Various Variables

Finland is a country of small networks. It can be hard to find and get into these networks. LinkedIn is one door into them. Depending on your industry, LinkedIn can play a significant role in your visibility to potential recruiters and for content that is searchable online. This visibility is important when you are looking for work. In this blog post, let’s break down what fully utilising your LinkedIn profile and account functions means. To begin with, we need to see how useful LinkedIn is in Finland. LinkedIn is both an established and growing social media platform in Finland. So, it is important to stand out on it. The research that tracks subscribers by country shows us that LinkedIn has been growing by around 100,000 members each year since 2019 (1). This means that about 32.4% of the entire Finnish population has a LinkedIn account. Which, in turn, means that around 50% of Finns between 15 and 65 have a LinkedIn account. This is important for jobseekers to know. Below you will see that there is a reason for this. The Finnish job market relies heavily on networks and networking and LinkedIn is a professional networking platform. LinkedIn makes it easier to establish a professional identity and a personal brand. Table 1. LinkedIn Users in Finland Your professional identity is “who you are in your work. It is the label you name yourself for whatever it is you do for a living” (2). Once you pinpoint your professional identity, you can begin or continue to build your personal brand on LinkedIn’s professional platform.   LinkedIn has many great uses for jobseekers. Their job board and search function are very useful and allow for many different filters to help you narrow your search for more relevant results. The ability to explore and follow interesting companies to discover their needs, what is important to them, their corporate culture, and more. You can also follow individuals and groups who you admire, who you wish to learn from, and engage with.  Additionally, there are two essential parts for building your brand, 1) your profile and 2) the content that you create, share and interact with. Each of these requires different tools and time. Let’s look at both of these parts. Breaking Down the LinkedIn Profile LinkedIn is about presenting yourself and interacting with topics that are important to you professionally. When you start doing this, it is important that your profile is looking well put together and comprehensive. Headshot/Photo You need to make sure that the photo you use in your profile is professional and clear. This is something that you can have friend take against a white background in your house when there is a good amount of light. Make sure to wear something that you would be comfortable working in. Banner photo This photo is the one that goes across the top of your profile page. It is a great opportunity to use it to represent something that is important to you. It is quite a prominent place and size on your profile so think about it. You can utilise whatever kind of photo here or some kind of graphic you like. Maybe browse other people’s profiles to see what you like. You could also use a tool like Canva to create something for you. Creating a LinkedIn banner (or any visual) with Canva is easy because it offers templates that have correct dimensions for this purpose. About section The About section is for adding information that is not directly available in your CV. It allows you to tell a story about yourself. This section that allows you to create a few paragraphs of text about yourself. Use this section to tell something about yourself that your other sections do not. This is a great place to talk about what drives your professional identity. It is important to note that there is a 2000-character limit but when people browse, only the first three lines are visible until someone clicks on your profile. So, make sure that those three lines are great ones! It will add great personality to your profile. Experience There is a reason that this section is called “Experience” and not “Employment”. This is because we can gain experience in many different ways. There are different ways to write about your previous experience, but it is important to include the dates and titles and a short description of what you did in each of them. Don’t forget that just because you volunteered for something, it doesn’t mean that you don’t put it in the experience section. Increasingly, LinkedIn is recognising the diverse kinds of experiences we have in our lives that help us to gain skills. One of those more recently recognised and added was the option to list “Parent” as a job title. Parenting is a whole set of skills that people develop in a certain part of their lives. These skills can be very useful in the workplace. Education As expected, this section allows you to list your academic qualifications. There will be full academic qualifications and different trainings that you have completed. These are good to put in this section - with a reminder that there is another section that can be for training and professional development if you wish to put it there instead. Other Sections In these other sections you can separately list many different items that are related to your professional life: Licenses and certifications Projects Volunteering Skills Publications Courses Honours and Awards Languages Getting and Writing Recommendations There is also the possibility for people to write a recommendation for you. This can be used for former colleagues, bosses, people you supervised - LinkedIn will ask the author to define the relationship when it is being written. This is something that can be done in a reciprocal way, you can find someone that you worked well with and ask them to write one for you, but you will also write one for them. When writing a recommendation, you can briefly write about these few things: the length and context of your working relationship mention the skills and expertise they have reflect on their role in the team add a personal note if you want Keep the recommendations to a reasonable-sized paragraph (100-150 words) and these will really help to round out your profile. Developing a Content Strategy It is important for any hiring employer to be able to see what you have been doing and how you both might be of interest to each other. This goes for anyone reading through your LinkedIn profile and your content as a whole. Your LinkedIn presence goes beyond the profile sections that you fill in. It also includes the content that you create, share, and re-post, like and comment on. It can take some time to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is really looking updated and complete. But it is important to take the time to do this. In a way, not having a LinkedIn profile is like a company not having a website; it is difficult to believe that it is real. If you do not invest time in your LinkedIn presence when you are looking for a job, then it can be difficult for employers to imagine you in their organisation. When the profile itself is in good shape, you need to determine how you want to show up and present yourself through your own day-to-day contact and interactions on LinkedIn. As mentioned previously, one of the best tools that you can learn to use to develop your visual content is Canva. There is a free version, and it is a great tool that is easy to learn and can help you create more pleasing visuals than any other tool if you are not a graphic designer. If you feel that you need some more insights into how you can create a LinkedIn strategy for yourself to begin developing a personal brand, Herizon.io runs a “LinkedIn Bootcamp for free. Their organisation also has other services and training for international jobseekers. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is well-versed in being a global citizen. She has lived in Finland for more than 15 years and is also an entrepreneur. References 1. https://napoleoncat.com/stats/linkedin-users-in-finland/2023/12/ 2. https://www.morethanmytitle.com/blog/2022/7/20/personal-branding-versus-professional-identity