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When it comes to preparing to leave the Armed Forces, it’s a great idea to set-up a LinkedIn profile the help you find work. If you’re not sure of the benefits, check out our article about how LinkedIn can help you find work.
Our Social Media Marketing Manager, Jamie Finn, shares some hints and tips for getting your LinkedIn profile ready to apply for roles.
How to get started
First and foremost, you’ll want to navigate to the LinkedIn website or download the LinkedIn app on an iOS or Android device. Once opened, you can then register your details to set up a new account. Once you’re logged in, the first place you’ll want to head to is your profile and set it up with discoverability in mind to help it stand out and attract the attention of potential employers.
To begin with, you can click on the area with a blank profile picture to upload one of your own. A good profile picture is more important than you may think, as it helps you establish a presence in the eyes of individuals who see your profile. Use a head and shoulders image, with as clear a background as possible – remember that LinkedIn is designed for professionals, and your profile picture should reflect this. Avoid using photos that show you in too casual of a setting.
By clicking the pencil near the top of your profile, you can edit the details that are displayed on it. Aim to fill in each section as much as possible, but pay particular attention to:
Headline – this should be a reflection of the fields or sectors you are interested in finding opportunities for, as your headline is an indexable part of your profile; meaning that when someone runs a search within LinkedIn or on a search engine like Google, those tools will check your headline for matching keywords and include your profile higher on the list of results it displays. An example headline could look like “Ex-Armed Forces, currently searching for opportunities to support civil engineering and infrastructure projects”.
Contact details – by default, you email address will appear on your profile and users can also contact you directly through the platform’s own messaging service, InMail. But it’s a good idea to also include your phone number to give potential employers another means of contacting you.
Location – make this is as accurate as possible, ensuring that you provide a postcode. HR, Talent Acquisition and Recruitment teams who use LinkedIn’s Recruiter tool to find candidates may conduct radial searches, so including this information will help you appear in their results as a candidate looking for work in the area.
Below your main profile card, you can complete your About section. In this area, you’re given plenty of space to properly introduce yourself, give interested users some insight into your background and experience, and demonstrate the skills you possess which you think will grab their attention. This area is again indexable by search engines, so include as much detail as possible. If you’re not sure what type of information to include, try thinking back on your service history:
What types of roles did you typically carry out on a day to day basis within the forces?
Did you often work alone, within a team or a mix of both?
Did you pick up any soft skills which could be applied to a new role, such as leadership, problem solving or time management?
Which of your skills do you think are transferable allowing you to take advantage of them if you were to move into a job in a new sector you’ve never had experience in?
At the end, you’ll also be asked to select 5 key skills to display in your About section. Have a think about the industries you would like to become a part of and which of the skills you already have would be useful in the type of position you want to secure work in.
Skills – Further down on your profile you’ll see an area where you can include additional information about the skills you possess. As opposed to the About section which only lets you select your top 5, here you can add as many skills as you’d like so try to include as many as possible. If they relate to any certifications you hold, you can also attribute these to your skills – and once you start connecting with colleagues, they’ll have the ability to endorse your skills to back up your claims, so feel free to reach out to anyone you think may be open to this.
Other areas – you can also include a wealth of additional information on your profile, and again it’s a good idea to fill these in as much as possible to give users who visit your profile the best possible understanding of who you are both as a person and as a professional. This includes providing information on your previous experience (list the forces unit you were a part of and the duration you served and do the same for any previous jobs you may have held), your education history, and licences and certifications you may hold and when you achieved them, and any languages you speak. This will improve the visibility of your profile and help more people find you on the platform.
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 are committed to assisting individuals with military backgrounds in secure fulfilling careers when it’s take to leave the Armed Forces. We work with our support to clients across the UK and worldwide to champion the unrivalled skills and expertise ex-military candidates share - spanning numerous technical and engineering sectors.
We’re signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant, and regularly post our client vacancies through the Career Transition Partnership, highlighting the job opportunities we have available.
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.