Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to get more people reaching out to you on LinkedIn.
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Let’s talk today about LinkedIn and asked the question, “Why aren’t you getting enough calls or contacts from your LinkedIn profile?”
Generally, there are 2 reasons.
You haven’t made it easy enough for people to find you. Here’s how to make it easier. You know how in your resume, when you uploaded to an applicant tracking system, the system is looking for keywords in your resume and how they need to be positioned in certain places on your resume in order for you to be found?
With LinkedIn, when recruiters, both corporate and third-party recruiters, are searching for resumes, they are doing much the same thing. The system has to identify you by your keywords in order for you to be found.
For example, all those times that you talk about being a “visionary,” “hardcharging,” “dynamic,” “a top performer,” is taking away from keywords. If you are in IT, you are use to buzz words. I use that is negative slang, as it was intended to. Think of it as what it is you do, the technology employed, the nature of the applications are infrastructure that you work in, and how many people you manage, are the resources on-site or offshore, and get that into your resume.
Again, on-site and offshore are keywords. J2EE JEE are keywords Cisco. Take in terms of the keywords to be found.
If you’re in accounting, GAAP, Oracle, Accounts Receivable,SOX, compliance.
If your financial markets, you may make sure that you mention operations, front office, middle office, back office… You get the idea.
What you need to do is think of positioning your keywords visibly in your LinkedIn profile so it is easy for the LinkedIn search engine to find you, as well.
Remember, from the employer’s perspective, they can’t see a lot about you if you are a 3rd level connection unless they use LinkedIn Recruiter. For those who don’t use LinkedIn Recruiter, they are stil trying to find people AND you want to make it easy for them to connect with you.
In your summary area, I want you to include your email address and phone number if you ae looking for work and just your email address if you aren’t looking.
Why?
The person who gets ahead isn’t always the smartest or work the hardest, although those are great qualities to have. The person who gets ahead is the one who remains alert to opportunities. Sometimes, they are internal to your organization. Most of the time they are external to it.
You may think of yourself as being the happies person in the world at your job, but another $20000 might make you a lot happier and you will probably still be doing great work.
So, make sure your email address and phone numbers are in the summary if you are looking for work. Make it easy for people to find you with useflu keywords and you will notice the numbers of your contacts go up.
By the way, if you are not looking for work and want to make a change to your profile, turn off the notifications feature for your contacts in the config section of your LinkedIn profile. This way, everyone will not be notified when you make a small change. Your boss who you are connected with isn’t going to be notified that you made this small change. Then, turn it back on afterwards.
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Do you think employers are trying to help you?
You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
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