Recruiters are actively searching for candidates on LinkedIn to fill vacant positions that might not be announced publicly. According to an annual social recruiting survey by Jobvite, 94% of recruiters use the platform to find candidates.
Therefore, if you play your cards right, the next job might be looking for you rather than the other way around. However, the most daunting statistic regarding the job market is this: Recruiters will decide whether or not they want to interview you in just seven seconds. That’s how long the average GIF is.
But the good news is you can use the following three simple tips for your LinkedIn profile to overcome these odds and ensure your profile gets found by recruiters.
Before we start, if you’re feeling frustrated by the lack of response from recruiters and need a boost in your job search, use my salary-doubling resume cheat sheet that can give your application the extra edge it needs:
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1. Do the basics right
The worst mistake you can make as a LinkedIn user is to neglect your profile when not looking for a job actively.
When you update it all in one go, you may not be able to remember some of your earlier wins. Additionally, if you’re trying to keep your job search a secret from your current boss, an all-in-one-go revamp might give them some cause for concern. Most importantly, having a strong profile helps you show up higher in the list of candidates a recruiter may be considering.
Here are some of the fields on LinkedIn you should keep updated to ensure you rank well.
Upload a professional picture
A professional picture immediately boosts your LinkedIn profile ranking.
Moreover, having a professional headshot can result in 14 times more profile visits and a 36-fold increase in messages received.
This has to do with human psychology. Being able to put a face to all the information gives people instant interest.
Choose a simple, clear, and formal picture. You should be the only one in it. Uploading a recent and accurate picture can also help people locate you on LinkedIn after meeting at a networking event.
Have a catchy headline
The headline is the most prominent section of your LinkedIn profile. Apart from being on the forefront of your profile page, it is the first thing people notice about you in their newsfeed, the “people you may know” section, and the LinkedIn job applications page.
A very basic mistake job seekers can make is to appear too eager. Anything like “seeking new opportunities” is “selfish” because it focuses on what you are looking for rather than what you have to offer.
More importantly, it wastes important “real estate,” which could be used to sell yourself in an instant.
Focusing your headline on only your education or job title is another common mistake as it has little or no impact in helping you stand out against other candidates with similar backgrounds. An effective headline should make it immediately clear what your industry-specific skills and strengths are.
To put this into perspective, look at the following examples:
Do you see how the green ones:
- appeal to a larger audience?
- have more search-able keywords?
- clearly spell out what this professional can offer a company?
Your headline is your initial sales pitch. Its purpose is to entice the viewer to click and visit your LinkedIn Profile. For a good headline, I recommend including four or five strong keywords to demonstrate your candidate’s strengths, areas of interest, or value additions.
Fill up the summary or about section
The summary (or the about section) of the profile is your first impression on your visitor. This section is not only an opportunity to include 2000 characters worth of keywords but also to provide evidence of the value you can add to their company.
Here’s how I recommend outlining your summary:
Job Title or Key Technical Strengths
Start off with your current job position. If the title you currently hold is not in line with what you’d like to do, you can rebrand yourself.
For example, I am a resume writer, but if I was interested in a marketing position, I’d start my profile “As a Marketing subject-matter expert…”
Next, follow this branding statement up by underlining the challenges you solved throughout your career or the gaps that you helped close.
Biggest Accomplishments
This is your biggest selling point. The idea is to communicate what you’re good at but also provide substantial and (if possible) quantifiable evidence to back up your statements.
If this is something you’re struggling to articulate, scroll down to where I talk about your experience section. While your experience accomplishments will be role-specific, your summary accomplishments can be from any experience or can be overarching achievements, too.
For example, if you have a history of surpassing your quota, say so. If you have a history of improving workforce morale, that’s a great accomplishment to include in the summary, too.
Key Soft Skills
The hard or technical skills might suggest you can do a good job but it’s the soft skills that convince that you will do so. These are particularly important to showcase your personality and emotional intelligence.
If you’re interested in a leadership position, showcasing these is critical to let readers know what kind of cultural value you bring.
Usually, for this portion of the LinkedIn profile, I like to focus on my clients’ people skills. This engages the visitor quickly because it tells them “you are probably going to enjoy working with me.” You can do the same. Who do you collaborate with? How do you elevate their work?
Call to Action
If you’re actively looking for a job, adding your email address to your summary can help recruiters get in touch with you quickly. If your job search is private, skip this.
Keyword Dump
This section is vital to LinkedIn algorithms. If you’re stuck with this part, this article breaks down which keywords are best for you.
Optional: Brief Bio
A one or two liner about your personal interests can help three-dimensionalize your profile.
List your experiences
An appropriately filled experience section helps you massively in searches when the recruiter is looking for experienced individuals.
After LinkedIn has guided recruiters to your experience section, strong writing helps make them stay. The ideal way to convince them that you’re the right person for the job is by highlighting your accomplishments.
If you cannot think of quantified accomplishments, remember: not every role adds value through numbers. Think about challenges or problems you resolved or improvements you made. This article will show you exactly how you can brainstorm accomplishments for your experience section.
Not everyone sees eye to eye when it comes to adding company descriptions on resumes or on LinkedIn. Personally, I think it depends on a number of things and can be a lot more impactful in some situations compared to others.
If you’re not sure if company descriptions deserve to occupy the already limited space you have, this article will help you make that decision.
Talk about your educational background
Adding your schools in the educational background section makes you a lot more likely to be found by former employees, colleagues, and classmates. This will also allow them to endorse you for the skills that you mentioned.
Additionally, your profile will rank higher when alumni from your school search for fellow classmates.
Moreover, providing all the required information will help you achieve an all-star rating on LinkedIn.
This section becomes extremely vital if you’re a fresh graduate and at the beginning of your professional career. A properly filled section can be used to highlight various events, societies, or clubs you might have been an active participant of during your student life.
If possible, tie in your extracurricular activities with what you achieved there following these guidelines.
Use the right keywords in the skills section
The skills section is the ideal tool to get yourself recognized in searches. Your use of keywords decides the “type” of searches you’ll be found in.
Avoid overcrowding this section with interpersonal or “soft” skills as they don’t typically get searched for; therefore, they won’t help you rank any higher than your fellow applicants. Instead, use this space to talk about your hard skills.
Think about it this way – what would you search for if you wanted to hire someone with your strengths?
These are some useful tips to help ensure that your LinkedIn profile (or resume) gets picked up by parsing algorithms.
2. Open to opportunities
As stated above, having phrases like “open to new opportunities” and “seeking new opportunities” in your headline wastes valuable LinkedIn “real estate.” Instead, you can signal to the recruiters that you are “open to opportunities” using your privacy settings.
You can access this feature here.
3. Update your career interests
The career interests section is a particularly useful tool to ensure that you don’t miss out on any opportunities. You can access it under the “Jobs” section.
You can list down the kind of job opportunites you’ re interested in from this section. Moreover, you can choose from Job Titles, Job Locations, and Job Types you’re open to. Make this list as thorough as possible if you’re not being picky, or restrict your options if you’d like to be.
If you follow all of these tips for your LinkedIn profile, you will capture recruiters’ attention.
Suggested readings
Not sure if your LinkedIn profile is following these rules?
Fill out the form below to get a detailed critique of your LinkedIn profile. I’ll let you know what it lacks right now and how it can be improved.
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