You’re hearing nothing back when you apply to a job on LinkedIn, not even crickets, and on the odd chance you’re getting a callback, you’re getting ghosted.

Combine that with stagnant wage growth, ridiculous starting salaries, insanely complicated interview processes with multiple people, and ludicrous “entry-level” job requirements, and a job market that feels hopeless. The challenges of job hunting on LinkedIn can be overwhelming, making it difficult to stand out and secure opportunities.

Many people have opted out of the job search out of sheer frustration. But how is it possible that some people are always fully employed or over-employed and are running side hustles that make their full-time jobs simply exist to pay the core bills and provide benefits?

Here are the 3 steps we’re going to cover, and a Bonus at the end:

1. How to build a perfect resumé

2. How to automate job applications

3. How to get job offers with no work

4. BONUS: How to build a News Feed packed with jobs

In this article, I’m going to explain my process for owning an agency that requires only a few hours per day to operate, a six-figure full-time job, and passive income through both affiliate and investment income. I’ll also cover leveraging your LinkedIn profiles for your job search, including building a perfect resumé, automating job applications, and getting job offers without work. I’m not a financial advisor; this is simply my experience of what I do to help give you a different example of what’s possible. Contact a financial planner if you want specific financial advice.

I review about 5-10 resumés and portfolios per week at both my full-time job and my agency. Some come through job posts, some through referrals, and some through cold contacts who fired their resumé into the void with their fingers crossed.

So, what is the most common way these resumés pass me (and any other recruiter) and turn into full-time employment?

1. Job posts

2. Cold emails

3. Referrals

I constantly read on social media that getting a referral is the best way to get a job. Although referrals do help, developing a relationship where referrals will work will take a massive amount of time. Using keywords from a job search in your resumé can help it get past recruiters and turn into full-time employment. Once you accept a job, the other relationships you could have developed into referrals could be wasted unless you put them into a few categories.

I like organizing these relationships into a few categories:

1. Full-time Employment

2. Secondary Full-time Employment - Also known as over-employment, which is great for remote workers

3. Freelance Customers

4. Hiring someone else to do the job as an Agency

I’m here to help, so text me anytime at 315-791-7511.

Step 1: How to create a resumé that will get you hired?

Knock the gatekeepers outta the way and bust down the door to your new job.

The first step is to ensure that your resumé is packed with the keywords and relevant job titles from the job description to get past the ATS. The ATS in corporations can often unfairly send a great candidate to the trash bin. Here’s a personal story for proof: I applied to Rogers Canada with my PDF portfolio, it had loads of great work and a visual timeline of my employment, and the ATS broke it apart so badly that the HR department looked into it because the information the ATS disseminated triggered the IT department to review whether it was working properly.

I broke their internet.

The only reason I got an interview and an offer was that HR called IT, who checked the file and saw that I was a good candidate, who pushed it up to the executive board. It was completely random, and leaving it to chance was a bad idea, but I thought HR was personally reviewing each resumé; they’re not.

So, let’s discuss how to use AI to tune up your resumé and ensure the ATS says, “Oooooooh, this is NICE!” 

Here’s how the ATS works, in broad strokes: HR posts a job with a description of the department you’ll be going to. This description is added to the job description, and the ATS analyzes the keywords.

Resumés without the matching keywords in the job description often get trashed. Resumés that do have the keywords go on to HR review. Getting past the ATS gatekeeper is key for job seekers. Here’s how.

Copy the job posting’s description take your current resumé and copy all of the content out of it, paste it into ChatGPT, and use these prompts:

1. Copy about 5 job descriptions for the job you want and paste it into ChatGPT

2. Prompt it to remove all keywords from this *Description and make a list

3. Paste in your resumé then

4. Prompt ChatGPT to analyze and rewrite my Resumé. I will be applying to *Job's Title and would like you to add the keywords from the list you just made

You will then receive a re-written resumé packed with the keywords from the description. If you want to cover even more keywords, analyze and list keywords from 5-10 job descriptions from similar job postings. Include these in your resumé, and you’ve got a winner.

Top Do’s and Don’ts when laying out your resumé:

Do: Keep it simple

Don’t: Add graphics 

Do: Add in your website link and a clear contact section

Don’t: Leave out the type of work you want, from in-office, hybrid, or remote

Do: Include salary expectations

Don’t: Use columns when you’re designing your resumé

Step 2: How to automate job applications

Ya, we’re done manually applying to jobs, that’s soooo 2023.

I apply to hundreds of jobs on LinkedIn every day. How? I’m glad you asked. Since the mass layoffs and “corrections” in tech, there has been a huge increase in competitors for each job.

There is an easy way to beat them, though, called volume. Most job hunters look for a job on LinkedIn, read it, click apply, and fill out the required information, often twice, when the corporations torture you with re-inputting your information into their system (because they want you to do all of the work). It’s impossible, with all of this, you’re likely to only able to apply to 10-20 jobs each day before you lose your mind and curse the process. By subscribing to job alerts, you can stay updated on new job opportunities and gain an advantage in recruitment.

Most days, I apply to roughly 2,750 jobs, receive 3 calls immediately, about 15 interviews scheduled, 3 job offers, and 1 accepted. In. One. Day.

So how do you do it? 

Once you optimize your resumé for better visibility in search results, I use a couple of tools to achieve this:

I mention a couple of pieces of software, I pay for and use these pieces of software, this is not an ad.

One of the tools is Lazy Apply. This AI-powered tool can send up to 750 job applications per day (it actually only takes about 2 hours). I use one of my secondary computers to run Lazy Apply every day, so I’m at the top of my mind for every daily business hiring.

Once Lazy Apply returns interviews, I analyze a few key details:

1. What industry are the interviews coming from?

2. What is the job title of the person interviewing me?

3. What is the average revenue of the business?

4. What country are these interviews coming from? This information is helpful for people hiring outside of their home country.

Now comes the second tool, Apollo. Within Apollo, I set up an email Sequence with the title “Re: Interview for *Insert Job Title,” where I write the following email, short and sweet:

Hi Name, I’m Name,

I saw your Job Title role and would love to schedule an interview (add a link to your calendar). Just as a reminder, I’ve attached my resumé and portfolio. You can also have a look at my website.

Don’t make it any more complicated than this. You’re aiming to make the life of the person hiring you easier. I'd love to see your version if you can make it even more condensed.

You may ask, “Why are you acting like they’ve already started the interview?” The answer is simple: it’s difficult on BOTH sides. I’ve been on both sides, and I can talk to numerous hiring managers who say that finding great candidates is next to impossible. When candidates put themselves out there and take a chance, it makes our lives easier. I would rather have one interview with a great candidate who is proactive about being seen and knows how to make themselves successful than “give a chance” to 10 marginal candidates who probably won’t go anywhere.

People want to work with successful people. If you’re proactive and reach out instead of sitting back, I know that you’re going to have the same attitude toward your work. The way managers see it is, “The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.” That said, if you’re sitting around waiting for someone else to contact you, you will act like this with your work. No one wants to work with those people.

Go out and take your opportunity! You'll win when you combine a proactive attitude and a huge volume of contacts. Using this process, I can have up to five new opportunities each week. Don’t rely on your current job to provide you with job security and advancement; achieve advancement by always having options.

How do you know when to cut a job loose? Easy, if you have gotten a raise in the last year that equals inflation, you’re going nowhere, and you should leave (remember to always have those other offers lined up). If you go no raise at all, keep looking and when you get that next offer that’s higher than what you have now, tell you boss, and if they don’t exceed the new offer by 10% get a second job and throttle back on your main job. If you’re getting a 20-50% raise each year, that’s the sweet spot, you’re building experience with the company, and that experience is valuable, besides, if they hire a replacement they’re going to pay this anyhow.

If you need a hand automating your applications, feel free to email me at scott@creatibly.com

Step 3: How do I receive job offers on my LinkedIn profiles without applying?

Build a personal brand so good that you’ll get weekly job offers.

This one is fun. This is where you get hiring managers to come to you looking for someone with the correct skills. Remember what I said about ensuring you have enough of the right keywords? We will do the same in your LinkedIn profile, optimizing every piece, including having a professional profile photo to create an approachable image and increase your hiring chances.

Let’s start from the top and work down through your LinkedIn profile.

Your LinkedIn profile image and LinkedIn profile banner

Pick a color, any color. By using bold colors as the background of your profile image and the same color (or a complementary color) for your banner, you start to build your personal brand. The reason you want to choose a bold color instead of a blurred office background is that when hiring managers (like me) are scrolling through candidates on LinkedIn, those with a bold color stand out. 

When you stand out, you’re more likely to get clicked, and more clicks mean more chances for success, so we always want to lean on the side of getting as many clicks as possible, no matter what. Amazon researched the perfect button color and made immense adjustments just to get you to click, so try a few colors and see what gets you clicked the most.

Why does everyone hate the “open to work” banner?

The “open to work” banner gets a lot of hate, as most people think it shows that you’re unemployed. But the truth is, on LinkedIn anyway, everyone is open to work. As a recruiter, it’s just another easy way to differentiate between open people, and sometimes, an open candidate comes with fewer strings attached (like having to leave their current job). 

So here’s what to do, make your “open to work” banner visible to recruiters only. Here’s how:

1. Log in to LinkedIn and go to your Profile

2. Click your Profile image

3. Click Frames

4. Choose the Open to Work frame

5. Click Apply

6. Scroll down the Edit job preferences to the bottom and select Recruiters only.

7. Click Save

8. Turn on Email Updates and Notifications, then click Update Settings

Now, Recruiters will only see your banner, and when a job search that matches your profile comes up, you’ll be notified! Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is crucial for successful job searches, as it helps you attract potential employers and recruiters.

Your Name and Headline

Keep your name simple; don’t play around with it, or LinkedIn could suspend your account. From a usability standpoint (this may be fixed now), if your name is too long and someone tries to direct message you, your name will push the Send button off the screen. Keep it to your First name and Last name only. This is perfectly fine; there is no need to be fancy.

Your headline can be fun. You can check out mine on LinkedIn, but the broad strokes and a good starting point are this: What you do, your email, and your phone number. Keep it simple and clean. Mine is basically Graphic Designer / scott@creatibly.com / 315-791-7511.

If you’re international, you can get a US-based number with Skype. I use this service, and I don’t make any money by recommending it; it just works and is inexpensive. I also travel between the United States, Canada, and Brazil on a monthly basis, so having one fixed phone number is great. I always choose a phone number in the place where my clients are, so it’s familiar.

Your About section

Your About section has 2,600 characters, so make sure to use the space. My About section is 2,461 characters for reference. The reason you want to use the space is that LinkedIn sees a complete profile, and you can fill it with keywords relating to your business. Most people have these super short About sections, and it’s not helping them.

Here’s what to write in your LinkedIn About section:

1. A brief, one-sentence intro about who you are, what you do, and who you help

2. 3 typical clients you help (For example, I help Agencies increase production, Founders build brands, and Freelancers become successful) 

3. Hourly rate and a range of pricing for your projects so potential customers can qualify themselves

4. Your contact info, website, email, phone, etc., be easy to get a hold of

5. Now you can start filling in more details about who you are and the problems you solve

6. Add a few testimonials if you have them throughout as social proof

7. Add keywords at the bottom, you don’t have to be spammy, but I’ve found I get more views with 10-20 keywords listed at the bottom of my About section

Next, add the relevant skills that relate to the job you want. I say the “job you want” because if you reference the job search you have, you’ll just replace that job instead of moving yourself up!

Your Featured Section

Add a quick link here for your consultation and make sure it’s pinned to the front. Remember, you really just want people to send you work or hire you, so make it as simple and easy to get in touch with you as possible.

Depending on the type of job you're looking for, you can add a lot to your Featured section. Adding your resumé here as a downloadable link or adding multiple portfolio pieces is a great way to show your skills. Highlighting posts that did well is also very helpful.

Remember that making yourself successful is incredibly important. If you can’t make yourself successful, why would a company hire you to make them successful? 

Your Experience Section

This section will be pretty bare if you’re straight out of school and just getting started. The key here is to show progress and attract the attention of potential employers. If you started freelancing, add your experience with each of your clients’ companies.

Having this section full helps, but you can only do that when you have been working for several years. If you’re new and can’t show much history, describe your experiences as much as possible.

Your Recommendations Section

This one is important: when you connect and build a relationship, ask for recommendations. This is an excellent way to give recruiters easy access to people who would vouch for you.

By having a complete profile, LinkedIn will see that you’re using the platform well and will reward you with a wider reach.

Bonus Step: How do you build a LinkedIn feed packed with job opportunities?

There’s nothing better than checking your news feed and seeing it packed with possibilities.

Here’s how to hack the LinkedIn algorithm to get it to start delivering fresh job posts and freelance projects daily by providing helpful advice and strategies.

I’m often so busy that I get inconsistent when posting on social media. Here’s the reason: I’ve built a LinkedIn news feed that delivers so many projects that I constantly get new opportunities every time I log in.

Algorithms, in a basic sense, give you more of what you interact with. Interaction is a vague term, so a few examples are: You react to the post with a Like, you comment on the post, or you pause to read the post, which is called dwell time.

There are plenty more pieces of the algorithm, but those are the broad strokes and the ones you can actively control, so we’ll focus on that.

If you see a pretty girl or guy and pause to look, social platforms will show you more of that. Political and news posts stir the pot, and if you’re reactive or it hits your heartstrings, you’ll react.

Your news feed looks like Facebook, filled with junk, not jobs.

This takes a little practice, but I assure you, it works. Do it for two weeks and watch the difference:

1. Don’t interact in any way with any post that doesn’t help you achieve your goal of getting a job

2. Do interact with each job a user posts by liking it, commenting with your info, and sending a connection request

Sure, you wanted to give that person posting a different opinion to yours a piece of your mind, but guess what? It will do nothing to help you get a job, and when a recruiter (like me) views your profile (yes, we check), we’ll see you stirring the pot and not being productive. Not someone we want on our team.

Yes, you can post personal opinions on your profile, but be careful. No matter how politically correct your post is, you never know who you can offend. Recruiters are people, too, for now, and you never know when your opinion could cause a rift. 

You might think posting about your big family and new kids is harmless, but your recruiter may have just lost a child or not be able to have one. 

You might think that most people agree with your view on war, but your recruiter may have family in a war zone. 

You never know, so it’s important that if we want to use LinkedIn for our job search, that jobs are our only focus.

Keep on growing!

If you want some help, I have coaching available.

How do I become “over-employed”?

Record rent and insane inflation- there’s a remedy: earn more.

It’s 2024 and it’s very difficult getting by on one salary, here’s how to get a second job.

There are a few ways to do this: combine your full-time salary job with freelancing, get 2 or 3 full-time salaries, transition your freelancing to an agency model and get a part-time job, or sell products, services and software with affiliate marketing. It’s hard to get a job in 2024, but it’s also never been easier to earn money. Sounds backward? Yup! But it works. Your job search will be a breeze from now on!

To connect with potential employers, it’s crucial to engage with the hiring team on platforms like LinkedIn, building a professional profile that speaks to their needs.

It might used to work to have a single full-time job, get married, have 2.3 kids and a nice car in the drive way of your nice house.

This isn’t financial advice; it’s my experience of what has worked for me, so let me tell you a story.

If you have a Why, you can bear any How - Jordan Peterson

Here’s my Why: this gets personal, so you can skip it as it may be triggering.

My Wife is very conservative, on our first date I asked her the typical “so what do you want to do?” Her response? I want to become a Wife and a stay-at-home Mom. 

I was blown away, I had always tried to date based on what I thought my family would want, fancy job, great education, beautiful, I was checking boxes based on what OTHER people reacted positively to. I never knew how much I wanted the same thing until my Wife said it first. We were married shortly after and started our family of now 3, my Wife is a stay-at-home Mom and loves it, most of the time, you’ll understand once you have lots of kids.

The fact is, it’s expensive to have kids and support everyone on your own. I have no choice but to be resourceful to earn income from my full-time job, agency, affiliates, and various investments. It’s hard but totally worth it. 

The reason I wanted this life is that I grew up in an empty house with no one to talk to as an only child to two working parents. Sure, they provided financially, but that was it: no fun, no emotion, just the bare minimum of food and shelter. I never knew what good parenting looked like until my Wife and I became parents. I was rarely happy around my parents. My kids are very happy. I was a lonely kid with no one to play with, my kids have each other, my Wife, and I who works at home the majority of the time. I was never played with as a kid, I ride bikes everyday and have found millions of Pokémon with my kids.

When you build income stability, you will create a life you want to live, and most importantly, you will become the parent you wish you had. I’m living proof.

What is your why? You read mine above, and understanding your why will give you all of the tools you need to handle the difficulty.

My opinion on this is that any company that is looking to hire should be looking for people who can make themselves successful. If you can’t make yourself successful, you’ll probably not help the company. It's a revelation when I see someone in demand and highly entrepreneurial. The “doers” are way harder to recruit and more expensive because they’re in a more powerful position, but they’ll go above and beyond in their role, teaching you things and being able to grow into leadership.

Here are 6 tips on what to look for with your second or third job:

1. Getting your second or third job is easier than getting the first one. If you work in Pacific time, get a second job in Eastern Time or further. You can work longer by staggering your time zones and eliminating the commute. Remember, never work at 100%; you can’t keep it up, and you’ll make yourself sick. I saw a Partner at an ad agency I worked at drop dead of a heart attack. It’s. Not. Worth. It. It was business as usual within 48 hours of his death. I’m sure his kids have never recovered.

2. Look for Hybrid or Remote roles where the company has the attitude “I don’t care how it gets done, only that the job gets done.” Great companies will act this way and understand that you have a life and that getting a job done means more than working a specific set of hours. Aim for speed and accuracy, and you’ll build the trust to get some freedom.

3. Get a second computer to stay logged in to both workplaces. The fact is corporate jobs are dead slow… You can easily handle 2 or 3 full-time corporate jobs if you're even reasonably talented.

4. Pick one challenging job and an easy second job. Get a senior job with more responsibilities and challenges and a junior job you can do with your eyes closed, and you’ll easily add $50,000+ to your salary.

5. Be honest. My bosses have always known that I do work on the side. My side “gig” is about 300-400% larger than my full-time job, but the slow corporate pace of my full-time job gives me a nice break from the speed of entrepreneurship.

6. Don’t quit. Never, ever, ever quit your full-time job. Always, always, always get fired. Here’s why: if you quit, you’re entitled to nothing; you walk out the door. If you’re fired, don’t sign anything from HR or your manager and go to an employment attorney and get their opinion on what you’re owed. Get the maximum you’re owed in severance.

Remember that in any job (whether it's your dream job or not) if you quit or are fired, you will be replaced immediately. It’s not a negative; it’s just business, and while every business will call itself a family, the loyalty will end quite quickly. Your coworkers will barely react to your absence; it’s just the nature of selling your time. Don’t take it personally, and don’t tie your identity to your job.

Also note that you don't need LinkedIn premium to make this work, although LinkedIn premium has many great tools to manage your leads while on your job hunt, it doesn't necessarily make you more attractive as a candidate to a hiring manager. Your hiring manager will look more through your qualifications, the little Gold icon doesn't do much.

When all else fails, remember my last video on this topic, use the search bar. The search bar is your friend and simply typing in "We're hiring *Job Title" will give you a headstart on your job hunt and will list all of the new jobs. It's increasingly important to engage with posts for new jobs right away as it gets you to the hiring manager's inbox first as well as helps grow your professional network as new connections may see that you're available for this type of work.

You have all the tools you need to decide how much you want to earn, go out there, and keep growing.

How to Get a Job on LinkedIn in 2024