One of the most common mistakes academics make when they’re looking to transition to industry, is treating the transition like any other job search.
Making the move from academia to industry is not just any other job search – it’s a career change.
Relying solely on job boards to find advertised positions is a sure way to lengthen your jobs search, and will set yourself up for difficulties as a transitioning academic.
Whilst you can find job opportunities on job boards, and they’re a great research resource for understanding more about the types of non-academic jobs out there, they’re also candidate magnets, and as such attract a lot of competition (much of it with prior industry experience).
If job boards are your only strategy of finding work outside of academia, being up against established industry professionals is a bad place to be as a transitioning academic.
But did you know there are plenty of other ways to find work outside of academia? I term this a multichannel approach to your job search, which will shorten the length of your search.
Aside from using job boards, a multichannel job search also includes; networking, working with recruiters, speculative approaches to companies of interest, monitoring company websites, increasing your visibility through professional development, and leveraging social media.
The tool of choice in terms of doing all this to successfully transition to industry, is LinkedIn.
What LinkedIn Offers Transitioning Academics
LinkedIn is a multifaceted tool in a multichannel job search and can be leveraged in four main ways:
- Networking: With 740 million users, LinkedIn has literally changed the way professionals’ network. I’ve emphasised the benefits of a structured networking approach for transitioning academics before, which include (but are not limited to); understanding industry jobs so you sound like a credible candidate, increasing your visibility on the non-academic job market, uncovering the hidden job market, and entering your industry career better connected. When you are inside academia, LinkedIn is simply the most important tool for connecting with industry professionals to facilitate your career transition.
- Job hunting: LinkedIn is big business. In 2016 the platform was acquired by the Microsoft Corporation for $27 billion, and by 2018 it contributed $5.3 billion to Microsoft’s consolidated financials. Companies advertise job vacancies on LinkedIn (it’s one of the ways the platform makes money – through paid job posts), so it’s a place to find advertised positions. But through effective networking and having visibility on the platform, it’s also a fantastic tool to help you tap into the hidden job market. The aim of tapping into the hidden job market is not only about accessing the 80% of positions that are estimated to go unadvertised, but to also get in early during the hiring process – ideally before the job is posted, or engaging as soon as the listing goes up. Getting in early increases the chances that your application is looked at.
- A research tool: One often-overlooked feature of LinkedIn is that it’s an amazing research tool for job seekers. Once you’ve identified companies of interest (and I recommend you should have at least five to be working your way at, at any one time during your job hunt), you should be following them (and their employees), identifying and following thought leaders in that industry, and following other professional bodies relevant to that sector (trade associations and societies etc.). Reading what these thought leaders post, helps you build your credibility as a job candidate, as you begin to; identify industry-specific trends, understand the ‘language’ of work outside of academia, and uncover your value to the non-academic job market.
- Increasing your visibility: As a transitioning academic with a professional network largely embedded in academia, you will be largely invisible on the non-academic job market, and LinkedIn is the best online space to help correct that. Networking, connecting, posting content, engaging in discussions, and liking and sharing posts, are all ways you can raise the visibility of your profile, and get noticed by people outside of academia. We look at how you can capitalise on this next week…
Raising your Profile on the Non-academic Job Market Counts
Increasing your visibility on LinkedIn as a transitioning academic, is absolutely necessary if you want to avoid the trap of lengthening your job search by relying on applying for advertised positions alone.
Raising your visibility also plays into LinkedIn’s algorithms. This is because LinkedIn rewards users who engage with the platform.
Recruiters looking for talent on LinkedIn use keywords to find candidates. So you need to ensure your profile contains these for the jobs you’re interested.
LinkedIn can be used to identify these keywords:
- Go to your profile, hit ‘more,’ and ‘build resume,’ then choose ‘create from profile.’
- Enter a job title that you’re interested in.
- Then create the resume (I don’t recommend using this in your job search by the way – it’ll be far too long and poorly structured), but on the right-hand side it provides a keyword check relative to your job of interest.
- LinkedIn will tell you the keywords you already have in your profile and some that are missing.
- If you’re a Premium member, LinkedIn will provide even more keywords to view (if you’re not a paid-up member, you can sign up for Premium for free for a short while to access these).
- Make a note of the keywords listed, and load them in your profile.
Yet keywords alone aren’t enough to get you to the top of recruiters’ searches. This is because recruiters use filters based on two key things that will affect your visibility:
- Your likeliness to respond: This is based on you having ticked that you’re open to new opportunities (with or without visibility of this on your public profile), how responsive you are to people who message you, and how much interaction you’ve had with recruiters.
- Your engagement with talent brand: This assesses how engaged you are with the recruiters’ company. So for your companies of interest, it pays to engage with their content and employees.
If you score highly in both these things, you’ll be high up the recruiters’ search list. So, LinkedIn rewards engaged and active members by increasing their visibility in searches.
Next time we’ll be looking at the practicalities of how to use LinkedIn during your multichannel job search, to network effectively, research companies/sectors, increase your visibility, and ultimately find job opportunities…
Summary
- LinkedIn is a multifunctional tool for a multichannel job search
- The platform enables you to network with industry professionals in a structured way that’s productive for your post-academic job search
- LinkedIn can be leveraged for networking, job searching, industry-specific research, and increasing your visibility
- The higher your LinkedIn engagement, the higher your visibility on the platform