You don’t believe in sitting back and taking a passive approach to your job hunt. But you know that responding to corporate job postings has become only slightly more effective than doing nothing at all. That’s why you’ve taken the necessary steps to enhance your LinkedIn profile and reputation.
Now that your profile projects an ideal representation of your skills and accomplishments, you’re at the dance. But if you don’t wear the right clothes, you won’t be found and followed by employers, recruiters, and headhunters.
A Jobvite survey in 2014 found that 94% of recruiters use LinkedIn to source and vet candidates, while only 36% of job seekers are active on LinkedIn. In this study, “active” means answering the questions recruiters have about your knowledge, your connections, and your reputation in the industry. It means that on LinkedIn, you’re dressed for the role you want.
Recruiters are trained not to use LinkedIn to search for profiles, but to use Google’s Advanced Search. Google looks for “relevance” to LinkedIn profile searches by finding keywords in five key areas:
- Professional Headline
- Current Job Title
- Titles of Previous Roles
- Summary Statement
- Specialties
If you have a clear idea of the position you’re interested in, follow these quick steps to populate these fields with the right keywords:
- Find job descriptions for your dream position.
- Go to wordle.com and click on “Create your own.”
- One by one, cut and paste five of the best job descriptions you found.
- Use the output to determine the top 10 keywords for your desired position.
- Insert at least two of these keywords in each of the five key areas of your profile.
If there is a range of roles within an industry or niche, select five job descriptions that span this range and do the same exercise. To further enhance your ranking, you may also ask your references to include two to five keywords in their LinkedIn recommendations.
LinkedIn continues to evolve and recruiters continue to refine the way they use it to find the best qualified candidates. Keep a competitive advantage over other job seekers in every aspect of your job hunt by checking our blog each week at www.imprimis.com/blog/.