What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the #1 social platform for professional networking, home to 700+ million professional users.
Today, it’s non negotiable to not only have a LinkedIn profile, but to have an optimized LinkedIn to showcase your brand.
Gone are the days where you can solely rely on your resume to get you the interview. One of the first things recruiters do after they quickly scan your resume? Check out your LinkedIn profile. And if your profile is lacking? They’ll move on to the next candidate.
The Importance of Having an Optimized LinkedIn Profile
A recruiters job is to investigate and look for reasons not to bring a candidate in. Having no presence on LinkedIn is a big turnoff and a red flag.
They want to put a face to a name, check out your professional branding, see that your profile matches up to what’s in your resume and also see beyond your resume (your certifications, skills, posts, recommendations, etc).
If there’s a disconnect between your resume and your LinkedIn profile, it’s very likely that you’ll miss an interview opportunity, which is why it’s vital to focus on properly aligning the two.
The Importance of Optimizing Your Profile for Passive Opportunities
Your LinkedIn profile serves two important purposes: As already mentioned, recruiters are popping over to your profile before they decide to bring you in for the initial interview, but also for bringing you passive opportunities.
Here’s how it works:
LinkedIn offers a service to recruiters that’s called LinkedIn Recruiter. It’s backend feature where recruiters can source for candidates on all of LinkedIn. They can put in any number of search variations to find the “perfect match” candidate.
Recruiters are likely to do this when they don’t receive the quality or quantity of applicants for their job posting, or in combination with the ones they do get.
If your profile isn’t fully optimized to its maximum potential, you won’t show up in the first few pages of their search results (think of it as Google Search results), and likely miss out on these passive opportunities.
Passive opportunities are awesome because when an employer reaches out to you, you’re a much more desirable candidate in the eyes of this company. You’re more likely recieve an offer and be able to negotiate a higher salary in the final stages of the interview process.
What else is awesome about having your profile optimized, is that you’ll have this opportunity even when you’re in your new role. It’s important to always stay open to new opportunities in this tumultuous job market.
Understanding LinkedIn Profile Optimization
Clients always ask us: “What gets optimized” on my profile?
The answer: every part of your profile. From the banner, the photo, the headline, your summary section, your work history, the keywords, the recommendations, to the settings you use.
Every part of the profile lends itself to be discovered on the backend, but also shows off your professional brand on the frontend.
We want to make sure that your profile really impresses the employer, much more so than what your competitors are doing.
How Long Does It Take to Show up in the Recruiters Search Results?
As soon as the optimization is done and the changes are saved.
Our clients start to see immediate results with recruiters reaching out to them for their desired roles.
Ready to work with us optimizing your LinkedIn profile, writing your resume, or any part of your job search, check out our services!
