How to Optimise Your LinkedIn Profile to be more visible to Recruiters

Being visible and easily findable by Recruiters on LinkedIn is a great way to hear about new openings in your industry whether you're actively looking for a new job or just open to hearing about new positions.

In this article we'll provide some top tips to make sure that recruiters are able to easily find you and contact you on LinkedIn about positions they're currently looking to fill.

If you also need some help on making your CV is on point too, I've created this totally free CV Template to get you started.

Why is LinkedIn so Important?

Most recruiters, both agency and internal recruiters, rely heavily on LinkedIn Recruiter to find and contact candidates for vacancies they're looking to fill. LinkedIn is the number one platform that recruiters use today, infact you could say they are overly dependent on it and many don't know how to find candidates on any other platform.

Why Being Visible Matters

You want the vacancies to come to you, you don't want to spend your time searching job boards or applying for jobs via company websites.

Sure you can do this, but the one thing that most people outside of the recruitment industry don't realise is that there are a hell of a lot of jobs that don't get advertised, the only way to know they exist is if a recruiter contacts you about them. So why aren't all vacancies advertised?

Sometimes it's a confidential role, maybe the company is going through a restructure or there's some secrecy about the current role holders imminent departure. Advertising the role would give this secret away.

A common reason is that sometimes advertising a role means the recruiter will get too many irrelevant applications. They could advertise a Sales Manager role and easily get in excess of 500 applications, the majority being from overseas. Rather than sift through all of these applications, it's often quicker and easier to find 20 or so suitable candidates on LinkedIn and message them about the role.

Advertising is expensive and offers a very low return. Advertising on both LinkedIn and Job Boards is very expensive, especially for internal recruiters who are working to tight budgets.

So now that we know why it's important to be visible on LinkedIn and make it really easy for recruiters to find you, let's talk about how.

LinkedIn Recruiter

Most recruiters today use LinkedIn Recruiter to find and contact candidates. LinkedIn Recruiter Licences allow recruiters to search everybody on LinkedIn using search terms and filters related to Job Title, Skills, Location, Languages, Education, Years Experience and many more. It also allows them to contact you.

Here are the best ways to make sure you are easy to find:

Your Job Title

Make sure your job title that you use on your LinkedIn profile is the one that is most commonly used in your industry, as this is the one that recruiters will most likely use when searching for candidates. For example, if the job title on your contract says "Systems Engineer" but you're actually a Software Engineer, use the job title "Software Engineer" on your LinkedIn profile. Recruiters won't search for the term "Systems Engineer" but are much more likely to search for "Software Engineer" or "Software Developer".

Your Location

LinkedIn Recruiter allows recruiters two main ways of searching for candidates, they can either search for people in a specific location, e.g. 'London', 'Paris', 'New York' etc, or they can search within a 10/25/50/100km radius of a particular postcode.

You want to be findable in both ways, and it's really easy to do. Let's say for example you live in Wimbledon, which is only about 8 miles from Central London. If a recruiter searches only for candidates in 'London' you won't appear in their search results, if they use a radius search you will.

The solution, change your location to 'London', assuming of course you're happy to hear about roles that are 8 miles away in this example! Use the closest major city as your location and you'll be more findable to recruiters.

Your Skills

When searching LinkedIn Recruiter, most recruiters will use the skills filter to find suitable candidates. Let's say for example you're a Marketing Manager and you have extensive experience in Social Media Marketing, you mention it throughout your profile in your career history. If you don't have it listed as one of your skills in the skills section of your profile, you wouldn't appear in search results if the recruiter is using the skills filter, which most do.

Take some time to make sure all of your skills are added to the skills section of your profile if you want to be easier to find.

Open To Work

In the back end of your LinkedIn account you have the option to state whether you are Open to Work or not, and you have two options as to who this is visible to - Recruiters only or Everybody on LinkedIn.

Make sure that you have Open to Work switched on and that it's visible only to Recruiters. LinkedIn take steps to make sure that anybody at your current company, including their recruiters can't see your Open To Work status.

But why have Open To Work switched on all the time even if you're not actively looking? Because most recruiters are either lazy or want quick wins, they have a filter in LinkedIn Recruiter to show them only candidates who are open to work.

From their perspective it's much easier and they're more likely to get a response from somebody who is open to work than somebody who isn't. Most recruiters will have the Open To Work filter on when searching LinkedIn and deciding who to contact.

Profile Picture

Make sure you have a profile picture on your LinkedIn Account, it doesn't need to be anything too fancy, just a simple head shot. Recruiters will very rarely contact a candidate who doesn't have a profile picture, they'll assume you're not very active on LinkedIn and won't waste their time messaging somebody who they don't think will see it.

So there you have it, some very simple ways to make sure you're easier to find on LinkedIn and more likely to hear about open positions in your industry, even those that aren't advertised.

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