By Jessica Hernandez, CPBS, CDCS
Executive Resume Writer | Certified Personal Brand Strategist | LinkedIn Top Voice
Karen, a Corporate Communications Manager who had previously used LinkedIn as a resume placeholder and only occasionally scrolled through posts, landed several interviews and two offers from LinkedIn without applying to a single job posting.
Then there’s Manley, a Senior Technology Program Manager, who landed his most recent role using LinkedIn without applying to a job posting. Wondering how Karen and Manley used LinkedIn to get interview invitations and job offers?
In this article, you’ll discover three steps to increase your visibility with recruiters, get more profile views, and attract more interview invitations in just 15 minutes a day — without applying to job postings.
How to increase your LinkedIn profile views
I often hear from job seekers that they use LinkedIn randomly (as a resume placeholder) and don’t have a sense of how to get more leverage out of LinkedIn. If that’s you, you’re not alone. That’s where Karen, Manley, and my husband started with their LinkedIn journeys. I suspect that you might be there, too.
Karen’s LinkedIn profile housed her resume, and she would apply to job postings that interested her as she saw them. But as far as using LinkedIn beyond that, she wasn’t sure what else she could be doing, and she wasn’t engaging — just scrolling. She told me, “I occasionally read posts, but I didn’t engage with them. And I was too intimidated to comment!”
Avoiding engagement can hamper your job search results because the true power of LinkedIn comes from being active on the platform.
If you want to be seen by recruiters and appeal to them, you must speak up, make the first move, and be visible. To do this, you need to comment, like, share, and join the conversations that are happening across LinkedIn.
First, log into your LinkedIn homepage to view what your network is posting about. You’ll notice that you will see posts from first-degree connections, pages you follow, companies you follow, advertisements, and posts that your network has commented on.
Each of these provides an excellent opportunity for you to increase your visibility.
When you comment on a connection’s post, all of their connections, plus their second-degree connections, can see your comment. So, you’ve just doubled your exposure outside of your own network.
How to get started actively engaging on LinkedIn
A simple yet effective way to start engaging is to share your experience, insight, or opinion on your connection’s post. You could also share your story in relation to the post.
For instance, yesterday, I posted a poll starting a conversation around a topic that I know resonates with job seekers.
You can see in the comments that some people share their experience, others an insight, and others a tip for how to remedy the situation. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to comment, and now their comments and profiles are visible to everyone in my network (30,000 connections and 183,000+ followers), plus anyone who commented on the post.
I recommend commenting on 3–5 posts per day. It will take you less than 15 minutes. If you can’t engage daily for 15 minutes, try a minimum of three days per week.
But don’t limit your conversations to just connections. You want to expand and build a stronger network.
Search for industry insiders, thought leaders, and influencers in your industry, as well as companies that you can engage with and comment on. Each time you engage with a post, you increase your visibility exponentially. I’ve received countless connection requests from people who’ve read my comments on other people’s posts, agreed with or liked what I said, and wanted to connect.
Engaging with recruiters and hiring managers
One of my favorite strategies for effective engagement on LinkedIn is to locate the hiring manager, recruiter, decision-maker, and a couple of employees for a target company. This strategy works best for your top 1–3 target companies. It’s not scalable for a list of 50 companies.
Once you’ve identified who they are (LinkedIn Unlocked students: this is the module on researching people), check to see if they’re active on LinkedIn. By active, I mean either posting themselves or commenting on other people’s posts at least once a week.
You can check their activity by heading to their LinkedIn profile and looking at the activity section. It looks like this:
Once you’ve identified your active employees and HR folks, you want to start engaging with what they write. For example, if I’m a digital marketer who wants to work at a marketing agency, and I see that their talent acquisition person shared an opening on her LinkedIn page, I would head over and like that post and leave a comment. I could share my interest if it’s a role I’m interested in. Or, if it’s not a digital marketing role, I could share it with someone I know who may be interested.
You want to increase your familiarity with your target audience by consistently showing up in their feed through comments, shares, and likes. Each time you comment on a post, the person sees it, and they see your name. Each time you like one of their posts, they see your name. Each time you share their post, they see your name. Each interaction builds familiarity. Familiarity builds the know-like-trust factor.
Commenting on company posts
When you comment on a company page, the company can see it, as well as recruiters who are looking for candidates. They can see that you’ve engaged with their brand. The more you comment, like, and share their company and sponsored posts, the higher your engagement and the higher you’re rated as likely to respond if a recruiter reaches out to you.
In fact, commenting on a company post spotlights your profile to recruiters. So, when you apply to a job at that company, there is a spotlight on your profile and application that says engaged with brand. This alerts the employer that you’re more likely to respond to them if they reach out to you about an opening. It’s another great way to stand out to hiring managers.
Consistency is the key that unlocks the door to interviews
Engagement works best when you're consistent. It’s hard to build a know-like-trust factor if you’re only showing up sporadically. That’s why I teach job seekers my 3x3 framework.
3 comments per day, at least 3 days per week. It’s doable and a great place to start and keep yourself accountable and consistent.
If you can do more than three comments three days a week, I strongly recommend doing so. The more time you invest engaging on LinkedIn, the quicker the interview invitations pour in. Karen, Manley, and Scott (another LinkedIn Unlocked student) invested about an hour daily posting and engaging on LinkedIn at the height of their job search. Scott’s network has grown 10x its size since he learned the strategies I teach in LinkedIn Unlocked, and Karen landed two jobs and several interviews.
Manley shared this about his results: “The results seemed subtle at first, but, in retrospect, they were pretty dramatic. I had always made connections, but they weren't always the connections I wanted. After the course, I was getting more interest from the companies and people that I was interested in. My time spent on LinkedIn became far more productive. I was spending the same amount of time, but I was using it more effectively.”
The more active you are, the quicker and greater results you’ll see from your efforts.
Fight the notion that these efforts to engage by commenting and posting aren’t as productive as applying to job postings. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking we’re being productive in our search when we click Easy Apply because we can quantify how many roles we’ve applied to. Instead, I challenge you to think of productivity as how much time you invested into actively engaging on LinkedIn.
What to post on LinkedIn as a job seeker
This is where you take your job search to a whole new level. Yes, you can get interviews from commenting and engaging with other people’s posts, but if you really want to show off your expertise and position yourself as a subject matter expert, then posting on LinkedIn can do just that.
When I speak with people about transitioning from passive scrolling to actively contributing, I most often hear:
What do I post?
How do I share authentic content?
I’m not confident enough to share.
How do I structure a post?
How do I get people to engage with my post?
First, let’s address the “what to post on LinkedIn” question.
LinkedIn is a professional networking site, so you want to keep your posts professional. Here are some ideas of things you can share:
A recent award or recognition you received.
A publication or project you completed.
An accomplishment (humble brag).
Kudos to someone else.
Industry news.
Share an industry article and summarize it.
Share an article and provide your rebuttal or feedback.
State a problem common to the industry or your position, and offer tips to solve it.
Talk about a challenge you’ve faced at work, how you addressed it, and the outcome.
Ask for feedback.
Share a challenge and ask for advice.
Give advice.
Share a story. “Someone recently asked me…Here’s what I shared”
Educate.
Appreciate.
Acknowledge.
Share job openings.
Share company posts/status updates/job openings.
Share a recruiter’s post.
When it comes to sharing authentic content, one piece of advice: Be true to yourself and your brand. I’m an educator at heart. It’s my nature to share knowledge and information; it comes easily. I’m not an Adam Karpiak who can bust out jokes or make hilarious, irreverent, witty posts that crack people up. I wish I could come up with stuff like that, but I’m just not that funny. I’m a teacher, so I teach. Stay true to who you are, your personality, and your style when you post to LinkedIn.
I’ve never been one to chase the algorithm. Someone is trying to go viral if you see the same post repeatedly. Going viral shouldn’t be your goal with content. Content should be about your brand and how to add value and serve others.
If you keep this at the forefront of your mind, your followership will grow over time. Very few people hit the viral jackpot and instantly jump up thousands of followers. I’m not here to tell you how to have one viral hit to get massive exposure. It might happen, or it might not, but what you can control is your personal brand and the content you produce and share. It’s taken me 10 years to reach 183,000 followers (which came through consistent effort), but those 183,000 followers are loyal and engaged.
LinkedIn’s Chief Economist, Karin Kimbrough, reported that 8 people are hired every minute on LinkedIn! That stat does not only reflect applications on job postings. It reflects all interactions on LinkedIn. The opportunity to find your next role is there — you just need to know how to use LinkedIn effectively.