How to Use LinkedIn to Find Your Dream Career

I was browsing through LinkedIn the other day, and I got the best idea ever. I thought about how everyone’s always talking about this idea of how to find your dream job, dream career, and dream mentor. I got giddy just thinking about it all. I thought, man you can really build a dream career journey, set goals, connect with others, and find the perfect role all on one platform. I love to see it!

The LinkedIn method I’m about to reveal is a little unconventional, but it’s so EASY and stress-free, and the best part is that you can quickly build a dream career using it. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it myself while going through my career search.

I love this method though because it’s never too late to use it. It helps those who have no clue about what they want to do in their careers, just as much as those who are seasoned professionals who might just be feeling a bit mehhh about their career journeys.

One thing I will say is that in order to use this method, you must have a completed LinkedIn profile page. If you don’t have that little “All-Star” badge on your profile, you should check out this article first. Once you do everything that’s laid out in that article, come back to this one!

If you feel like your LinkedIn is in a good spot, continue reading!

Step 1: Find Your Dream Career & Company

Forget about everything that you’ve heard or read before about finding your “dream job.” Forget about all the roles that people have said you’d be great in. Let go of all judgments that you might have about an industry, role, or job as well.

So now that you’ve gotten rid of all prior biases, I’m going to show you a few ways to find your dream job and dream company. In order to do this, we’re going to be analyzing the “Search appearances” feature. With this feature, LinkedIn shows you how often your profile has appeared in search results in the last week.

From your LinkedIn profile page, navigate to the area and click on your “search appearances”. This screen is a gold mine. From here you’ll see a few headers, including:

• Keywords you were found for (aka, this could possibly be your future dream job)
• Top job titles of your searchers (aka, this could also be possible dream jobs that you could pursue)
• Top companies your searchers work at (aka, this could be your dream company)
  

So from the example above you could see that the LinkedIn engine has been working. Here’s how I would breakdown my results:

Possible Dream Jobs:

• Creative Strategist
• Student (back to school?)
• Founder/Business Owner
• Marketing Specialist
• Salesperson
• Recruiter

Possible Dream Companies:

• Morning Brew
• WarnerMedia
• Fiverr
• Duke University
• USA Hockey

Here’s my advice: Use the information above to your advantage. This page refreshes every single week. Each week you have another chance to find your dream job by doing a deep dive into companies, keywords, and job titles that pop up on this page. Some weeks you might come back with results that don’t make sense, but write everything down and do research on it anyway. I’d advise you to do this consistently for a month. After that, you’ll start to get a sense of which direction your career could possibly move in.

Now I do want to put out a disclaimer here. This page will also change depending on who and what you interact with on LinkedIn. For example, the company that I work for shows up under my top companies, because I interact with their content and my coworkers on LinkedIn. When I was on the job search, I also interacted with a good bit of recruiters, so of course, the job title of “recruiter” would show up every now and then. The same could be true for your results.

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Step 2: Secure The Perfect Mentor

Go back to your LinkedIn page and locate “Who viewed your profile”. If you don’t have premium LinkedIn you will only be able to see the last 3-5 people that have looked at your profile. If you’re not already connected with them, go ahead and send an invitation to connect. You get bonus points if you also set up a get-to-know-you chat.

Try to be intentional with each networking conversation you have with your new connections, you never know, one of these people could be a future mentor!

Along with finding a mentor, you should also consider finding a coach, sponsor, and accountability buddy. They are all very similar to a traditional mentor, but they play very different roles in your career journey.

Here’s my advice: It’s up to you to connect with “Linkedin Lurkers” (I totally made this up. lol) and turn them into one of the people I mentioned above. Check the “Who viewed your profile” page daily or weekly and build a contact list. Start slowly by first, connecting with the people you add to the list with short friendly conversations, and begin to work your way down this list. DO NOT go into these conversations expecting to get something in return (i.e. a job). Go into each conversation with an open mind, and be genuine. You never know where the conversation might lead you or what it might spark for the other person!

Bonus Tips:

• From the “Who viewed your profile” page, you can also see companies, job titles, and more at the very top of the page. This area is actually a bit more updated than the “Search Appearances” page because it refreshes every time someone new looks at your profile.
• Another tip is to do more research on the people who have viewed your profile. They also have job titles and work for companies that might be a good fit for you.
• Dig a little deeper by either exploring that top bar on this page (see below) or the profiles of each person that you’ve connected with to find your possible dream job and/or dream company.

See an example of how to use the top bar on the “Who viewed your profile” page below.

Step 3: Expand Your Network

Go back to your LinkedIn page and locate the sections that say, “People also viewed” and “People you may know”. Click the button that says, “Show More” under each section. You could technically rinse and repeat all the advice I’ve given you above. Here’s how:

Dream Job, Dream Company, AND Dream Mentor all in one: Combined, these two sections give you a list of 20 people. Without even clicking on their names you’re able to see their job titles and the company that they work for. Right off the bat, you have a list of potential new jobs, companies, and mentors.

After clicking on each person’s profile you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Learn more about their day-to-day job (do their tasks/responsibilities sound like something you’d like to do?)
• You’ll get to take a peek at their career path thus far (more dream job options!)
• You can even connect with them and set up a networking chat (you could find out if they are a possible mentor, sponsor, coach, or accountability buddy).
  

See this in action below!

See how I hacked that? This method might be a little easier, so you could either do this and only this, or you could combine this hack with the ones I’ve listed previously!

What’s Next?

After you learn how to “Find Your Dream Career” continue to DIY your career with more Breakroom Buddha LinkedIn articles

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