How To Update Your Profile and Apply For A Job, After You’ve Learned Top Skills

This past week, we shared the Top Skills of 2016 (aka the skills employers need most), and made 5,000+ LinkedIn Learning courses free for the Week of Learning. So you should be well on your way to learning the skills you need to get a better job. Once you learn the skills, what’s next?

Good question!

You’ll want to make sure you update your profile by adding the skills you’ve learned so you can get endorsed, appear higher in recruiter searches on LinkedIn, and apply for the jobs you’re now qualified for. Here are a few of my favorite posts on building a great LinkedIn profile:

• Your profile is 14x more likely to be viewed if it includes a profile photo. Check out this guide to taking the perfect profile photo.

• If you’re always on the go, you can update your profile in minutes using the LinkedIn app.

• 86% of recruitment decision makers agree it’s important that candidates clearly communicate achievements. Proudly tell your work story on your LinkedIn profile with these tips.

Now that you’ve got a stellar profile, you need to apply for the job -- whether it’s a more senior job at the company you currently work at, or a job at another employer. Nobody knows better how to apply for a job and stand out from the crowd of applicants than LinkedIn’s Head of Talent Acquisition Brendan Browne. Here’s what he recommends:

First and foremost, apply for the job. There are more than 6 million open jobs posted on LinkedIn. So be sure to check out LinkedIn Jobs; there’s bound to be a job that interests you.

But that’s where most applicants stop! If you’re jockeying for a new position at your current employer, reach out to the hiring manager and ask to meet 1:1 so they can put a face to the name and get to know you personally. If you’re ready for a new challenge and trying to land a new gig at another company, find someone in your network who works at the company who can introduce you to the hiring manager. When someone does that for a job I’m hiring for, it immediately moves them to the top of the list of applicants because it demonstrates they’re willing to go the extra mile and tap into their network, and it illustrates they’re good at what they do. If they weren’t, their connection wouldn’t have introduced them to me.

Make sure you take advantage of this advice since they’re a sure fire way to increase your likelihood of landing your dream job. And be sure to check out the jobs we have on LinkedIn related to the Top Skills of 2016:

1. Cloud and Distributed Computing Skills (1,000+ jobs on LinkedIn)

2. Statistical Analysis skills (nearly 10,000 jobs on LinkedIn) and Data Mining (nearly 12,000 jobs on LinkedIn)

3. Web Architecture and Development Framework (35,000+ jobs on LinkedIn)

4. Middleware and Software Integration (10,000+ jobs on LinkedIn)

5. User Interface Design (3,000+ jobs on LinkedIn)

6. Network and Information Security (7,000+ jobs on LinkedIn)

7. Mobile Development (nearly 6,000 jobs on LinkedIn)

8. Data Presentation (nearly 1,000 jobs on LinkedIn)

9. SEO/SEM Marketing (43,000+ jobs on LinkedIn)

10. Storage Systems and Management (32,000 jobs on LinkedIn)