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The Top 8 Keys To Building A Searchable LinkedIn Profile

Are you looking for new opportunities on LinkedIn? Have you upgraded to Premium, exhausted all of your InMail credits, messaged countless recruiters, and are still seeing minimal results? Follow this comprehensive step-by-step guide to have the recruiters come to you! Our tips are universal — we have the solutions for you, whether you are a new grad, a mid-level manager, or a seasoned professional.

According to Kinsta in their article titled, Mind-Blowing LinkedIn Statistics and Facts (2021), “122 million people received an interview through LinkedIn with 35.5 million having been hired by a person they connected with on the site. So it's unsurprising that 3 people are hired through LinkedIn every minute.”

As a ClimateTech recruiting company, we have the hands-on experience, the knowledge, and the expertise to navigate these jaw-dropping numbers. With such significant hiring stats, it’s a given that you should have your LinkedIn profile optimized and searchable. Follow the steps in this guide to get found, discovered, and ultimately hired via LinkedIn.

Our Comprehensive Guide is Broken Down Into a Few Actionable and Easy-To-Digest Steps:

• 4 Basic Tips (Straight from LinkedIn)
• 2 Mistakes to Avoid
• 2 Keys To Getting Discovered
  

4 Basic Tips (Straight from LinkedIn)

1. Make Sure You Have Achieved "All Star Status"

If you have your profile section completely filled out, a star will appear in the top right-hand corner of your dashboard. When most recruiters are searching for talent, they enable a filter to exclude those who don't have all their profile information filled out. In essence, the more information you include the more searchable your profile will be.

2. Your Profile Picture Matters, Keep it Professional and Personal

There are search tools that are specifically designed to omit people without pictures. Make sure you have a professional and personalized image to ensure that your profile appears on recruiters’ search queues. A typical LinkedIn Recruiter seat license allows you to send 100 InMails per month. Most recruiters will use those InMails wisely and send them to those people with complete profiles.

3. Tell Recruiters You're Available for New Jobs

Ensure that you have “open to work” enabled on your profile section. Make sure that you add the top 5 job titles that you would like to hear about to your preferences section. Be sure to also add any locations you’re open to and check remote if that is something you're interested in. If you're currently employed and don't want to publicly broadcast your job search, you can alter the settings to only allow outside recruiters to see your availability. LinkedIn’s algorithm only allows recruiters with the LinkedIn Recruiter product to see your job preferences, however, it isn't guaranteed that your company will not see this.

4. Engage and Network With Your LinkedIn Community

The more active you are, the more likely it is that you will appear on LinkedIn recruiters’ searches. Be sure that you are actively engaged by liking and commenting on posts from both companies and individuals. Not only does this help with networking, you will meet more people with common interests. In the future, when you're applying for jobs at a company you may have some inside contacts or a rapport built up over time. Lastly, your activity level has a direct impact on your searchability by recruiters, recruiters can filter individuals by their “likelihood to respond.”

2 Mistakes To Avoid

1. Don't Use LinkedIn’s Default Headline

The most important element of getting discovered is setting yourself apart from others who are looking at the same jobs. That being said, only mentioning your title does nothing to sell your value or differentiate you from your competition. Ensure that your headline (your main selling point) is packed full of keywords and value statements. We will dive deeper into this later on.

2. Don't Put ‘Seeking Opportunities,’ ‘Looking For New Opportunities,’ or ‘Currently Unemployed' in Your Headline

Again, this is where you're trying to sell your value, skills, and expertise. You have 120 characters to truly convince recruiters to give you a shot, there is blatantly nothing enticing about the fact that you're “Seeking New Opportunities.”  Instead, use LinkedIn’s “open to work” feature to tell recruiters you're available and use your headline to show experiences, skills, professional development, etc.

2 Keys To Getting Discovered

1. Build A Great Headline

LinkedIn is simply a search engine, just like Google. Recruiters use keywords to find potential candidates. It's pretty simple, if a recruiter types in “Product Manager Climate” in the search field, LinkedIn will show profiles that have the words “Product Manager” and “Climate.” In this case, both “Product Manager” and “Climate” are keywords. People that show up at the top typically mention keywords frequently and include them in their headline which carries more weight.

Unlike a resume, you can't tailor your LinkedIn profile for each specific role. Your profile needs to be set up so that it captures a range of opportunities without being too general! The good news is, there's a formula that will help you figure out exactly what keywords you need to include in your LinkedIn headline.

Follow These 4 Steps:

1. Visit Job Boards (Climate People, LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, etc.)

Apply all the appropriate filters to these job boards (salary, location, seniority, etc.) and search for positions that interest you.

2. Record All Job Titles

Open up a Google Sheets and record all of the job titles that you're interested in, compose a list of at least 30 titles.

3. Discover Your Unique Keywords

Insert your 30+ job titles into WordClouds and see which words are most prominent. The most used 3-7 words are the ones that you will want to include in your headline. These are the keywords recruiters are using when searching for talent.  

4. Show Your Value and Stand Out

Everyone uses the same formula, “title - company.” Don’t do this — use metrics & keywords to show your unique value.

Here Are Some Examples of Stellar LinkedIn Headlines:

→ Data Scientist | Data Mining | Experienced in Tableau & Python | Enhanced Machine Learning Prototypes by 38%

→ Software Engineer, Database Developer & Analytics Manager @ HubSpot | Increased Automation Levels by 55%

→ Marketing Director |  B2B & B2C | Increased Paid Website Traffic by 75%

Don’t Have Snazzy Numbers?

Don’t worry! This formula gives you a lot of flexibility to highlight your current or desired job title, one keyword or expertise, and either your current company (if this is recognizable) or the industry/sector you would like to be in. This is a very search friendly headline — remember to use all 120 characters!

Here Are Some Examples of Number-Less Headlines:

→ Software Team Lead | Machine Learning | Python | GoLang at Google | Building massive data pipelines for Climate risk

→ Platform Product Manager | SaaS Products | Climate Change & Sustainability advocate | Climate Data enthusiast

Are You a Recent Graduate or An Entry-Level Professional?

This is really the time to sell yourself! You can simply state your aspirational roles, what you studied, or the fields that interest you.

Here Is An Entry-Level Example:

→ Recent Finance Graduate with a focus in Financial Analysis, Reporting, and Auditing | Financial Reporting Analyst

Optimize Your Skills Tags

Lastly, you will want to make sure that you optimize your profile’s skills tags to illustrate your unique value and stand out. Peruse job postings that you're interested in and add the top skills listed as tags on your profile. That being said, make sure you actually have experience with that skill before adding it to your profile. Order your top three skills so that they are pinned to the top and ask your network to endorse you. LinkedIn allows you to have 50 skills tags, use all of them!

So there you have it! Follow these 8 steps and your LinkedIn profile will be fully optimized for recruiters to find you.

As always, do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or clarifications. Subscribe to our newsletter for similar tips, tricks, and advice!

→ Click here to view a video walkthrough of these steps!
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