We all know LinkedIn has become a crucial tool for the professional jobsearch. We know less well what recruiters actually look for when conducting profile searches. Here are a five basic ways to optimise your LinkedIn profile so that recruiters will look, and call.
1. Complete profile
A recruiter will not waste time contacting you if they think you are a dormant account holder on LinkedIn and there is no surer indicator of this than an incomplete profile. Whether its the absence of a profile photo, incomplete work history or few connections, an incomplete profile sends one very clear message – you don’t use LinkedIn often enough for it to be a viable method of communication with you. The fact that this may or may not be true is irrelevant – you represent a risk of being a waste of time and that will be enough for the recruiter to skip to the next profile.
2. Job Title
Due to the limited boolean search capacity of LinkedIn, searching by Job Title is a far more common search technique than is the case with Online Job Boards or proprietary recruitment databases. What this means for job seekers is straightforward – not only do you need to have Job Titles in your work summary, but they should be aligned as closely as you can to industry standard nomenclature. Avoid using esoteric language or grandiose titles that don’t reflect the actualite – don’t let corporate narcissism or personal vanity damage your chances of appearing in search results relevant to you.
3. Location
As a formerly US centric networking tool, UK recruiters have been quick to learn to use the Location filter to generate only UK based profiles. This remains an essential part of the profile to get right. Without a country category or a postcode, you will end up being lost from searches as recruiters almost always recruit against geography and use the Location or promixity filter to do so. Furthermore, with geolocation likely to become the next big thing in social media (and social recruiting), it is essential that this is not overlooked as you complete your profile.
4. Company Name
The norms of recruitment have changed. The era of excessive privacy, cloak and dagger levels of subterfuge, and of headhunters behaving like MI5 agents is over. Not revealing the name of your employer on your LinkedIn profile might have been something you would do 10 years ago, but today it is anachronistic and counter productive from what you are hoping to achieve by being on LinkedIn. Company Name comes second only to Job Title as a search field for recruiters – you’re guaranteeing that you will be missing from searches if you do not add your company name where it should be.
5. Settings
One of the most powerful features of LinkedIn, is also one of the most overlooked – the Settings page. Boring administration it may be, but it’s the page that allows you to control how visible and reachable you are to wider LinkedIn community. Often never revisited post set up, this is the page where you set whether recruiters can see and contact you, decide who gets to see your status updates or whether to display your contact information to people who can view your profile. In short, this is the page which determines how easy it is for someone (a recruiter, a hiring manager?) to reach you. Making that difficult obviously isn’t the way to go if you want to be successful on the job hunt.
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