Recruiters Explain What The Worst LinkedIn Profiles Have In Common
Recruiters and hiring managers need to find your profile in the first
place. Then they need to like what they see there.
Recruiters spend lots of time combing through LinkedIn
profiles—possibly more than many would like. After awhile, they can start to
blend together, which means that whatever you can do as a job seeker to stick
out from the crowd (at least in a way that reflects well on you) is probably
worth trying.
At a minimum, though, you’ve got to sidestep the most common mistakes
and drawbacks that recruiters encounter on LinkedIn constantly. These are some
of the issues that recruiters, hiring managers, and execs who constantly
use LinkedIn to staff their teams say the worst profiles have in common.
1. IT’S OUTDATED
Whether you’re barely keeping an eye on what’s out there or are
actively looking for your next role, a complete and current profile can
unlock doors—and an outdated one can slam them shut. Many users treat
their LinkedIn profiles like their resumes, as a static resource they only
bother to update in times of need. That’s a bad move says Stacy Zapar, founder
of the recruiting consultancy Tenfold; she relies heavily on LinkedIn to
find and make hires.
“Think of your LinkedIn profile as an online portfolio,” she
suggests. It’s got to be “a dynamic, real-time representation of your
professional experience. If you wait until you’re actively job seeking, you may
forget key details, or you may have already gotten passed over by recruiters
with great opportunities because those details were not included in your
profile.” Even if you’re not on a job hunt, it never hurts to
keep your latest qualifications in full view of recruiters and hiring
managers, this way they can come to you with opportunities you might never have
known about or considered otherwise.
Plus, Zapar points out, “making a bunch of updates to your
LinkedIn profile all of a sudden often raises red flags with your current
employer.”
2. YOUR HEADLINE SUCKS
When recruiters search profiles on LinkedIn, they see a list of
candidates that match their search criteria. The details on the search results
page itself are pretty minimal. Often recruiters don’t have much to go on
beyond job title and headline when they’re deciding whether to click your
profile and read further.
This means your headline can be a huge draw. “The headline is
the first thing we see,” says GoDaddy’s VP of talent acquisition, Andrew
Carges. “Be sure to use this valuable real estate to tell more than your job
title. Grab my attention and give me a reason to keep reading.” If you don’t,
you’ll just blend into the sea of other people with the exact same job title as
you. Not sure how to make it more memorable?
But keep SEO in mind even as you get creative. LinkedIn is
essentially a search engine, and it indexes headlines, so make sure you’re also
including a couple of keywords that are relevant to your work.
3. IT DOESN’T TELL A COHERENT STORY
Most users write their LinkedIn summary and experience
sections to reflect their resumes, and wind up with a linear run-through of
their employers, responsibilities, and accomplishments. This is effective
at conveying what you’ve done and where, but it doesn’t do much to help you
stand out.
Consider approaching your LinkedIn profile like a story. Creative
strategist Victor
Nguyen-Long takes that advice literally; each of his employer sections
reads like a mini narrative, explaining why he moved into each new role. Here’s
the first line of one of them: “After 3.5 years in Portland, I decided I wanted
to move back to Washington, DC to be closer to family.”
You don’t have to take the storytelling approach this far, but you
should go beyond just recording what and when, add some why and how.
That additional context can help your profile stand out, showcase your
creativity, and explain to recruiters what motivates you.
4. IT’S ALL BUSINESS
As Nguyen-Long also realizes, separating all things business from
anything remotely personal will leave your LinkedIn profile
sounding sterile. You want to give recruiters and hiring managers a chance
to see common threads.
And not just recruiters. In fact, you never
know who will be reviewing your profile, or where they may find common ground
that could give you an advantage. Job opportunities sometimes come from
surprising places. Do you have a favorite charity or volunteer your time
somewhere? Mention that! Do you have
projects outside your core job that you work on? Add them to the project
section. Speak other languages? Include that, too.
Go against the grain wherever you can. At a minimum, don’t just
write a bland professional overview in the summary section and leave it at
that. Throw in some details about your hobbies, interests, pursuits, and
why you do what you do. Sticking just to your business experience alone doesn’t
create a complete picture of what you’ll actually be bringing to an
employer.
5. YOU HAVEN’T WRITTEN ANYTHING
LinkedIn’s publishing platform opened up to all members a
few years ago. For bloggers and writers, adoption was easy. For most
users, not so much.
You don’t have to be a prolific writer to use this feature to your
advantage. Be strategic and selective. Consider writing a couple of posts that
showcase the way you see your field, how you work, or some
thoughts about recent news in your industry. Sankar Venkatraman, a senior
product manager at LinkedIn, says these posts can be as short or long as you
like, just as long as they let you “share your experiences and expertise around
a specific field of interest.”
The goal of blogging periodically on LinkedIn is twofold, he
says—to “give recruiters further insight into your ideas, as well as
improve how you show up in searches.”
In fact, the same logic is behind avoiding all five of these
pitfalls. Not only will sidestepping these common errors make your
profile show up more often in searches, it’ll also pique recruiters’
interest once they do find you.
BY LARS SCHMIDT
https://www.fastcompany.com/40426311/recruiters-explain-what-the-worst-linkedin-profiles-have-in-common?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fcweekly-top&position=5&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=06162017
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