For anyone who is planning to leave the Armed Forces, the prospect of finding a new career and online job searching can feel daunting. When you add tools like LinkedIn into the mix, that may be a new social media channel for many service leavers, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Our Social Media Marketing Manager Jamie Finn chats about why LinkedIn is a great tool for anyone looking to move into a new career, and especially how service leavers can use the tool to find work opportunities.
What is LinkedIn, and why should you use it?
LinkedIn is one of the largest social media networks in the world and unlike most others, it is specifically designed for professionals to help them connect with colleagues, network with others in their sector, highlight their skills, mark themselves as open to job opportunities, discover new roles and allow recruiters and potential employers to reach out to them with offers. It’s a fantastic tool to help service leavers get back into the world of work and find job opportunities that are a great match for their existing skillset.
Setting up your profile
We’ve created a comprehensive guide on how to set-up your LinkedIn profile, including how you can best highlight your military experience.
You can find out more in this article.
Growing your network and discovering opportunities
Once you have your profile in a position you’re happy with, it’s a great idea to navigate to the top of it and click the ‘Open to’ button, and list yourself as ‘Open to finding a new job’. This will signal to employers and recruiters that you’re actively searching for new opportunities, allowing them to reach out to you with any available roles they may have.
From the search bar at the top, you can perform a comprehensive search on a topic of your choosing. Try typing in the name of an industry, like civil engineering for example, and you’ll see a wealth of different results returned to you. You can use the filter options to narrow down what you see – people will allow you to see individuals associated with civil engineering (though you may want to specify “civil engineering recruitment” in your search to ensure the results display individuals who may have roles to advertise in the field, rather than actual civil engineers). It’s a good idea to send connection requests to individuals you think are responsible for hiring within their company – or alternatively, try connecting with recruitment consultants operating in the industry who may also be able to suggest jobs to put you forward for.
Filtering on posts will help you discover associated topics that people are talking about, whereas companies will let you find businesses who specialise in the field – allowing you to follow them to stay up to date with their latest news.
Try to actively engage with other users and companies on the platform by liking posts that resonate with you or commenting to leave your opinion on the topics they’re talking about. Not only will they be able to see your activity, but other users on the platform may also choose to follow up and send you a connection request to add you to their network.
Perhaps most importantly, filtering on jobs will allow you to browse a list of roles currently being recruited for across the industry. Here, you can also utilise additional filters to narrow down your search based on location, salary, company, experience required and much more, allowing you to see a comprehensive list of roles available in your area which could be a good fit for you. From the job listings, you can then either send an InMail message to the hiring team, or apply directly through LinkedIn using the information on your profile.
Proud to support the Armed Forces community
Here are NRL we’re passionate about helping people from military backgrounds to find rewarding careers. Supporting clients across the UK and globally across a vast number of technical and engineering sectors, we recognise the valuable transferable skills you have developed during your time in service, and the benefits these can bring to organisations to help them deliver their engineering projects and grow their businesses.
We’re signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant, and regularly post our client vacancies through the Career Transition Partnership. As well as advertising opportunities to join the NRL Group on the Forces Friendly Jobs website, as we’re keen to reach people from all walks of life.
If you’re looking for help to find a new career as you prepare to leave the Armed Forces, then our team are happy to share careers advice and job support.