The photo and the headline
Use a photo where you look like yourself on a reasonable working day. A phone camera, decent light and a plain background will do. Profiles with a photo get looked at considerably more often than profiles without one.
Your headline defaults to your current job title, which wastes the most visible line on the page.
The About section
First person, and under about 150 words. Cover what you do, the kinds of business you’ve done it in, and what interests you next.
LinkedIn shows only the first two or three lines before a “see more” link, so put something in those lines that earns the click.
Experience
You can be a little less formal here than on a CV, but the same principle holds. Say what you achieved, not only what you were responsible for. If your CV has strong achievement lines, several of them belong here too.
Include every role you want to be found for. Recruiters search by job title, and a role you’ve left off is a search you won’t appear in.
Skills
List the skills you’d want to be approached about, and put the three most important at the top, because those are the ones shown first. Endorsements from people you’ve worked with carry a little weight. Endorsements from strangers carry none.
Staying visible
You don’t have to post to get the benefit of being active. Commenting on things in your sector, following the businesses you’d like to work for and connecting with people you meet will all keep you in view. A profile with no activity at all reads as dormant, and dormant profiles get skipped.
Looking without announcing it
LinkedIn lets you tell recruiters you’re open in two ways. The green frame is public and everybody sees it, including your current employer. The recruiter-only setting is hidden from anyone whose LinkedIn account is registered to the company you work for.
Use the second one if you’re looking discreetly. Treat it as discretion rather than a guarantee, since it depends on whether your employer has their account set up correctly.
Keep it current
Update your profile when something changes, not when you start looking. A profile that suddenly gets polished is visible to everyone who knows you, and colleagues draw the obvious conclusion.
Want a recruiter’s view of your profile?
If you’d like a second opinion on how your profile reads to a recruiter in your sector, ask us. Our consultants look at these all day, and it takes ten minutes.
