5 Easy-to-implement Contractor LinkedIn profile tips to get more work

Be THAT contractor you secretly envy. These 5 contractor LinkedIn profile tips are based on what we do ourselves at Cast UK to become in the top 1-5% of profiles on LinkedIn (as rated by LinkedIn themselves). Read on for the tips you need to start generating the opportunities you know you deserve - or explore the sections with these links:

1. Build your LinkedIn Social Selling Index score

Your LinkedIN Social Selling Index (SSI) score: “measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights and building relationships.” You can discover your social selling index score here. To build an effective LinkedIn SSI, it’s not enough to simply connect with everyone and everyone in an attempt to reach 500+ people. They have to be targeted connections (those who will help you when you’re next on the bench). It takes our recruitment consultants around two to four hours each week to build 50 relevant new connections and engage with existing ones. Here’s how to quickly build yours:

1. Connect with past clients, hiring managers and colleagues.
2. Accept connect requests from recruitment consultants with a relevant network of target companies.
3. Join relevant industry groups and engage with comments or articles posted. Sometimes with a quick like, but try to add to the conversation with comments.
4. Sharing relevant industry news, using a mix of articles you’ve found yourself and those shared by your connections on LinkedIn.
5. Use Boolean searches to connect with those with the right titles and sectors.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes this process much easier and quicker. It may cost around £50 per month but, without it, you could find that you spend much longer on your contractor marketing.

2. Your LinkedIn headline should sell your services

This is relevant for anyone looking for opportunities, but even more so for contractors. Your LinkedIn profile header should be more than your last role / aspirational next role and sector. Yes, it needs to include relevant keywords, but it needs to sell your services.

Which of the following do you think would make a recruiter or client stop and check out your profile?

CCMP-certified Change Manager | Currently seeking new opportunities

OR

Experienced CCMP-certified Change Manager delivering multi-million projects within FMCG.

3. Sell in your summary section: achievements and links

80% of interim and contract profiles I come across fail to even have a summary section. Their LinkedIn profile instead skips straight to their ‘work experience’ section. The summary section is your chance to sell in your key achievements, skills and suitability, much like you would in the Profile Summary and Key Skills/Expertise sections of your CV. Make sure you also link to any other active social media accounts you may have, along with any articles or blogs you may have contributed to. (See this as a ‘sticky’ for your thought leadership pieces, so they don’t drown in the sea of activity you hopefully have.)

4. Seek 4 recommendations after every contract

Ideally, you should obtain four recommendations after every contract from each contract. One from your manager, one from someone involved in the business who engaged you, one from a peer and one from a subordinate. This is the “Holy Grail” and may not always be possible. However, you should at least focus on your manager and the people who hired or engaged you.

5. Establish yourself as a visible expert (with just 30 mins a week)

Thought leadership may bring to mind the unattainable task of being a go-to person that journalists want to quote and publications want to feature. However, you can easily become a visible expert on your way to obtaining thought leadership status - all with just 30 minutes a week and your smartphone. Video is becoming a much more powerful marketing tool. It lets people see the real you behind the LinkedIn profile and often gains a lot more traction than articles alone.   We recommend you keep videos to around 2 mins for How-Tos and 60 seconds for opinion pieces. Here’s some example content:

• A 5-point plan for successfully delivering big data change in the ‘xyz’ sector
• The 7 essential steps to delivering Supply Chain transparency
• Effective strategies for dealing with Brexit uncertainty
• How Brexit is really affecting supply chains in [x/y/z] industry

By providing useful information to your connections, you build trust and authority, whilst also highlighting your expertise. So when a client or recruiter is looking for top talent, who do you think will be at the front of their mind?  

Building your LinkedIn profile should increase the number of contractor opportunities you’re approached for. If you want to increase your chances of winning those contracts - or go after more lucrative ones - then sign up to our webinar, Contractor interview secrets to help you stay off the bench.