Attract recruiters to your LinkedIn profile with these 4 steps

In this age of social media hype, the role a great LinkedIn profile plays in successfully landing a new job is increasingly important. An article in BusinessInsider.com recently highlighted ways you can enhance your profile to lure recruiters and hiring authorities to you.

The article pointed out that LinkedIn has recently announced a dramatic change involving a new feature they will debut in early 2016. For those subscribers who use its recruiter packages, the search functionality will be turned upside down. It will work something like this: An employer or recruiter will simply point to a profile of someone they think is a perfect fit for the role to be filled. For example, it might be the person who is about to leave the position or a peer in another company. LinkedIn’s search capabilities will then scour the whole database of millions of profiles and return those who most closely match the ideal person.

“How does that change affect my LinkedIn profile,” you might be asking?

The answer is that recruiters are no longer going to be just searching by keywords, skills, current and former employers, location and educational degrees. Instead, they will be looking for candidates whose profiles are a match to “ideal profiles” of that position.

With this reality in mind, now is a good time to reevaluate your own profile and make some necessary additions or tweaks. Here are four steps take:

• Review the profiles of the person currently holding the job you want. Also, review the profiles of similar positions in competing companies. You are looking for the skills listed. Also note the writing styles and the overall content. Pay close attention to their summary section.

• If you possess parallel experiences and accomplishments, update your profile accordingly. Your objective is to make you read like a star in your industry. This is your place to stand out from the competition.

• Make sure you include a professional headshot. Be sure you have a natural smile and the background is not distracting.

• Review job titles for clarity. Is there sufficient information detailing accomplishments for each job? Will a reader easily understand what you did in those positions? And, do these details highlight your uniqueness from others in similar positions? Your goal is to clearly identify a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) about yourself that will have the recruiter seeing you as a stand out from the crowd.

At Key Corporate Services, we recognize the critical importance of maximizing skills and experience. All candidates should have a LinkedIn profile that makes them look like the ideal candidate that stands out from the crowd.