How to Create a LinkedIn Profile That is Appealing to Recruiters
Just like it makes sense to regularly update your resume, you want to regularly update your other career branding tools, including your LinkedIn profile. If you’re in job search mode, the target audience for your LinkedIn profile is the recruiter. You want recruiters to find your profile when they do research, and you want your profile to get their attention when their research returns dozens or more profiles.
Make your headline descriptive
If you don’t proactively edit your Headline it will default to your current title and company. That brands your company, not you. If your title is generic (e.g., Manager, Director), then it doesn’t tell the reader anything about what you do. Include your industry and/or functional expertise in your Headline to provide more description in a quick read.
Don’t Oversell Yourself
A recruiter’s job is to determine your skill level. When you oversell your skills on your LinkedIn profile, it comes across as trying way too hard. The immediate picture in their head is someone who needs to be the center of attention and dominates the conversation. This is not the right message to send to not only the recruiter, but the dream job you are looking to land.
Let your skill sets do the talking
The best way to optimize your LinkedIn profile is to make sure you have included all the key skill sets you want to be found on. For example, if you’re in finance, you need to look at all the skills required to do your job and make sure they’re included in the headline, summary, work history, and endorsement sections of your profile. Why? LinkedIn’s search algorithm is much like the one on Google. It looks at the relevance of your profile based on the search terms. So, the more optimized your profile is with the kinds of keywords a recruiter uses to find candidates, the more likely you are to show up in their search results.
