The first extremely underrated LinkedIn feature is to message anyone without using LinkedIn premium. Normally for anyone who is not a first degree connection, you either press connect and hope they get back to you, or you try to message them only to get prompted to buy this totally not overpriced service. But if you’re the same LinkedIn group, you can click show all under the all members tab here. And now we can message anyone, even third degree connections, directly and for free.
Pro tip, on the main LinkedIn homepage, job seekers can search for the field they’re interested in, for example, digital marketing. And here, you can actually filter for groups, And you can join these to network with professionals in that specific industry.
2. Leverage "people" tab on company pages
Make use of the people slash alumni tab on LinkedIn pages. For example, this is a page from my college. I go to the alumni tab here and under where they work, I can add Apple, for example, right? And boom, here are 67 alumni, if I scroll down, that I can reach out to if I wanted to work at an overpriced phone company. Pro tip and prepare to get your mind blown. Instead of trying to connect with them from here,
copy and paste their name into the college alumni group to see if you can message them directly. There’s a very good chance they’re part of both, or you can go directly to a company page.
For example, Amazon go to the people tab here first filter by location, let’s say New York city, right? Um, and then choose a department you want to be in. For example, I want to be in sales for that sweet, sweet commission. Then scroll all the way to the right and filter for your first and secondary connections. And if you scroll down, these are the people most likely to agree to a coffee chat.
3. Let recruiters know you're interested
Staying within the company page, go to the About tab, scroll all the way down, and click the I’m Interested button here. This adds your profile to their recruiter’s backend database so they can message you directly. No further action needed on your side, and this interest expires after one day. Two quick things. Some companies will not have this feature enabled, so not every page will have this. And second, this function is relatively new, so don’t expect a bunch of messages right away.
4. Linkedin career explorer
And to get here, simply type in this URL, which I’ll link down below. If you scroll all the way down past the fancy animations, you’ll see this, explore job transitions. And this is awesome for job seekers.
First, add a location, for example, New York City again. Then input your current role. For example, I used to be a management consultant. And here, sort popularity high to low. And in a nutshell, this is a list of roles that management consultants in New York City moved into as their career progressed. It obviously makes sense some consultants end up becoming managers in consulting, but according to the data, a lot of consultants move into the program management track as well. So if you’re feeling a bit stuck or lost in your career, getting inspiration is the first great use of this tool.
Second, if you are a consultant looking to go into program management in tech, which is very common, the skills on the left are ones you most likely already have, and you wanna work towards the skills in the middle and on the right. An action you can take immediately is to add all these skills into your LinkedIn profile, since you now know recruiters for program managers are looking for these skills. And you also wanna take something called the skills assessment, which I’ll talk about in a minute.
Pro tip, The titles from the enter a job field here are the LinkedIn approved titles you wanna use on your profile as opposed to what your company calls you.
For example, I used to be called a torso account strategist, which doesn’t exist here, but I really was just a key account manager. And this is what most recruiters on LinkedIn are actively searching for. By the way, check this out.
This is Show, he's pretty big on TikTok
And I know I caught up with him two months ago because of this LinkedIn companion app called Dex.
It keeps track of all our previous interactions And as you can see, I’ve set up a reminder to catch up with Show at least once every quarter so he doesn’t forget me when he’s rich. My three favorite ones by far is..
first, being able to add notes, reminders, and manage contacts directly in LinkedIn so I can refer back to all of this the next time either one of us reaches back out.
Second, the mobile app. Super clean view with everyone I’ve set up reminders to keep in touch with. I can swipe to dismiss or snooze. And if you sync your Facebook account, you get reminded of their birthdays as well.
Third, and this is super underrated, on the web app, I can actually see the city my contacts are currently in. So I know who I can meet up with whenever I travel.
The next one is kind of creepy, but you can low-key stalk people as well because you can see whenever someone updates their title on LinkedIn. Him, landed the job there? Just kidding, I’m not that judgmental. Link down below to start your free trial of Dex and let me know what you think.
5. Skill assessments
On your profile, scroll all the way down to skills, click on demonstrate skills, and then skill assessments. Each assessment has 15 multiple choice questions. I actually took a few myself.
And if you score in the top 30%, you receive a skill badge. And you also start to rank higher than your peers with the same skill when recruiters search for that skill. In this oversimplified example, someone with a skill badge and endorsements in that skill will rank higher than someone with just a lot of endorsements. But that number two person will still rank higher than other people with a lower number of endorsements in that skill, and so on and so forth.
If you’re in the first few years of your career, I recommend taking the assessments for Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook at the very least. For experienced professionals, it really depends on the industry that you’re in. For creatives, you might want the Adobe Suite of Tools and AutoCAD.
For cloud, there’s Azure, GCP, and AWS. For marketing, there’s Google Ads and Google Analytics. Right now, skill assessments is relatively new, so I would check back regularly for new assessments. Just go to the All tab, scroll all the way down, click Show More Assessments, and pick the ones relevant for you.
6. Career Break, and it works like this
If you are laid off or you have an employment gap, scroll all the way down to your experiences, click the plus sign, choose add career break, and pick one of these types. Now, when recruiters and hiring managers land in your profile, instead of seeing an end date with no explanation, they can now see why you’re on a break and what you’ve been up to during that time.
Pro tip, while this feature is great, I personally don’t think a headline that says position eliminated or career break gives a strong first impression when someone first lands on your profile. So if you are between jobs, I would recommend adding an experience and in the title, mention the roles you’re looking for, add LinkedIn in the company name for that icon and include what you’ve been up to in the description field with quantifiable metrics.
This just makes such a better first impression. I know some of you watching might not agree with this tip, but in my opinion, this is a creative way to show you’re looking for new opportunities and recruiters will definitely take notice. But the choice is yours, Both options are available.
7. Use featured section for job search
Most LinkedIn users think this feature section is mainly for content creators selling stuff to make a quick buck. Totally not me, of course. But when I was a job seeker, this was where I put my resume and portfolio. All you have to do is under the feature section, click add a link, paste the URL to your resume in Google Drive, click add, title my resume, leave the description field blank, you’ll see why in a bit, and add a thumbnail.
And because I’m such an angel, I’ve actually created a template in Canva that you can use for free. I’ll link that down below. Now, because we left our description field blank, other people would just need to click once to get to our resume as opposed to clicking twice if you included the description for whatever reason.
And of course, you can now also add your website portfolio or other social media profiles if you wanted to.
8. Connect with someone over the LinkedIn mobile app
Do not click on the connect button because it just sends a super generic connection request. Instead, you want to personalize your invite to maximize the chances of the other person accepting your connection request. To write the perfect message for your connection request, regardless of who it is, check out this video for a simple three-step process.Thanks for reading!
