The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and it is optimizing your profile on LinkedIn. It is very important to know how to optimize LinkedIn profile for recruiters to stand out in the huge job seekers population.
Your profile is your identity on LinkedIn, it is like the clothes you choose to wear at a dinner party that you know some very successful business people are attending and you hope to get the attention of one or two of them to elevate your chance of getting employed for a special position. Now imagine choosing to wear a casual pair of jeans, a torn-up white shirt, and dirty sneakers. Is this suitable for that formal party? Absolutely not! A non-professional LinkedIn profile is just like those clothes for recruiters.
The goal here is to attract recruiters who are actively searching for suitable candidates. The key is to try to stand out for that.
You have no idea how many profiles recruiters have to review every day, which is just so dull after a while.
Imagine someone who sells black clothes every day, well you cannot be a red cloth on LinkedIn, for the fixed format and everything, but you can be that one black cloth that has a different texture or different design. There are some strategies for this goal, so let’s have a look on how to optimize .
How to optimize LinkedIn profile for recruiters?
You want people to remember you on LinkedIn, not just to review your profile like millions of other similar ones and throw the memory in the river of oblivion. Recruiters are always searching for new blood, and you will end up in that river if you don’t have something to offer them.
It was during the pandemic that statistics showed more than 33 million Americans lost their jobs and are actively looking for new positions. Thankfully a lot of them could find a job during that time, using LinkedIn, and the first step to do that was learning how to optimize LinkedIn profiles for recruiters.
We all know the basics of doing so, right? Adding a professional profile picture, editing your LinkedIn URL to make yourself easier to find, choosing a clear and accurate header, adding a good description to the about section and not using the usual clichés, be clear, honest and precise in the education and experiences section, minding the skills and recommendations. Also, we all know how important licenses, certifications, volunteer experiences, and projects can be important to lure the recruiters to our direction. These are the basics, what I like to talk about are the strategies of how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for job search.
1. Strategic content
As we said, your profile is your ID card on LinkedIn, an online resume of yours, but it is not enough for getting employed, that is exactly why you get invited to a job interview. The employer tries to get familiar with your character, goals, and the things you are interested in.
Some recruiters also like to look at your activities on LinkedIn. You know, to learn about your characteristics, who you are, and what you like. So it is suggested to publish content about real-world incidents, your experiences, and your opinions about them. You can also share the posts of the companies you like to join or people you are looking to in your professional path.
2. Self-branding
Use your profile to reinforce your brand on LinkedIn. Some sections in your profile can be more effective in this matter, like the about section. You can paint a rapid overview of your identity, your skills, your professional path, and your professional approach for users who are viewing your LinkedIn profile.
The other important section is featured. Make sure to add as many accomplishments as you had in this part. Is there something you are proud of? This part is the most visible and the most attractive unit of your profile, so maybe that is why it is suggested to add the most related accomplishments if you have some special position in your mind.
The next options are the cover photo and the title you choose for yourself. Make sure to make people understand your most precious skills and what you can do for them in your chosen title. Also, choose a professional cover page demonstrating your work and expertise.
The recommendations section is also a very good portrait of your professional character. Your former colleagues’ and managers’ recommendations will tell the recruiters how you are at the office.
3. The keywords
They are the things that recruiters have to find you. For example, use “sports journalist” or “sports reporter” in your profile as a keyword if you are a sports journalist. You can add the word “expert” to the keyword if you’ve worked in a field for years and had some great accomplishments in that field.
Conclusion
If you take a look at all of those websites that are talking about how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for recruiters, you see that most of them are talking about the basic things we just mentioned above.
Like make a good introduction, use a good headshot, and have that big smile in it to attract the recruiters, and enrich your profile with keywords. Use an ‘OPENTOWORK’ frame if you are not currently employed to tell every user that you are actively looking for a job.
Make a beautiful story about your career path in the about section. Get ideas for selecting keywords from the job postings about your target position, you can also use them to find out what skills you need to get employed.
Add a video headshot to your profile. As you know any videos are more attractive than any texts for the modern human. So make a video headshot and tell your audience who you are, what you do, what quality makes your work stand out, what you are best at, etc. many websites claim that LinkedIn has this feature of adding a video headshot along with the profile photo, but I could not use it.
Instead, I chose to add my introduction video to the featured section of the profile. You know, for the fact that the featured part is the most visible and attractive section after the introduction card. All right, now that you know how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for job search, why not go and make it perfect right now?
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