LinkedIn Might Rat You Out
Does LinkedIn notify your employer or co-workers that you’re searching for a new job? In some cases, yes.
For example, if you don’t set your LinkedIn privacy settings correctly, LinkedIn notifies your connections (Your boss? your co-workers?) that you’ve connected with a recruiter or HR manager at another company.
The Best Jobs Aren’t Usually Advertised
You’ve undoubtedly read and heard that the best jobs are not advertised. They are filled internally, using headhunters or through networking. Today, you need to add LinkedIn searches to that. Many companies now start candidate searches not with job postings, but with LinkedIn searches.
Additionally, even if a recruiter or HR manager has pored over your résumé and you’ve had your first interview, if you’re a manager, director, vice president or executive, no one’s going to hire you without looking at your LinkedIn page.
Do you take yours seriously enough to have it up to date and orderly?
You Need to Keyword
HR professionals, recruiters and headhunters often start looking for candidates using LinkedIn to find good matches for the job description. Will they find you?
It depends. Your job titles aren’t enough. Recruiters have a list of keywords for each job they need to fill, and if your LinkedIn profile (and résumé put through an ATS) doesn’t contain those keywords, you won’t be found.
For example, if you’re in advertising, you might think everyone knows you’re involved with media buying, programmatic advertising and analytics, but if those words don’t appear on your LinkedIn page, recruiters searching for people with those skills won’t find you.
If you work in social media, make sure every platform you can use is listed somewhere on your page. You might even want to do this on your résumé (at the bottom, for example, under your education).
Let Me Help You Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
I can review your LinkedIn profile and see if it’s optimized for a job search. That means making sure it contains all of your profession’s critical keywords. That means making sure you have some interesting comments and posts (they show up for recruiters). That means making sure you have a professional photo of yourself and interesting background. That means listing your education, interests, certifications and hobbies correctly. That means making sure you remove jokes and snarky comments.
Having a good LinkedIn profile won’t get you your dream job, but NOT having a good LinkedIn profile can prevent you from getting found (and called) by recruiters looking to fill your dream job.