How to Increase Your Professional Visibility?
Use these tips to increase your chances of getting work.
The job market has probably never been as competitive as it is nowadays. In a world in constant change, it is hard to stay afloat and not getting behind. What can you do then to be visible to recruiters, companies or clients?
This article is mainly aimed at people who work with computers, such as developers, designers or photographers. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply to plumbers or electricians for example.
Here are 5 ways to get more exposure:
Have a website
“If you are not online, you don’t exist”. This is now more true than ever before. The good news is that you don’t need to learn coding or hire a freelancer, you can now do it yourself. You can have your website or online store up and running in a matter of minutes using something like Wix or Shopify. If you know how to set up a Wordpress site, you can add a plugin like Beaver Builder and build your website using a drag & drop interface, without needing to write code.
Create content
Creating content is one of the best ways to get leads. It’s a long term strategy compared to paid advertising, but I found it easier and makes me save a lot of money. In the short term though, paying for advertising works best, but you should really know what you’re doing because it can be expensive.
Creating content is like a snowball, it starts small but keeps getting bigger and bigger. The more content you create, the more exposure you will have on the Internet. People will find you this way and they’re more likely to work with you if they think you really know your stuff.
The good news is that it’s now easier than ever before to do this. You can use YouTube, Medium or any social network. But always start with a stablished platform, where there’s an audience already. Building your own blog might make sense in the medium/long term but it’s much harder to grow an audience this way.
Add value to people beforehand
Whether you are an employee or a freelancer, you will have an easier time convincing someone that already knows you and what you do. You can do this using content, answering people’s questions in Quora or offering a free consultancy to someone that lands in your website.
Have a portfolio
You may think this only applies to freelancers, but I’ve been asked about this a lot even when I was looking for a permanent job. Having a portfolio will increase drastically your chances of getting work. People and companies always like to see some examples of your work, this could be some example code, websites, designs, articles you’ve written etc.
If you don’t have a portfolio yet, you might find yourself in the chicken and egg situation: you can’t get work because you don’t have a portfolio yet, but you can’t build a portfolio because you haven’t worked with anyone yet. A solution for this would be to offer someone to work for free in a project or at a big discount, so you’ll have your first example of work. From there, you can get the ball rolling.
Get references
Having good references is very important, because people actually read them before hiring someone in the same way you read the reviews in Amazon before buying something.
If you are applying for a job, you might be asked to provide references from previous employers and if you are self employed, people will look for reviews in sites like Checkatrade, Trustatrader or Trustpilot.
When starting out, is a bit tricky as you don’t have any experience yet, but after that, kindly ask people to review you if they’re happy with you. Always make sure they’re happy first, the last thing you want is having negative reviews.
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