As part of your Dubai job search it's essential to know exactly who is discovering and looking at your LinkedIn profile.
If someone has found you on LinkedIn and taken the time to explore your LinkedIn profile, it’s highly likely that they are interested in your skills and experience.
These are the people that you need to reach out to because they could be the ones to connect you with your next Dubai job opportunity.
As a job seeker in Dubai, or even as an entrepreneur, it's very helpful to understand who your LinkedIn profile is attracting.
Think about it, if your LinkedIn profile is not attracting the attention of the right people in Dubai, you need to do something about it, and if you don't know exactly who's discovering your LinkedIn profile, you won't know if your LinkedIn profile is doing the job that you created it to do.
Almost all Dubai recruiters use LinkedIn to source candidates, hiring managers and HR teams in Dubai do the same.
In fact, a majority of professionals in Dubai are on LinkedIn and this means a well optimised LinkedIn profile is one of the keys to a successful Dubai job search.
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I'm going to tell you how to locate and use the 'who's viewed your profile' feature on LinkedIn, I’ll also teach you how to interpret these insights, and which sections of your LinkedIn profile you’ll need to work on so that you get found by more Dubai recruitment agents and HR teams.
Accessing the Who's Viewed My Profile section of LinkedIn could not be easier.
To access it from your desktop, simply navigate to the left hand side of the LinkedIn home page and click on the 'Who's Viewed Your Profile' link that appears directly below your LinkedIn profile picture.
To access the Who Viewed My Profile page on the LinkedIn mobile app, firstly tap your profile picture, then tap 'view profile'.
Now scroll down to the analytics section and locate the number of profile views that you've had. Click on this number to access the analytics. If you haven't had any profile views in the last 90 days, this option will not be available to you.
The Who’s Viewed Your Profile feature on LinkedIn reveals everyone that has visited your LinkedIn profile in the past 90 days, this feature will also provide additional trends regarding your LinkedIn profile views and further insights about the viewers, something we'll talk more about below.
The information that LinkedIn reveals about the people that have visited your LinkedIn page depends on the profile viewer's privacy settings, and there are three variations that you should be aware of:
1. If the LinkedIn member has their privacy settings open you'll be able to see the viewer's name, headline, location (for example Dubai), and industry, this is of course very helpful information, if you are looking for a job in Dubai you ideally want recruiters in Dubai to be finding you on LinkedIn.
In my experience, a majority of LinkedIn members have their profile open, and therefore you'll likely be able to see this information for most of your LinkedIn profile visitors.
2. If the LinkedIn member has their profile set to semi-private, you'll see certain characteristics such as their job title, company, industry and place of education.
The actual information shown varies so that LinkedIn can protect the users privacy, for example it might say VP of marketing in Healthcare industry, or student at NYU, or someone who works at Heinz.
3. If someone has their LinkedIn profile set to private mode you'll only see 'LinkedIn Member'.
As a side note, this information is helpful if you want to restrict the amount of information someone can see when you visit their profile page, this is helpful to bear in mind if you are conducting interview preparation using LinkedIn.
If you are a marketing professional looking for a senior marketing opportunity in Dubai, and you see that the VP of Marketing from Microsoft Dubai has visited your LinkedIn profile, why would you not reach out with a brief introduction message?
Just because they may not have messaged you directly, does not mean that they're not interested.
A simple message to introduce yourself could open the door to an interview, which could eventually lead to a Dubai job offer!
If your LinkedIn profile has been set up and optimised correctly for the Dubai job market, you should also find that your LinkedIn profile is getting a steady amount of views from people in Dubai.
By developing a posting, engagement and content creation strategy, you should find that your LinkedIn profile views grow considerably over time. If the number of views from Dubai recruiters and Dubai professionals is not increasing, something needs to change.
If your LinkedIn profile is not attracting the of people in Dubai, don't worry, there are some key areas of your LinkedIn profile that can be optimised so that you get the kind of views that you need.
It's possible to adapt your LinkedIn profile so that you attract more of the right attention, by right attention I mean the attention of people from Dubai such as Dubai recruitment agents and other Dubai professionals.
There are 7 sections on your LinkedIn profile that you should optimise if you want more visitors from Dubai.
A professional and engaging LinkedIn profile picture makes a huge difference to how likely people are to click onto your profile.
LinkedIn themselves claim that your LinkedIn profile is 14X more likely to be viewed if you have a profile picture as opposed to leaving it blank.
Before Dubai recruiters or hiring managers meet with you, or even contact you, your LinkedIn profile picture will give them an idea of what you are like as a professional.
You can learn more about picking the perfect LinkedIn profile picture by watching the video below.
A well designed and eye-catching LinkedIn banner image is a great way of instantly communicating who you are, what you do, and why someone in Dubai should connect with you on LinkedIn.
A LinkedIn banner can be created using Canva with hardly any effort, you can learn how to create a great LinkedIn banner by reading this article.
A lot of the time recruiters in Dubai will search for candidates that are already in Dubai, this is simply because it’s easier and cheaper to recruit talent that’s already on the ground.
This means it’s a good idea to have your location set to Dubai, so that your LinkedIn profile shows up in any searches where the location filter is set to Dubai.
As a bonus tip, try to get yourself a Dubai telephone number and make sure that this number is on your LinkedIn profile, you can even consider including your Dubai telephone number alongside your email address on your LinkedIn banner image.
You can get yourself a Dubai sim card by visiting an Etisalat store or DU store in one of the many malls in Dubai, just remember to take ID with you!
Your professional headline can help you two-fold;
Firstly, if it includes the right keywords, it'll help you to show up in the right LinkedIn searches and this is essential if you want to be contacted by Dubai recruiters about job opportunities in Dubai.
Secondly, if your headline is well written it will help to instantly grab the attention of whomever is viewing your LinkedIn profile, conveying some key information to them at a glance.
Recruiters in Dubai like to be able to find relevant information quickly!
The about section on LinkedIn allows you to type a relatively in-depth and compelling narrative about yourself.
Again, including the right key words will help you to show up in the right LinkedIn searches.
Once someone such as a Dubai recruiter clicks onto your LinkedIn profile, they will be treated to an interesting narrative about your career journey, what makes you unique, and why they should reach out to you for a job in Dubai.
This is obvious, but many people don't make the most of their LinkedIn experience section.
Don't just simply list out your job roles with some generic duties and responsibilities, instead, use this section of your LinkedIn profile to include some of your key successes and achievements, the things that you are most proud of, and the things that make you a great fit for the roles that you want to land or industries that you want to transition into.
Think about how you can help a Dubai recruiter or hiring manager make sense of your career journey and make sure that you draw their attention to the most relevant skills for the job that you wish to land.
The Skills section of a LinkedIn profile is often misunderstood and neglected. Listing the correct skills is an essential part of key-wording your LinkedIn profile.
For example, listing skills such as marketing will help you to show up in more marketing related LinkedIn searches that a Dubai recruiter or hiring manager might be conducting. You should also pin the most important and relevant skills at the top of the list.
Work hard and invest time into optimising your LinkedIn profile for Dubai
As you continue to optimise your LinkedIn profile and continue to monitor the results using the 'who's viewed your profile' feature, you should see a quick uplift in the amount of visits that you get to your LinkedIn profile from Dubai recruiters and hiring managers.
Don't give up on it too early, take at least a month to keep tweaking and refining your LinkedIn profile, whilst using the who's viewed your profile tool to monitor the effects, and inform your LinkedIn optimisation efforts.
Don't forget to sign up for your 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Learning so that you can access this feature.
Let's look at the difference between a basic LinkedIn account and a Premium LinkedIn account which comes as part of a LinkedIn Learning free trial.
A basic free LinkedIn account, which is what most people use, will provide you with the following who’s viewed your profile features:
Provided that you have set your LinkedIn profile viewing options to show your name and headline when viewing profiles, you will see the five most recent visitors that have viewed your LinkedIn profile in the last 90 days.
You'll also be given a list of suggestions for increasing your profile views.
However, this list of viewer insights will only tell you where the visitor works, where they found your profile and their job title.
This is not very helpful information if you're looking to pro-actively reach out to potential hiring managers.
On other hand, a LinkedIn Premium account will give you a lot more information:
You'll be able to see everyone that has visited your LinkedIn profile over the last 90 days, provided that you have had at least one visitor!
You will also be shown the viewer trends and insights, and you'll see additional weekly viewer insights.
A LinkedIn premium account will also help you to monitor the general trends of your visits by showing you a percentage of increase/decrease of viewers in the last week.
If you are serious about harnessing the power of your LinkedIn profile to find a new job, grow your career, or find new clients, you should seriously consider making the most of a 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Learning / Premium
LinkedIn premium provides you with a whole list of features and benefits that will enable you to truly unlock the power of LinkedIn, and who doesn't like a free trial?
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