid to find a candidate to fill a vacancy so it’s in their best interests to do that. If they don’t call/message it usually means:
- The role is now filled and they aren’t looking for anyone.
- The recruiter isn’t very good at their job and you probably don’t want to deal with them.
- The end client has changed their mind/budget/project scope and the role is no longer available.
In any case, badgering the recruiter won’t get your anywhere.
How To Get Recruiters To Chase You With Job Offers on LinkedIn
As explained, recruiters want to fill these positions and as you gain a bit more experience you’ll become more sought after. It’s a nice place to be when they hunt you down with job offers for two reasons:
- If my current contract were to end suddenly, I know I’ve got a few irons in the fire.
- If I’m looking for work, I can bargain with different clients to increase my rate.
If you’re searching for new jobs every few days and connecting with recruiters as you apply for them, eventually you’ll start seeing these posts appearing in your feed as the recruiter creates them.
I’ve made a bit of a habit to tag any friends/colleagues that I think might be of value whenever I see these posts. It makes me feel good helping out a mate that I’ve worked with and also pays dividends in terms of more recruiters finding me and wanting to connect.
I’ve not had to look for a new job in a long time as they tend to find me, but should I need to I know I’ve got a lot of good will from people I’ve referred into new roles and recruiters I’ve helped.
What else can I do to find work on LinkedIn?
Building up a network like this can take time so the easiest way of doing it is building it long before you actually need it.
If you’re in a job, stay active on the platform engaging with people and trying to help them.
If you’re looking for work, don’t make job hunting your be-all/end-all. My brother did this in his younger days and would report back that he’d applied for 1000 roles…you’ll still see some of that in the media from time to time and I find it very tedious.
Focus on building quality relationships with people who you can help and can help you. When you’ve done 10 minutes of that every few days, get back to work building your skills as a developer and working on stuff that people value.
