Based on my experience sourcing on LinkedIn, here is a list of profile hacks.
To be found more often, both on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Recruiter, do this:
- When you enter your data, follow prompts and selections – do not enter unusually spelled names
- Use your industry, not your company’s
- Your companies should point to company pages on LinkedIn; same for schools
- Use standard job titles (e.g., “Software Developer” not “Chief Coder”)
- Do not enter years of study – this way, you will be found by any range of years of study
- Add a degree or certification abbreviations to your last name
- Otherwise, do not abbreviate words
- LinkedIn does not search for words in the “Accomplished” sections. If you graduated with honors, got certified, or won a competition, say so in summary
- Do not put closing dates on the last few jobs – you will then be found for each keyword in the job titles or companies
- You can add a fake job with just the title you want – or say it in the headline
- Explain your skills and experience either in summary or in the last 1-2 position descriptions:
- What have you done, and what was achieved?
- Write concrete facts and figures; do not praise yourself
- Vary the ways you speak about the job, phrase your skills in different ways
- Run Grammarly
- Take skill quizzes
- Add 50 standard skills to your profile
- Add languages knowledge
- Go easy on your part-time activities, hobbies, and family
- Be alone in your profile picture
- Get at least 500 connections with LIONs
- Add a publicly visible email address to your profile
- Join relevant groups
- Share content on your timeline and run polls
- Respond to others’ professional content, @mention them
- Attach your resume to the profile and say so up front in summary
- Do not change default settings except email notifications
- Get a premium account and allow everyone to message you
- Turn on “Open to Work” when you are ready
To find LinkedIn members who will have missed this post, take LinkedIn Recruiter Mastery.