How Recruiters Find You On LinkedIn

These are notes taken from Abby Kohut’s (Absolutely Abby) presentation at one of our Tuesday Tune-up meetings:

How Recruiters find you on Linked In. 

To narrow the field of potential candidates, most recruiters will search LinkedIn by

• Job title
• Location
• “Current” – mainly to narrow the field
• Key words and skills

Ensure your profile contains the following;

• Various job titles for the type of position you are seeking. Example; Director of Marketing, Marketing Director, Director of Brand Management, Media Director, Advertising Director, etc, etc,
• Create a current job even if you are unemployed, using the appropriate title(s). To do so you’ll also need a Company name. If you are a consultant, create a name for your Company or business. If you are not a consultant, the company name can be…”Seeking New Opportunity” or your title or profession in your location; such as “Marketing Professional in Columbus, Ohio”.
• If you volunteer, you can use this as a current job (indicating volunteer), however realize the importance of titles in a recruiters search. Since you can have more than one current job, perhaps doing both would be the best approach.
• Key words and skills are critical to include in your profile. The more inclusive the better. Remember that even if you download your resume on LinkedIn, the search feature on LinkedIn will NOT search your resume for the keywords, only the information on your profile.

Example; A search for an Administrative Assistant eliminated many candidates because they did not have Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint as keywords on their profiles. It is unlikely that they don’t have the skills; they just omitted them from their profiles.

You will also want your profile to be listed in the top 50 (if not top 25) profiles that are listed when a recruiter does a search for someone with your background. The following will have an impact how you’ll far up the list your profile will appear.

• Your Job Titles are relevant
• Your Key words and skills are a match
• The closer you are to the recruiter in the LinkedIn network. 1st degree connections, 2nd degree, 3rd degree, groups.
• Most recruiters have very large networks, so you’ll not only want to be as close to them as possible, but ensure the keywords and skills are included in your profile as well.
• Consider connecting with LIONS to broaden your network. Also, internal and external recruiters for the target companies you are seeking.

Thank you for the tips, Abby!