Discover career opportunities in the Netherlands using LinkedIn

Setting up your account

Once you have registered your account on LinkedIn, you can start building your online business card. Marle explains that with setting up your account you should fill in all your work experience and the skills you used for this job. Rosanne adds that in the Netherlands recruiters often look for a specific skill set, instead of only work experience.

For the profile picture a choose calm background and slightly more business-like clothes. As she continues to explain, she highlights ‘You don’t necessarily have to wear a tight blouse, but don’t use a holiday photo with your sunglasses on your head or with your swimwear on.’ Rosanne agrees and adds: “At Saxion, we offer the opportunity twice a year to have a professional photo taken for free that you can use for LinkedIn.”

Rosanne continues: "Many students don’t add a banner, but that's a shame because you can add a picture related to your work field so that someone can see at a glance what you do. If you want to stand out on LinkedIn, add a headline keyword that matches your profile and skills. If a recruiter or another LinkedIn member searches for a particular search term and you have this search term in your headline, you will show up higher in the search results.’

Creating a post

When creating a post, it is important to remember that LinkedIn is a business platform. But you don’t have to aim as high as a high-end researcher who shares his interesting innovations. Rosanne acknowledges that students struggle with the question of what to post. Her advice is: ‘You can post something about a day you visited a company, attended a presentation, or share something you learned.’ Merle agrees and adds, ‘I often see students who only post when they need something from their network, doing this, people don’t get a good image of who you are and what you do.’

Start connecting!

You can start connecting on LinkedIn even before you arrive in the Netherlands. By doing this you can get a head start with exploring your future working field. Rosanne states, ‘You can follow companies on LinkedIn to stay updated on job market trends and opportunities in the Netherlands.’

Marle points out that during your studies, you'll come across many people, such as guest speakers and internship supervisors. Feel free to send them a connection request. Unlike other social media platforms, it is acceptable on LinkedIn to connect with someone you’ve had a conversation with only once, states Marle. Rosanne agrees and adds ‘You never know how that person may be able to help you in the future, or the other way around.’

Find job opportunities!

On LinkedIn, you can find job opportunities with ease using the vacancy page. Within this vacancy page, you can apply all sorts of filters to find a job that suits your needs. Other than just the vacancy page, Rosanne provides another quality tip, ‘use the search bar and fill in a job title that you wish to fulfil. Doing this, you can find contributions of companies or people mentioning this position.’ Not all companies post their vacancies on the vacancy page.

Another method to show others that you are looking for a job is using the open-to-work mode. With this mode, you will get a banner on your profile photo, and you are recognisable by recruiters. Rosanne expresses the need of being active on LinkedIn, ‘Increase your visibility, give likes and comments on the contributions of other people and companies. This way, you will also be seen by others, and they will see that you are open to work.’

Useful tools

There are a few tools you can use to improve your posts. Perhaps needless to say, it is important to check your spelling before posting. For this, you can use Grammarly, which is a free tool that checks your spelling and grammar. Another tool to use AuthoredUp. AuthoredUp checks the readability of your posts and gives them a score. Rosanne points out, ‘Generally, posts that have a score around 8 get more likes, comments and shares.’ In addition to this, add a bold title to your post with the ‘bold text generator’.