Engage in LinkedIn Groups for Your Executive Job Search to Boost Your Profile’s Relevance
Engage in LinkedIn Groups for Your Executive Job Search to Boost Your Profile’s Relevance
LinkedIn is known to be the most popular and most populated social media venue for executive job search. Thus, as an executive in career transition, you likely have a complete profile:
* 120 characters in your headline that describe your value, your executive level, and your industry.
* 2000 characters in your summary.
* 2000 characters for each of your positions.
* Hundreds if not thousands of connections.
And so on.
You probably also are members of LinkedIn groups. Every LinkedIn member can join up to 50 main groups. Are you maximizing your career opportunities through your membership in LinkedIn groups?
The real reason executive job seekers are on LinkedIn is that they want to be notable for (or be found for) the expertise they deliver. Although the official help source on the LinkedIn interface specifically does not mention your joining groups as a key to improving your search rank, it has been reported anecdotally that your membership in LinkedIn groups matters.
Choose the Right LinkedIn Groups for Your Executive Job Search
Therefore, you need to pick your LinkedIn groups according to some criteria that will promote you as an expert in your area of focus.
1. Choose LinkedIn groups related to your job search target.
2. Choose LinkedIn groups related to your functional expertise.
3. Choose LinkedIn groups related to your field of interest or industry.
By relating your profile with those similar to you in interests, industry, or job title, LinkedIn is likely to believe that you are authentically part of these affinity groups. But this is just the start. Simply having the groups on your profile is not enough to convince LinkedIn that you are part of these groups. Although the groups to which you as an executive job seeker belong tell something about your authenticity and your brand, they do not tell LinkedIn’s search algorithm enough about your relevance to the search results that ought to contain your profile.
According to the People Search Relevance and Rank on LinkedIn Search help topic:
Before we return results, we consider the searcher’s activity on LinkedIn, the profiles returned by the query, and other members who have run similar searches in determining the sort order. These, along with other factors, combine to provide us with data to improve the overall quality of our members’ search results.
The key phrase here, as it relates to LinkedIn group membership and relevance, is “we consider the searcher’s activity on LinkedIn.” This means you have to post topically relevant status updates regularly, in your timeline and in your groups. Perhaps I am going out on a limb here, but I also suspect that you need to engage other group members to create relevant, reciprocal, socially mediated engagement that is topically focused and related to your executive job search insofar as your posts and comments relate to your job search target, your industry, and your job function.
Your LinkedIn Group Membership and Engagement Boosts Your Profile in the Search Results
Straightforwardly, when you engage with other members–in groups in particular, because they are already topically narrow–you validate their affinities. When they engage you, they validate yours. And, so, the water rises and raises both your and your LinkedIn connection’s boats, meaning your executive job search profile will become more relevant in the inscrutable but critical LinkedIn search algorithm.
Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net / kasahasa
