LinkedIn is one of the most influential platforms in the recruiting industry. It certainly changed the entire recruitment process, with more and more hiring managers using it to find potential candidates.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date and discoverable by recruiters. Regardless of whether or not you’re actively looking for a new job at the moment, recruiters are more likely to connect with you if you appear professional.
We’re going to go over the most important steps you can take to ensure that your profile page is ready to be found by potential employers, including how to make your profile visually stand out and how to show off your potential in the best possible manner.
TIPS ON HOW TO GET DISCOVERED BY RECRUITERS ON LINKEDIN
1. Choose A Professional Profile Photo
Even though you might think it doesn’t matter, your LinkedIn profile picture actually transmits a ton of information. It’s the first thing people see in search results and when they click on your profile. That’s why it’s crucial to make sure your photo is top-notch.
Research shows that having a profile photo alone increases your chances of getting noticed by recruiters by 14%. Of course, having a professional headshot taken by a photographer might be too much effort and money, but you can easily recreate a professional-looking photo at home.
Nowadays, almost all mobile phones can take good quality photos in high resolution. The ideal dimensions for a LinkedIn photo are 400×400 pixels. Also, you should make sure that you’re the only person in the photo and that your face takes up at least 60% of the frame.
Your profile picture is going to be the key to conveying your personal brand and message to potential recruiters. That’s why it’s important to decide whether you want to be serious or put on a smile. Smiling in your photo is a sure way to seem more approachable.
It’s okay if you prefer to have a more serious look in your profile picture, especially if you consider yourself to be a bit more serious in terms of your brand. It’s a good idea to put on a business casual outfit for your photo.
If you’d like to showcase your current job or any interesting details about your work in general, you can do so in your banner image. Another good tip is to avoid any distracting backgrounds. A simple, white background will work best.
2. Set Yourself As ‘Open To Job Opportunities’
Another excellent way to take advantage of your profile photo is to set yourself as open to work. This is a fairly new feature that LinkedIn has introduced to its users. When choosing to set this up, your profile photo will get a green frame with the hashtag #opentowork.
To do this, simply click on the “Career Interests” button, which is located under the “Job” tab on your profile. Select On, and fill out the requested information. You can select more than 10 desired job titles and more than 20 communities where you’d like to start working.
You will be able to set up your preferred location, as well as the types of job opportunities that you’re interested in. This will increase the chances of your profile showing up in the recruiter’s search results when they’re looking for suitable job candidates.
You’ll be able to decide who can see that you’re open to work opportunities. It can either be visible to all LinkedIn members or to recruiters only. Since LinkedIn is committed to protecting its user’s privacy, they prevent recruiters who work at your current company from seeing that you’re open to work.
3. Provide Contact Information In Your Profile
There are not many options for recruiters to get in touch with you on LinkedIn. If they’re using the free version, they need to connect with you first before being able to send you a message. If they’re paying for LinkedIn, they still have a limited amount of InMail messages every month.
This means that you’ll need to assist them in contacting you by providing your contact information and making it clearly visible on your profile. You can freely add your email or phone number, or both, in your About section.
By default, your email address is only visible to your direct connections on LinkedIn, which is why it’s important to add it to your About section.
Additionally, you can make sure that everyone on LinkedIn can see your email address in the settings. Make sure that your profile is set to public in the Privacy settings. You can change these settings at any time.
4. Connect With Recruiters
No matter what industry you’re in, LinkedIn is full of recruiters. An easy and fool-proof way of getting noticed by recruiters is by connecting with them. You can conduct a search for recruiters that specialize in sourcing talent in your industry.
Simply type in “recruiter” and your industry or niche in the search bar. You’ll get a list of recommended recruiters and once you find ones that work for interesting companies, you can connect with them. Don’t forget to include a simple, but personalized note.
It’s also great to let them know you would be interested in applying for an open job if they have one already available, or if they plan on hiring in the future.
Since recruiters often network with each other, having a good reputation can also help you get recommended by recruiters, if you happen to leave a good impression. Just because you didn’t get a job at one company, doesn’t mean that the recruiter won’t recommend you for a different job opening.
5. Stay Active and Comment on Relevant Posts
Apart from job seekers, recruiters are probably the most active people on LinkedIn. Many of them are not simply searching for people using keywords, but instead, they’re closely looking at hashtags and searching through content and posts to find potential candidates.
By commenting on relevant industry posts and updates, you’ll be putting yourself out there as an expert for recruiters to notice you. You can also do so by posting your own interesting and well-researched content and utilizing relevant industry-related hashtags.
Commenting and staying active on LinkedIn doesn’t just mean writing “Great post!” on as many posts as you can find. While that may be fine for other social media platforms, LinkedIn is all about conveying a meaningful message and voicing your opinion.
The key is to provide insightful and relevant comments that actually contribute to the conversation and the post itself. You can treat your comment like a mini post and craft it carefully by acknowledging the original content and therefore giving your readers context, and then adding your own voice to it.
A great tip is to search for LinkedIn posts from recruiters letting their connections know that there’s an open job at their company. You can do so by using “job posting”, “job alert”, or “now hiring” as keywords.
6. Keep Your Profile Updated And Neatly Organized
Recruiters and employers will usually contact candidates that have an attractive and complete profile. An updated and complete profile will also increase your chances of being found by recruiters, as compared to incomplete and inactive users.
Since your LinkedIn profile is going to be the first glimpse anyone gets into your professional life, it’s important to make sure that you’re updating it regularly. Even though it’s not a social media platform, you can still use it to strategically post.
It’s ideal to share updates once a week. Since all your connections can see your posts, it’s imperative to use them carefully. By sharing relevant, fresh content regularly, you can add value to your LinkedIn network and get noticed by recruiters.
Get A Custom URL
When you sign up for LinkedIn, your profile gets a random combination of numbers as the URL, which does not look professional. Since recruiters actually prefer to see profiles with custom URLs, it’s a great idea to update this to match your name.
Choose A Strong Headline
Also, since your headline is going to be the very first thing recruiters see, besides your profile and cover photo, you should choose a headline that’s going to describe who you are in just a few words. Avoid making your job title your headline. Instead, opt for something that’s going to give insight into your background, experience, and skill.
Include Personal Interests
Even though it might not seem so, it’s actually recommended to include some of your personal interests and other non-related skills in your profile. This will let recruiters know more about you, thus increasing your chances of being noticed and contacted.
Organize Your Profile Sections
Last, but not least, LinkedIn gives you the ability to reorder your profile sections. If you’d like to emphasize a certain section, for example, your professional experience, you can put that section first. It’s always a smart idea to put sections that best highlight your expertise at the top.
7. Follow Relevant Influencers
LinkedIn Influencers are selected individuals who have been invited by LinkedIn editors as leaders in their industries. You can tell whether someone is an influencer because their profile will have the official stamp located in the top left corner.
Following your industry influencers will give you insight into relevant news and you’ll be up to date with the latest trends. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn from their ideas and build your own reputation by following their example.
You’ll significantly increase the chances of catching recruiters’ eyes by commenting on influencer posts and updates. Apart from that, you can also share their posts, add your own thoughts, and simply have a reliable source of interesting information and articles about your industry.
8. Show Off Your Experience and Portfolio
One of the most important sections of your LinkedIn profile that recruiters are going to look through is previous work experience. Make sure to list any and all relevant job titles you’ve had in the past, in the correct order, and make sure to add a detailed description of each job.
By doing so, you’ll be able to describe your past responsibilities and the scope of your previous jobs, therefore letting recruiters know what you’ll be able to provide for their company, which is extremely important.
Another section that you can take advantage of is the Featured section. You can add posts, articles, links, or media to this section. This means that you can use it to link your previous projects and achievements, which is certainly a bonus.
You’ll want to showcase your portfolio attractively and visually. This will enable potential employers to get a quick glance at what you can do and how you can help their business. You can also upload your resume to this section.
For example, if you’re a web designer, you can showcase websites you’ve designed by adding screenshots to your profile. Or, if you’re a content writer, you can take advantage of the Featured section by adding links to your writing samples.
If you happen to have your own website where you’ve already showcased your skills and portfolio, you can also link that in your LinkedIn profile. You’ll want to add between 2 and 5 items to your portfolio, as that will be enough to give recruiters a general overview.
9. Get Recommendations And Endorsements
Recommendations
Another way of getting the attention of LinkedIn recruiters and employers is by having amazing Linkedin recommendations from your previous employers, clients, or colleagues.
If you don’t have any recommendations yet, you can ask for them by scrolling down to the Recommendations section on your LinkedIn profile and clicking on the “Ask for a recommendation” button.
You should note that you can only invite people who have a LinkedIn profile to give you a recommendation. These recommendations should be honest and specific, so you should avoid generic ones.
Recruiters are most definitely going to look through your recommendations when looking at your profile, so make sure to occasionally ask for them and collect as many as you can before you begin the search for your next job.
LinkedIn Recommendations can add value to your profile and help you get hired faster.
Endorsements
Another great thing you can get from your fellow colleagues or employers are Endorsements. This feature is there to indicate someone’s industry knowledge and professional skills.
Anyone who visits your LinkedIn profile can endorse you by simply clicking on the plus sign next to the skill they want to endorse you for.
Don’t hesitate to ask your colleagues or clients to endorse you for relevant skills, as that can greatly influence whether a recruiter selects you to go through with a job interview.
An easy way to get both recommendations and endorsements is to simply do the same for your fellow colleagues and wait for them to return the favor.
LinkedIn Recommendations and Endorsements represent a huge benefit for your job hunting efforts. They also make it way more likely that your profile will be discovered in search results by potential recruiters.
Statistically, members with more than 10 skills that have been endorsed are more likely to have their profile viewed, so it’s important to add as many skills and ask for endorsements if you’re looking to find a new job via LinkedIn.
10. Be Consistent With Your Resume
Last, but certainly not least, you’ll want to make sure that what you have on your LinkedIn profile matches your resume completely. That way, you’ll seem more trustworthy to recruiters, which will ultimately increase your chances of being hired or recommended for a job.
If you don’t have a resume yet, you can take advantage of the LinkedIn Resume Builder option. This can be accessed from the desktop only. This feature helps you create a professional-looking resume that will help you get noticed by employers.
Additionally, it uses all the existing data from your LinkedIn profile, meaning that there won’t be any inconsistencies between your online profile and your actual resume.
You can access this feature by going to your profile and clicking on “More”, then clicking on the “Build A Resume” option. After that, select the “Create from profile” option. You’ll be able to add the job title you desire to apply for.
After that, you can preview your resume and make any changes necessary, or you can download it as a PDF and use it outside of LinkedIn. This resume will include your LinkedIn profile link, email, summary, experience, education, licenses & certifications, and skills taken directly from your profile.
GET NOTICED BY RECRUITERS ON LINKEDIN AND LAND YOUR DREAM JOB
If you didn’t already sign up for LinkedIn, now is the perfect time to do so. This networking platform has completely revolutionized the recruitment industry and has quickly become a staple in any hiring process.
It’s a convenient and universal way to showcase all of your professional experience, skills, and knowledge in a single place. By optimizing your LinkedIn profile and taking advantage of all the features it offers, you’ll set yourself up for success in future jobs.
Since recruiters use LinkedIn regularly, your chances of being discovered by one are greatly increased if you have a professional-looking LinkedIn profile that’s up-to-date and complete.
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