Staying updated is key to success: says LinkedIn expert, Hammad Siddiqui, at Futurebound

Do you want to connect with more people to build the best network for your career? Are you wondering about a lack of work opportunities even though you are on Linkedin?

Hammad Siddiqui, global Linkedin trainer, revamp consultant and career coach, addressed ways in which youngsters can make their profiles attractive at the virtual session ‘Are you LinkedIn or Linked-Out?’ on November 21. The session was part of Futurebound, a three-day pan-India youth conference organised by AIESEC (Association Internationale des Étudiantsen Sciences Économiques et Commerciales) and mentored by Infosys.

Here are excerpts from the session...

Reach out to more people by being ‘LinkedIn’

How do you connect with others through LinkedIn? We need to learn this trick to upgrade our professional standing. Changing with time is the need of the hour. If you stay at the same place, it’s going to affect your career.

I am based in Canada and work with people who are migrating here. Everyone who comes here has one thing in common — they have lost their social capital as they are no longer in their home country. These people want to expand and reach out to others. I help them by devising their job search strategy using LinkedIn as a tool. Making them reach people is my passion and my work.

My clientele also has companies based in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Anyone can reach me on LinkedIn as I have close to 30,000 followers.

Don’t treat LinkedIn as your resume

There is a misconception that LinkedIn is our resume. This puts the actual philosophy of networking on the back-burner. We fail to understand that LinkedIn is a search engine — if I search for a computer scientist and a candidate's profile is well optimised, I would be able to see her.

LinkedIn throws a candidate’s posted content to anyone searching for such content. This is how we get to connect with people who satisfy the requirements for my search. The more your profile stays well-updated and optimised, the more people will want to click on your profile. This is how a profile starts networking for the user.

Deciding on the LinkedIn strategy

Just like we need to eat in order to stay alive, your LinkedIn profile needs data for you to put in so that it does not die out in the competition. There is zero training available about LinkedIn. If you have access to LinkedIn learning, check out the course that is provided by LinkedIn about LinkedIn itself. This short course talks all about how you create a profile. It’s easy to create a profile as all you need is your name and email. But that does not mean that your profile will stand out just with that amount of information. Your profile should reflect your work or your brand in the most attractive way so that the people who search for a job related to you or your brand will directly get connected with your profile.

It is extremely important to feed your profile with relevant, valid information in the most presentable way.

Effect of the pandemic

The pandemic has made the world a remote working place. Somebody called me from Germany as they needed to recruit an IT desk support person. I am not a recruiter but I can do this job. They found me on LinkedIn. They called a person in Toronto from Germany to discuss the matter and that’s how remote the working world has become.

As everything is becoming digital, we need to update our profiles on LinkedIn as it can be seen from every part of the world through networking. If your profile stays static, it would not attract any employers even if you are worthy of the position.

Competition to LinkedIn and what makes it different

There are many platforms that give competition to Linkedin. For instance, Indeed is a big platform. The only difference that segregates LinkedIn from other platforms is that it is not a job portal. Linkedin is owned by Microsoft and is one of its kind. I believe no other platform can take its place even in future.

You can follow recruiters on LinkedIn rather than connecting with them. That helps you understand what the recruiter is actually looking for and how to approach that person. The pandemic has given digital platforms a boost and we need to make the most out of it.