Think about your social media habits — how often do you log on to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in a day, as opposed to your LinkedIn account? No need to answer that out loud [chuckles]! LinkedIn is such an underused gem. It’s aim is to create engaging content for professionals and jobseekers. With over 500 million members globally, we should in fact be looking at this platform as a “dark horse”.
LinkedIn currently boasts approximately seven million users in South Africa, and of those, majority use the site for networking opportunities and to stay up-to-date with industry news. Only a measly 28% of South Africans engage with the platform to actively seek employment opportunities. Whether you have aspirations of working abroad, or being headhunted by your dream company, LinkedIn has made such hopes accessible.
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Many turn to LinkedIn to try secure new job prospects, but struggle to navigate it — it’s a tad user unfriendly, but that shouldn’t put you off. “I wasn’t following recruiters, and therefore potential employers were not searching for my profile, or viewing my applications. It was only after an encounter with a career coach that I understood the importance of a strategy, keywords and a detailed profile,” says Nonhlanhla Duze, a 35-year-old jobseeker who’d been job searching on the site for a year with no success.
Duze is like many of us who suspect they’re doing something wrong on LinkedIn, but can’t quite place a finger on it.
