People ask me all the time if they really need to be on LinkedIn if they want or need to make a career change.  LinkedIn, like it or not, is the most powerful tool you have to put yourself out there for potential employers to find… for FREE.

You have complete control over your LinkedIn profile so visit it regularly and make sure that it is up to date and relevant.

• How does your profile compare with others in similar roles because that is who you are being compared to?
• Is your contact information up to date?
• Have you added a business professional (not taken in your car!) photo of yourself?
• If you are between jobs then state that you are open to new opportunities, recruiters actually search for that to find actively looking candidates.
• Do you use keywords in your summary and past job descriptions?
• Does your profile match your resume?  This is important!
• Focus on what you want to do and leave out what you don’t want to do again.

You can see from this survey response below that recruiters heavily rely on LinkedIn as a sourcing tool for talent search. 66.43% of recruiters use LinkedIn on a DAILY basis.  LinkedIn leaves Dice, The Ladders, Monster, Careerbuilder and Indeed in the dust.

In your current role, how often do you search for candidates using the following job boards? October 5, 2016SourceCon

Here is a great infographic from Entrepreneur.Com with some super tips on updating your LinkedIn profile, How to Create Your Perfect LinkedIn Profile.

If you are looking to make a career  move, LinkedIn will need to be part of your strategy.  It is also a great way of keeping track of who you have connected and networked with in your job search.

Need a way to organization your career search?  Here is an article with some great tools including one we really like JibberJobber.  ORGANIZE YOUR CAREER SEARCH