Optimizing your LinkedIn profile for recruiters

- One of my favorite things to do with people is take them top to bottom through their LinkedIn profile and show them how to optimize it to get recruiters knocking on their doors and that's what we're going to do right now. So the first thing I need you to understand is the top fold of your LinkedIn profile is most important. We want to get this right. Recruiters spend about six to 13 seconds looking at that, deciding if they're going to keep on scrolling. So we want to make sure that you make the right impact. Now I'm going to start with your photograph and your banner. There are a lot of different theories on this, but let me tell you mine. The photograph, you should look approachable. You don't need anything fancy. Grab your smartphone, get some good lighting and then have somebody take, I don't know, 30, 40 pictures of yourself and choose one that makes you look like you're someone they'd want to talk to. You don't need to overdo it with a smile, but again you want to look approachable. As for the banner, I'm going to tell you to stay away from things that are too busy or distracting. Don't try to pack a lot of information in there. Don't do anything that's too out there, because again first impressions matter. I'd rather them not waste those six seconds trying to understand what's going on in your banner. I want to get them to the good stuff which leads to the single most important prime real estate on your LinkedIn profile. Do you know what it is? It's your headline. Your headline is the single most important piece of real estate on your entire LinkedIn profile, and here's why. The keywords that you put in that headline will help you rank higher in the search results. Let me give you an example. Imagine there are two candidates who both have digital marketing experience. One puts that in their headline, the other doesn't. Which one do you think is going to rank higher in the recruiter tool that they use on LinkedIn? The one with digital marketing in the headline. So my advice to you is to take those five or six key skill sets that you most want to use in your next job and put them in your headline with a vertical line divider between each one. The nice thing about this is that when recruiters search and they see your results, they'll not only see your headshot but they'll see that headline and what happens in their brain is they go "Check, check, check, check, check. Look, this person has the skillset I was told to look for" and that will get them to click through to your profile and read more. Now that leads us to your about section which they'll head to next and my one piece of advice here is to keep it short. Please, they don't want to see an epic novel. In fact, I'm going to tell you that when you write too much in your about section, it can look narcissistic or even worse, desperate. You want to get just the right amount of information there. My personal advice is three sentences, how many years of experience you have, the size of the organizations you've worked for and maybe some other number, some other project that you accomplished. Why am I saying that? Numbers are the most memorable thing, both on LinkedIn profiles and resumes, and they also help quantify you. So when you have some numbers in your about section, that kind of roll up and summarize your expertise, you're very quickly telling them the depth of your experience and that's going to get them to keep scrolling. I'm also going to tell you, this is a great place to expand upon those key skill sets, which are what? The keywords I've been talking about. So what I like to do is see a nice long list of say, 10 or 12 key skill sets right below that two or three sentence summary. It works like a checklist effect. Again, the recruiter's now scrolling down and going, "Look, check, check, check, check, check. This person has all the things I was told to look for." After that, you're going to move into your Work history. The work history is about keeping it to the facts. Remember the numbers I was talking about? Well, this is the place where we want to see the numbers. I don't want to hear how you did something. I want to hear what you accomplished on the job. This is where numbers play a huge role. Tell me percentages, numbers, dollar signs, things that will help quantify your experience. This shows them your depth of knowledge and understanding of the skill sets and it will prove to them that you can do the job. It also makes it a lot easier for them to go to the hiring manager and justify you as a candidate when they can show them the numbers. Now, after that, the rest of the sections of LinkedIn are pretty self-explanatory, but I do think it's important that you fill them out. Degrees, certifications, volunteering, put in that information, but don't overdo it. You don't need to over explain. Same thing goes for publications, organizations and languages. If you have them, great, but if you don't, don't make something up and lastly, we want to look at endorsements and recommendations. Do you understand the difference between the two? 'Cause I think this is pretty important. Endorsements are something that people that know you click on saying, "Yes, I can endorse that person for this skillset." What's nice about that is that, if I see that you have 20 endorsements for digital marketing, I know 20 different people clicked on that. That can help a recruiter understand how many people feel you have that skillset. Recommendations are slightly different. This is someone on LinkedIn who's taken the time to write out and summarize why you are good at what you do. Again, what's nice about that is a recruiter knows that can't be made up. That somebody on LinkedIn had to physically put that in and post it for you. So having both of these things can help when it comes to validating your key skillset it's also another great place to have those keywords. The last section of your LinkedIn profile is the interest section and it's not one that I want you to ignore. I want you to think about it just a little bit, because this is where recruiters can look and see what you're interested in. Things like who are you following on LinkedIn, top voices what companies are you paying attention to? What groups are you part of? What newsletters are you reading? And what schools do you pay attention to? These are all clear signs of who you are as a professional. Okay, so I hope what you're taking away from this video is that your LinkedIn profile is your marketing teaser copy for your business of one. You want to make this thing so easy for recruiters to read that they fall in love with you. Now, I gave you a lot of tips to cover today, but there's two I really want you to take the time to do, right now. First is your headline. Go find those five or six key skill sets, get them in there and secondly, is that About section, because most people overdo it there. I want you to streamline it down. Remember, less is more in that section. Now, once you've done those, I'll let you move on to the next video because we need to talk about your resume. Go get 'em.