In today’s world, LinkedIn is the most powerful social networking platform for professional visibility. I am going to discuss some key parameters & changes in your LinkedIn profile which are going to increase chances of job search success.
The mechanics of the job market has undergone drastic change. Earlier organisations used to contract headhunters & recruitment firms to fill in vacant positions. However modern day job search is driven by networking & referrals & organisations prefer to scout for & contact prospective job seekers directly for the interview process without even a position being advertised. Companies advertise vacant positions only in situations when they are not able to fill positions through networking & referrals.
Success of your job search depends upon whether recruiters/hiring managers hiring for vacant positions can actually find your profile & are impressed enough with your credentials to contact you. Let us dig in detail changes you should do in your LinkedIn profile that can turn odds in your favor.
When you go to your LinkedIn profile & scroll down, you will find section “ The Dashboard” only visible to you. Notice the search appearances on your Dashboard section. It is very common for candidates to appear in 50 searches in a week & sometimes even less than that. If you have correctly crafted the LinkedIn profile, your profile should appear in a few hundred search results in a week. Putting some efforts in restructuring your LinkedIn profile can result in you being found by at least 10 more by exact recruiters/hiring managers who are looking to fill in positions you aspire to be securing next. Putting the same amount of time, people put in for resumes & interview preparation, in perfecting the LinkedIn profile can have proportionately larger impact. The following suggestions would go a long way in improving your job search odds in your favor:
- Improving your LinkedIn SEO: Starting point should be to step into recruiter’s shoes who is looking to fill in a vacant position. What you should keep in mind every time a recruiter uses a search term/keyword that does not appear on your profile, you will drop out of search results you should be part of. You should strive to brainstorm /visualise skills, experiences, expertise & competencies recruiters must be looking & searching for candidates having your experience & expertise. For instance, if someone is looking for a digital marketing manager- they would look for keywords/search terms such as online marketing, paid advertising, facebook marketing etc. Besides they would be looking for a variety of platforms such as twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, google my business which they want their digital marketing manager to have experience of. If you have these skills & experience & have not listed them in your LinkedIn profile, this will result in a drop in the number of searches. So how should you find your keywords?
- Look at profiles of similar professionals to figure out if you have missed out mentioning some of them in your profile.
- Hunt for job listing & find out the keywords which various recruiters have used while specifying the requirements of the role they are looking to recruit for.
Finally use the identified keywords in your profile to describe your work history & other sections of LinkedIn profile.
- Specify your career interests: There is a small & little known section “ Career interests”. You can find it in your dashboard just below number boxes. If you visit this page, you will find a whole area for you to fill in specifics about the type of job you are exploring, your preferred job locations, the size of company you would be interested in & a lot of other information. Besides, you can flick the button to “ On” to let recruiters know that you are looking for opportunities. You should aim to include all variants of job title & include as many locations as you can that you wish to explore for your target role. All these information will help LinkedIn algorithm determine which search results you should be appearing in.
- List your skills: Another important section for job search visibility is the skills section. You should comprehensively list all the skills you have in the skills section of your LinkedIn profile. This is relevant since in some cases recruiters restrict search results by filtering some specific skills so that they research on those people with these identified skills. You are allowed to add upto 50 skills. Hence use the keyword list you came up earlier to populate your skills section
- Consider your summary or about section as elevator pitch for your next switch: So by now you would have understood what it takes to have recruiters & hiring managers look & browse through profiles. Let us put ourselves in recruiters shoes once again. In a lot of situations, recruiters have time constraints & they are not in a position to look at hundreds of LinkedIn profiles. Therefore, the first impression they form about a particular LinkedIn profile will decide whether they will go through the profile in detail or hop on to the next one. This is the reason your summary section should act a relevant pitch & should answer the following question of the recruiters:
- Have you been managing a team of people or a significant budget.
- Your achievements & any awards or appreciation you won.
- What makes you unique.
- How having you on board can help them solve their current set of business problem or encash a compelling business opportunity
It is essential that we present all the most compelling facts within the first few lines of our Profile, so that the initial impression we create is as strong as possible.
5. Have a saleable professional headline: Professional headline has a potential to either encourage people to want to click through your profile or have them give your profile a pass without giving it a second look. By Default, LinkedIn encourages you to select your current job title as your headline. However a lot of professionals are not aware that this does not give much clarity on what you really do, what sector/industry/function you work in & what specialist skills you bring. For more details on how you can you make your professional headline saleable, please refer my earlier blog
Are you looking for some career advice & guidance about how to write an executive resume or have a rebranded LinkedIn profile. As the founder & executive resume coach at Sushant Kumar Ventures, offering executive resume writing & LinkedIn profile writing services for modern day job seekers, I would be happy to chat to help you meet your career goals; Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/fbPEMJ3
