With 87% of active and passive LinkedIn users open to new job opportunities it’s no surprise that this site is used by 90% of recruiters to find qualified people. It makes me wonder what the other 10% of recruiters use?
However, having a page isn’t enough as there’s still a human element (me!) doing the searching. You need to optimize your profile for LinkedIn algorithms and the search term an actual person would be inputting to find you.
Here are my top tips (with more found here) on things that you can do to help your profile get found by recruiters and hiring managers:
Optimize your headline and job title
In a search, it’s the keywords in your profile headline and recent job title that are used by the LinkedIn algorithms first. Your headline is the first piece of information that comes up in search results alongside your name and profile photo.
After headline, the next top piece of information shown in search results is your current and past job titles. If what I’m searching for appears in your job title, it helps position you higher in the list.
I am very likely to do a search for “Marketing Director” (there is a difference with quotes and without) and if you have a matching keyword in your headline or job title, you will be positioned higher in the results and the actual words will be bolded. This is also why you need to make sure your job titles are actually something that people will search for.
"I have never done a search for a ninja of any kind." - Me
Here’s an interesting take on the importance of the job title: “I would argue that [the job title] is your most important field, and would strongly recommend that you use the 100 characters to its full potential,” wrote Levi Lewis, a search engine expert who researched LinkedIn’s search functions during his own job search. “Instead of project manager I might say ‘Project Manager, ecommerce customer experience for checkout, cart, and post-order.’”
Specify your location or where you want your location to be
The next filter in a search after “Job Title” is location. I will always filter by the location of where the job is. We all want to fill the role and finding someone in the city where the job is located is easier than moving someone across the country.
Have your location associated with your profile and if applicable, make sure that the location on your profile is where you’d like to work. We are almost always starting a search in the local city where the opportunity is.
Get your skills & keywords right
Using my Marketing Director search as an example, this is where I will add a filter and look for something like “marketing strategy” or “email marketing” or other software or tools that are a requirement of the role.
“These keywords make the biggest impact on LinkedIn search ranking when they appear in a profile headline or job title, but can also be placed in job descriptions and the LinkedIn profile summary.”
They serve to narrow a very long initial list into a much shorter and more manageable one. Make sure that you include common industry related keywords in your profile and job summary because they are what people will be searching and filtered for.
Give us your email address Ok, this isn’t necessarily to get found, but once you are found you can make it easy for hiring managers and recruiters to contact you: give us your email address. Just put it right in your About section.
You can also make sure that your email visibility is set to ON to allow people to download or view your email. Without visibility specified, only your first-degree connections can see your email in your “Contact Info”.
Here’s the path to follow to make sure people can find your email: Click on your profile “Me” >> Settings & Privacy >> Privacy >> Who can see your email address and then use the drop down to apply settings to the people you want to find you.
Conversely, if you don’t want to get emailed, you can hide your email address using this process as well.
This is not foolproof, not written in stone (as we all know algorithms change), but it’s a good start to optimizing your LinkedIn page and making sure that opportunities from recruiters and hiring managers find you.
Try this LinkedIn optimization tool made by our friends at Jobscan. Go there to scan and analyze your LinkedIn profile against three or more job descriptions and see how your profile stacks up!
Good luck!
This article was written by Joanne Acri and first appeared on LinkedIn