There are more than 120 million LinkedIn profiles out there, but how many of them are really “searchable” or reflect a personal branding statement? Having a LinkedIn profile that isn’t searchable is the same as having a commercial website to sell products that is not search engine optimized (SEO) and cannot be found by Google or Bing (no site traffic, no site visitors).
Tom Cruise said it in his 1996 movie, Jerry Maguire. “Help me help you.” Recruiters want to connect the right people with the right opportunities. When searching LinkedIn, recruiters and sourcers use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc.) and KEY WORDS to narrow the potential candidate pools that they identify. KEY WORDS they look for are typically nouns, not verbs. These KEY WORDS tend to be titles, industry jargon, functional vernacular as well as those that describe operational scope or size.
Most every field within a LinkedIn profile is searchable by keyword by LinkedIn users. The graphic shows fields within a profile where key word optimized sentences can be placed. The Summary and Position Description fields allow for the most characters. An underused field that few realize exists is Interests which can hold a thousand characters. Also searchable is a recently added field called Skills. Users can add up to 25 skills (61 characters are allowed per skill). The Skills field can be found as a drop down selection on the main LinkedIn navigation panel More.
Is your LinkedIn profile optimized for increased “searchability”?
Working through a “Listening To The Market” exercise may help. This is a multiple step research and matching process that involves:
- Listening to the market
- Analyzing data
- Identifying recurring themes for employer wants and needs
- Matching and aligning experience and expertise to identified themes
- Transferring the research to create a market ready profile
One method of listening to the market is to utilize a few vertical job search engines such as Simply Hired or Indeed to find posted positions on the internet. By gathering a sampling of positions and analyzing them, recurring themes can be identified. These often include industry terms, standardized job titles and detailed terms within functional experience requirements.
Some Good News…
LinkedIn recently reported that they have enhanced their search interface capabilities and LinkedIn users can now search for companies not only by attributes such as location, industry, and size (or product for that matter) but also by how the user is connected. Users can now filter a set of results to include only those companies where they have a direct connection or broaden a search to include companies in the users extended network.
But…
This increased functionality is excellent news for those searching and those hoping to be found, however, since the enhancement is new, few may be utilizing it. Those wishing to be more “searchable” should still edit and make enhancements to the experience section of their profiles.
Here is an example of a non optimized profile entry for a human resources generalist at William Wrigley Company:
An optimized profile might instead contain a more traditional job title and be more descriptive. Here is an example:
By utilizing a paragraph that describes the company, as well as a second paragraph that describes scope and responsibility, industry and functional vernacular can be used and this might just contain the keywords that could prove to be differentiators to a recruiter who is comparing hundreds of profiles.
Make it Easy for the Recruiter to Connect With You..
Edit your account settings in LinkedIn to include your name and email address under the box “What advice would you give to users considering contacting you”. You may wish to create an email address that is specific for LinkedIn for this purpose. If you do so, make sure to visit LinkedIn’s settings section to associate the email address with your LinkedIn account.
“Help me help you” by creating a robust, searchable profile that contains key descriptors reflective of your background and industry experience.
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Grant Alexander is a BPI group company
