With over 414 million members, LinkedIn is the professional social media platform of choice that is used by more than 87 percent of all recruiters to source candidates for jobs. As the year continues, many professionals will be considering a career move.
What’s the best way to get recruiters looking at your profile? I teach LinkedIn workshops for professionals and I have offered this advice more than 700 times in over five years of classes: be sure to analyze the profiles of industry professionals who have the job you want to get and use this information as a guide for your own profiles.
This means you should include in your profile: skills, job descriptions, titles, and keywords that recruiters use in compiling lists of prospects using the Advanced Search
feature on the platform.
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Social media and branding expert, Robin Colner.Now, this advice is even more relevant because LinkedIn recently announced it will soon roll out a feature that allows recruiters to select profiles of three ideal candidates as a reference. They then use the Recruiter Tool to generate an optimized list of target candidates based on how closely their profiles match that of the ideal candidates.
LinkedIn is making it easier for recruiters to do their work, while it also provides a guide for potential job seekers to market themselves more effectively.
If you are interested in attracting the attention of recruiters, the most important action you can take is to identify the influential people in your industry with your desired job function and study their profiles to identify the titles, keywords and descriptions of accomplishments that will make your profile more attractive to recruiters using the new algorithm.
Also, remember these other tips to optimize your profile and increase your visibility with recruiters and business prospects:
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Upload a professional headshot
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Create a headline that includes your functional expertise as opposed to just your place of employment.
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Add Slideshare presentations, videos with captions and media citations to your Summary and Experience sections.
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Publish original blog posts directly on the LinkedIn platform to demonstrate your thought leadership and expertise. The posts will automatically appear in your followers’ inboxes as well as in your Summary section. Be sure to share the posts as status updates which gives you a third way to distribute this impressive content on LinkedIn. Share the posts on your other social media profiles and link to them in LinkedIn Group discussions. The posts can also be shared as updates from a LinkedIn Company Page.
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Showcase your experience in an interesting, informative and impressive story, rather than in just a list of job titles and work places.
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Add relevant skills to the endorsements section and include them in all of the related job descriptions.
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Obtain recommendations from colleagues, supervisors, and clients from each place of employment.
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Visit LinkedIn daily and share valuable content through updates.
Robin Colner is a social media marketing and online branding expert and director of the Digital and Social Media Professional Certificate Program at Fordham University’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies in West Harrison. She can be reached at (914) 826-5512 or at Rcolner@DigiStarMedia.com, and on Twitter: @RobinColner.
