In Honor of National Nurses Week: How LinkedIn Is Empowering Healthcare Students, Professionals, and Organizations
At LinkedIn, our mission is to connect the world’s professionals to help them become more productive and successful. But our mission goes beyond serving as a professional network. While we are a business, we strive to be a business that leads with compassion.
Like many organizations, we are continually looking for ways to apply our talent and knowledge to help solve current problems. Lately, we have dedicated our efforts to make an impact in the healthcare industry — and I wanted to share some of what we are doing to celebrate National Nurses Week May 6-12.
LinkedIn Trends Illuminate Healthcare Industry Priorities — and Opportunities
We currently have 6.65M healthcare professionals on our platform globally, including 1.5+ million registered nurses in the U.S. alone. We are seeing a marked increase in the engagement level of this audience on Linkedin.
At the same time, we’ve seen a significant increase in healthcare workers taking Linkedin courses. For example, there’s been a 138% increase in healthcare workers watching courses on resilience. This is a smart move since hiring demands have shifted to skill sets and experience that will help in the fight against COVID-19. This is evident in the upsurge of healthcare-related job postings on LinkedIn since January — in line with a 35% overall increase in job postings on LinkedIn during that time.
Amplifying Job Hunting and Recruiting Efforts
In response to these trends, LinkedIn has taken a number of measures to help healthcare organizations, graduates and professionals. For one, we are offering free job postings for essential businesses globally through the end of June. We are also building on two well-established LinkedIn initiatives — Recruiting for Good and Unlock LinkedIn — to offer support and guidance to the new graduates, registered nurses, and all our members in the healthcare industry on LinkedIn.
We’ve expanded our Recruiting for Good program to help match available talent with nonprofits looking for volunteers and to hire into open positions. Haley Roberto, Key Accounts Manager with LinkedIn Talent Solutions, is on the program’s task force. “We’ve trained 150 internal volunteer recruiters who are each assigned as a dedicated full-time recruiter for a specific healthcare organization,” she said. “Large enterprises are volunteering their recruiters and we are training them to take on assignments. It's amazing to work for a company that gives me the ability as a salesperson to participate and contribute in this way.”
Simultaneously, I launched Unlock LinkedIn as a continuation of Get Hired, a video series I helped co-create to share the perspective of our student and young professional member base. Through Unlock LinkedIn, we share ideas and surface ways to connect students with opportunities.
However, not all healthcare students and recent graduates are assured of employment. Many of them are facing the same questions as those in other fields: How does the current situation impact me? Where and how can I find work? That is why on May 12 I will be hosting a special edition of Unlock LinkedIn to teach nurses and those in the healthcare profession how to effectively use LInkedIn in their job searches.
Harnessing the Power of LinkedIn
While the times have changed, many of the basics remain the same when it comes to employment. On LinkedIn, those with a strong profile and professional brand stand out. That’s why it’s more important than ever for healthcare students and professionals to represent themselves fully in their LinkedIn profiles.
If you are just graduating, highlight your clinicals, certifications, recommendations, and volunteering as professional experience. Some states are allowing new graduates to practice before taking their boards. If you’ve done this, make sure it’s on your profile. Recruiters look for these details on LinkedIn, and including them in your profile significantly increases the likelihood of appearing in their searches.
Take advantage of the reason LinkedIn exists and reach out to your network, including dormant connections. When networking, reach out with intention: Why are you reaching out? What’s your plan for outreach? How will you follow up after reaching out? Be generous and write recommendations for your peers, whether they are just graduating or already working on the frontlines.
These are just a few of the powerful ways you can harness LinkedIn to your advantage. Please join our next Unlock LinkedIn live episode, May 12 from 1-1:45 pm ET to learn more best practices and help us celebrate #nursesweek and #healthcareheroes fighting on the front lines every day. Guest speakers from LinkedIn and the healthcare industry will share and help seasoned healthcare professionals, students and recent grads understand how to further unlock LinkedIn.
