5 Things Women Should Do To Make Full Use Of LinkedIn, But Don’t!

Women can make good use of LinkedIn as a tool to network and showcase themselves and their skills, but fail to do so!

Did the title make you curious and you found yourself here? Or did the title make you angry and you found yourself here?

Either way, I’m glad you are here, and hope you get to take away some value, thoughts, and questions at the end of this.

India sure has a long way to catch up, to increase our current share of women at work of about 36% in India as reported in Statista, as compared to about 59% in the US as reported in Gallup.

The opportunities for women to work or return to work are increasing, but we still see that there are many hurdles for women to cross to have a successful career.

LinkedIn as a platform for career growth

LinkedIn is a great platform; if leveraged can help women grow professionally. Founded in 2002, it became a one-stop solution to all recruitment, networking and professional growth. Professionals leverage LinkedIn to continue to grow, to explore, and to find opportunities. According to LinkedIn (reported on Hootsuite), it has over 756 million users across 200 countries, with over 76 million in India and 43% of them being women.

Did you know? Women have a lower level of confidence and greater fear of failure as compared to Men. (LinkedIn Opportunity Index 2021). It disheartens me to see how these amazing women are not leveraging LinkedIn and missing out.

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Here are 5 things women must do to make good use of LinkedIn.

Looking beyond jobs on LinkedIn

Although LinkedIn is the first platform they think about for jobs, it is seldom leveraged as a platform to network, follow leaders in their industry and keep updated on the companies they aspire to work with.

Networking leads to opportunities beyond jobs and can help them grow personally and professionally with a possibility of helping another women on the way.

Being frank about their career breaks

This is a notion that is fed into them, that career breaks are bad. This should not be the case, as career breaks are taken due to strong personal or professional reasons.

Most recruiters and companies are looking at relevant skills for the job and look beyond the career breaks when the candidate is ideal. Women need to take career breaks in their stride, and look at them as experiences that helped them grow and add skills.

Career breaks become a taboo when they believe it is. Instead, they should showcase the skills added on during the break and work on staying updated with the working of their industry.

Supporting fellow women

Quite often, women are pitted against each other as competition, and encouraged not to root for each other. It’s time for them to move away from these toxic notions and work on upholding each other.

Even liking, sharing, and commenting on a connection’s post can help them grow and show encouragement. Also every opportunity you may get or see, recommend a fellow.

Showcasing their thoughts and opinions

Most times, women focus on just talking about their job or staying silent.

LinkedIn is a platform to showcase not just your skills, but your personalities. Women need to put forth their thoughts and opinions on subjects they are interested in. There would be many other girls and women they will be inspiring by using their voice more often. It may also give your future employer an insight into what you may bring to the culture of the company.

Being consistent

Women should take out time explicitly for LinkedIn – even if it is 15 mins a week to engage with their network and expand it. They need to make sure to keep at the activity consistently, and be assured to see results.

Take that step towards growth and be sure that you will pull up more women along with you. Use your voice for yourself and for the others.

Happy LinkedIn’ng.

First published here.

Image source: shutterstock

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