A match made in heaven.. or could it be LinkedIn?
At our previous event in January we spoke to event attendees about self-love, skin care and how to take a closer look what they are putting inside their bodies. At our latest event earlier this month we decided to focus more on the outside and talk to our guests about how they could use LinkedIn to build their own brand, attract an important recruiter and even get that dream job!
We had two wonderful speakers – Stanislas Dutreil, the Managing Director of Badenoch + Clark who has over 16 years of recruitment experience and Saskia Baudet, who has been with The Adecco Group for over 9 years, first as a recruitment consultant, then as a Branch Manager and most recently as Manager, Spring Professional Luxembourg.
Building your e-reputation
They told us all about LinkedIn, how important it is today and how it is ideal for personal branding, building an e-reputation, and increasing visibility. In a world where search engines, websites, and reviews are the first point of reference, it comes as no surprise that recruiters and companies conduct background checks and your LinkedIn profile could be the difference between getting that job call or not.
The workshop was very interactive and both speakers encouraged the audience to talk about their personal experiences. They gave us tips on how to monitor the statistics and popularity of a LinkedIn page, shared useful analytical tools we can use and even told us how to check the Social Selling Index of our LinkedIn profiles! Wondering what that is? If you attended the event, you already know.
Improving your Social Selling Index
On LinkedIn, the “Social Selling Index (SSI)” is the index assigned to a profile based on its relevance and popularity on the job profile site. A higher SSI increases the chances of a profile appearing as the first few results of a keyword search. So, when a recruiter looks for potential candidates on LinkedIn by entering keywords like ‘team management’ or ‘marketing’ for example, he/she will see the profiles with the highest SSI first. It’s easy to see why having a good SSI is critical to being discovered by the right person!
So, what can you do to improve your SSI? Stanislas and Saskia explained how the SSI for your profile is totally dependent on your network on LinkedIn and ‘A Good Network = Higher Social Selling Index’. However, be careful since it is very much quality over quantity and a good LinkedIn network is not necessarily a wide network, but more importantly a quality network.
Tips and tricks to increase your visibility
Some key ingredients to building a quality network are connecting with other professionals in the same locality, in the same industry and even those that are in competing businesses. Who you follow, what you post on your profile and being and active LinkedIn member by liking or commenting on the activity of others are other useful ways to improve the SSI of your profile.
Did you know that it takes an average of 8 seconds to read a CV but in contrast only 5 seconds are spent on a LinkedIn profile? Or that profiles with a profile picture are get 7 times more visibility? This means your profile must also have impact and grab attention! Including important keywords for your industry in your profile description and having a great profile picture are therefore important to get the attention your profile needs.
All in all, the workshop was an eye opener and we know we will never look at LinkedIn profiles quite the same way again!
We want to thank our hosts at Badenoch + Clark for letting us host the workshop at their lovely venue and hope we will continue to have their kind support.
Also, watch our Facebook page for announcements regarding our Annual General Meeting and Networking session in March! It’s going to be a super exciting event with some inspiring tips on how to network, a chance to meet new and current board members and also some delicious crémant of course! See you there 🙂
– blog post by member Supriya Sodhi, entrepreneur and founder of DogStays