1. When I was doing Masters, in order to not forget every little academic project I did, I documented them on LinkedIn and put the code on github and linked it.
2. People would be against doing this, but when I was searching for internships, I kept adding any recruiter I came across to my network. Especially with recruiters from well-known companies (like MS, Google, Intel etc), I add them aggressively and was sure to do (3) below.
3. When adding someone to my network, instead of the default template message, I wrote something about myself, like "Hi I am currently doing my Masters in CS at <univ> university and I am looking for internship opportunities. Please take a look at my profile and let me know if you think I might be a match for something".
4. Always kept my profile updated as I took more courses, did side projects etc. This way, my network got updates about me, and they were able to see that I was getting more knowledge and experience. The recruiters and other professionals who were not able to find a match for me before now start to think may be they should give me a shot.
5. Network, network and network. I shared interesting tech articles I found online, liked others' posts about such articles etc. This might seem obvious, but don't "like" memes and funny statuses. I grew my network to the point that I had 400+ connections. But only about 200 of them were people I actually know and the rest were recruiters/professionals in the field/startup CEOs etc. The downside of this is that I now often get recruiting messages when I'm no longer in the job market. I save those messages hoping that I would find them useful one day.
TL;DR is that keep your profile updated and rich with content, and network as much as you can. Be professional, try to take time to respond to the recruiters who reach out to you. Even if you are not interested in their company, take a minute to just say so. It may help you in the future.
I'm asking because I'm curious of how job hunting and networking goes for you without LinkedIn.
I've followed up with a few over the years and they've ultimately not been good fits for me at the time (stack, salary, or location), but I wouldn't say they were bad jobs. Also, for the others I usually just respond with a canned "I'm only looking for X, Y, Z right now, so feel free to reach out again if you find something along those lines!"
I think it's worth having a LinkedIn if you're looking or open to moving jobs, as it's a pretty common venue for recruiters to (easily) get in touch, IMO.
Whilst I do have a LinkedIn profile, I have yet to use LinkedIn as an avenue to search for a job in any meaningful sense. Perhaps this will change, but at the moment I'm far more likely to integrate Google's job search into my process than jacking up LinkedIn to max.
jobs seem to be a natural extension of google's search service, and a direct competitive response to indeed. these job search results will be useful to people but i don't see it changing the industry. discovery is an important step in getting a job but it's only one step.
(i say this as someone working on the matching problem between employers and employees.)