On the twenty-ninth installment of Tristan's Tips, our special guest Tristan Layfield walks us through why LinkedIn is such an important platform for the modern professional and anyone trying to get into or grow within their field. He also shares a handful of statistics that help illustrate that fact.

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TRANSCRIPT

Tristan: What’s going on, y' all? It's Tristan Layfield of Layfield Resume Consulting, and I've teamed up with Living Corporate to bring you all a weekly career tip. This week let’s talk about why LinkedIn is so important. Over my time doing this work, I’ve noticed that prior to working with me, many of my clients never fully understood LinkedIn and how it can help them. But if you talk to any career coach or resume writer they are going to tell you that you not only HAVE to be on LinkedIn but you have to have a BOMB profile and engage throughout the platform. So let’s walk through a few of the reasons why LinkedIn is so important. LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site on the internet boasting around 610 million members with around 121 million of those members using the site daily. According to a UMass Dartmouth study, 92% of Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn. And LinkedIn states that there are around 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision makers that use the platform. Based on those stats alone, I think it’s pretty clear that LinkedIn is a great place to not only grow your network, but your overall brand and thought leadership. No matter what company you want to work for, there is more than likely someone on the platform that works there or has worked there and that person could be a resource for you during your quest to land a job.To take this a little bit further, according to Jobvite, 77% of recruiters use LinkedIn for their social media–based recruitment efforts. While that number is down from 92% in 2017, that is still a TON of recruiters who are scouring the platform to find the perfect candidate for the jobs they’re trying to fill. You can easily miss out on all of those opportunities if you aren’t on the platform or if your profile isn’t updated often! Now, the last point I’m going to make is that LinkedIn is not only a networking site but it has its own job posting board with over 20 million jobs. There are also job search filters you can take advantage of to narrow your search by industry, function and experience. LinkedIn can also help you discover new jobs with instant job notifications, job title highlights and salary tools. Not to mention, quite a few jobs allow you to apply using your LinkedIn profile so you can say goodbye to all those crazy long job applications! Another great feature that many people aren’t aware of are the job seeking settings that LinkedIn has that allow you to let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities in various ways. I know I’ve thrown a lot at you, but these are only a handful of the reasons why LinkedIn is an important platform for the modern professional and anyone trying to get into or grow within their field. If you want to discuss how you can make your LinkedIn profile work for you, book a free consultation with me and let’s chat! This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @layfieldresume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn!