Recruiters spend a lot of their time on LinkedIn, but that’s not the case for everyone. Although LinkedIn has 610 million users worldwide, only 3 million of them share weekly content (that’s only 5% ….ouch). It’s not uncommon for users to go months without logging in.

According to LinkedIn, the average user only spends 17 minutes per month on the site – given that recruiters can spend all day on LinkedIn that “average” is quickly diminished for the average professional account.

Did you know:

the average time per user across all social networks is 2 hours and 22 minutes….per day!

LinkedIn was never intended to be a job board, it’s a social network, and unfortunately the worst one, according to The Guardian. “It’s safe to say that LinkedIn users are “cautious” with the time they spend on the platform.” So if you want new job opportunities presented to you, the average user needs to not be average!

Visibility is not availability. Yes there are a lot of people registered on the platform, but many of them are not looking for jobs, or even at the website – no matter what the marketing team at LinkedIn promotes.

So LinkedIn seems to not be a very good social network, but it can help you find a job – time to become a candidate. There are a lot of dark accounts, time to light up, stand out from the majority of users that spend their 17 minutes a month online.

For candidates it’s a great passive tool.  State what sectors, roles you want to be a part of. Make yourself visible on the network, update job titles, About section and comments. If you’re going to be available in April 2030 and not before, why not write that? Get active when reading messages, and Inmails; typically they go to your “social” section if using gmail – not your inbox!  
Lastly, when was the last time you refreshed your Dashboard? – it’s a fairly new feature, and has a number of settings which you should adjust given your job needs, including career interests, and salary insights.

If you are going to use LinkedIn actively, some small tweaks will really help you stand out for new job opportunities. You may now return to your Instagram feed.

(Source: WordStream, Digital Information World, Social Sprout, Zephoria)