With over than 20 million companies and 14 million open jobs, LinkedIn is the number 1 place to find your new job. Moreover, over 90% recruiters regularly use LinkedIn to find candidates. Find out how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and stand out in front of the recruiters with the following LinkedIn profile tips.
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In the last few years, everything related to job applications has changed. The traditional and inefficient approach of visiting Career Fairs, meeting recruiters and dropping off resumes has seen a positive disruption. Today – it is much easier to find opportunities in your area of interest.
Evolution of the job market:
From industrial to service economy
During the industrial / manufacturing based economy, lifetime employment was what employees stuck to. An individual would join a company – and work there until retirement.
As our economy evolved from an industrial economy to a service based economy (today’s economy) – more job opportunities became available. Moreover, service economy infused with a high rate of technological disruption, changed the entire job market.
Companies now have to adapt and hire people based on short-term workload, the number of temporary contractors increased. Moreover, with the abundance of job opportunity rising from economic growth, employee turnover also increased.
Reality check, what is the average turnaround period in your workplace? Has it gone up in the recent years?
The business of one – your personal brand
Today each one of us are representing our own brand – a company of one. This is where your personal branding and the way you present yourself in social media makes a big difference. What you say and how you say it online determines your online identity.
In marketing – perception is reality. Whatever you are projecting yourself as in social media – is the reality. Use it to your advantage.
If you are good at certain jobs and have the required specific skillset – you have to present yourself accordingly. You have to make your identity stick out.
Nowadays, recruiters have less than a month to fill positions which requires skills and experience. They have pressure time-wise and if you optimize your profile, you are making their life easier.
Put yourself in the recruiter’s position
On average recruiters get over 200 applications per job position. Going through 200 applications individually is not possible. Moreover they have a long list of other tasks to fulfill their monthly KPI. Recruitment becomes a game of elimination – trying to weed out the candidates who do not match the job profile.
Recruiters KPI = provide a list of candidates who will be a good fit for a position
Now, out of around 200 applicants – more than half do not meet the job requirements.
Then out of the remaining 100 in the applicant tracking system – the recruiters use keyword tracking to filter the skills. Then they check personality of the applicant, or might also check aptitude test scores. It goes on and on.
Recruiters have to go through the haystack to find a needle while constantly working under pressure from the hiring manager. Moreover, they are short in time and have a lot of tasks on their table. Smart applicants try to make recruiters life easy by providing and highlighting the information recruiters are looking for. That is why you should optimize your LinkedIn profile.
Optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract recruiters
As mentioned above – over 90% of recruiters are on LinkedIn. They are proactively searching for candidates. Whether in a paid plan or not – the recruiters put in keywords, location, skills and get a list of candidates. How do you get yourself on their list?
Optimizing your profile and using the right keyword increases your chances statistically to get in the recruiter’s list. It is just like an in-bound marketing strategy. A strategy where businesses write blog posts with optimized titles for search engines to bring in potential customers. Your profile can be optimized to be ranked for certain keywords, skills and location of work.
The Top Fold – it is the single most important part of your profile. Recruiters spend around 6-10 seconds first looking at your top fold and then decide if they want to find out more about you.
Optimize your LinkedIn Profile’s Top Fold
1. Profile photo: Use good lighting and have a neutral backdrop. Your photo needs to make you look approachable.
2. Headline: This part of the profile is the most important real estate of your profile. Think in terms of Search Engine Optimization – whatever you put here is what you get found for. Put keywords for the type of opportunity you are seeking for. Put the skills you want to be working on in the headline to attract recruiters.
3. Summary: Short summary – What value do you bring? Numbers, Facts and figures and entice the recruiter to keep reading and also keep the keywords in mind.
The Top Fold hooks the recruiter to find out more about you.
Add relevant work experience and history
The experience section is another super important section of your profile. To have a professional profile, your current job and past job with your accomplishments should be clearly laid out for recruiters to see.
- Make sure the resume and LinkedIn work history is the same
- Make sure you are getting the right company logo and information
- Recruiters can find out everything about the company you worked at previously, so make their life easier by tagging an existing company profile
- Be Objective – give them the facts and stats in terms of number
- Tie everything back to the skills that was mentioned in the heading and summary.
Acquire more Endorsements
Endorsement is the social proof of a LinkedIn profile – it provides evidence of your expertise from real people. Endorsements make recruiters believe in the list of skills you have expertise for. If the recruiter is satisfied with your experience, they will use the endorsements to verify your skillset.
Try to get 10+ endorsements for the core skills that you are projecting yourself to be specialized in.
Build long term connections
The LinkedIn search algorithm displays search results based on location and connections. Meaning if you have connections which are a 2nd or 3rd connection to the recruiter – the chances of your profile showing up in the search is higher.
Moreover, recruiters are also analyzing who you surround yourself with? Which companies or profiles do you follow? It gives them an indication of your past behaviors to predict your future potential. If you follow the page of the company you applied to – it gives them an indication that you are genuinely interested in the company and position.
Other ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile
Contact information: Make sure your contact information – especially email, address and phone number is up to date. Majority of the recruiters like to get in touch through the LinkedIn messaging service. However, a few of them take the traditional approach to email and call you. If your information is correct and up to date, you do not miss out on an opportunity.
Letting recruiters know you are open for opportunity:
This part is being more transparent to the recruiters. LinkedIn allows recruiters who are on the paid membership plan to see if you are actively looking for opportunities. Sniping or scouting employees of a competitor is not always the most ethical thing to do for recruiters. However turning this option “On” means you are actively looking for a new opportunity.
LinkedIn resume template builder: LinkedIn provides an awesome way to build your resume using your profile information. LinkedIn’s resume looks professional and is consistent with your profile. Next time you are in an interview or a recruiter asks for your resume – you can just provide the LinkedIn resume to make things consistent and easy. To do this – go to your profile, right under your cover photo – click more and select “Save to PDF”. You will have your LinkedIn formatted resume ready.
Summary
- The job market has changed drastically as we move more into a service based economy. This resulted in more opportunity and also increased rate of turnover
- You have become a company of one. Personal branding in social media is a great way of in-bound marketing for your own brand.
- Recruiters are overworked and busy – help make their life easier by optimizing your LinkedIn profile
- LinkedIn candidate search works like a search engine (google)- you get found for keywords in your headline. Put the right position and skills in the headline
- Make sure your profile photo is approachable, its the first place that recruiters look at
- List down your experience, make sure you have endorsement for your skills and associate yourself with the right company and profile
- If you add people of the company you want to work for as friends, the chances of you getting found increases
Job search is not easy, and usually it takes a few weeks to months. If you follow the above guide and optimize your LinkedIn profile – you will not lose anything, but you have everything to gain. Most importantly – you might have recruiters running after you with job offers.
Let us know if this guide helped you, even better if it got you a job because of it. At Pixelio, we are all about marketing and we want to help people market themselves better – to be more RELEVANT.
