I was helping out a buddy of mine recently who is entering the job market. After looking at his LinkedIn profile, I realized he was making some of the same mistakes that many smart executives make. They put up a profile and some basic job description and work history and leave it at that. By not using LinkedIn to its’ fullest potential, you are making it harder to find and hire you. In a job search, you want every available method of meeting people working IN your favor…not against you. An unmanaged LinkedIn profile is just that…working against you.
Special thanks to Steve Gilbert, Managing Director of Passivecast and long-time executive recruiter for some of this info. He’s been coaching me on the ins and outs of how recruiters find new candidates. Here’s what I shared with him. I hope it brings you some value as well.
Hey {unnamed person}, You need to get your LinkedIn house in order. I imagine you’ve had headhunters calling you over the years…but the right ones must not be able to find you or you would have been recruited away a long time ago.
Here are a couple of thoughts for you to tweak your LinkedIn profile, so when you speak with execs & recruiters, they can get what they need…quickly. LinkedIn is the one of the most well used recruiter tools. You need to help them to find you and know you. That way the CEO/CIO/VP contacts you are making sync up with the recruiters. It’s a win-win for you.
- LinkedIn Profile : Your LinkedIn.com profile is not public. It’s got to be public so people who are recruiting via Google can trip across you as well.
- Contact information : personal phone number, personal email address. Available to anyone, do not protect this. Get a GMail account and a cricket phone if you are concerned about privacy. MUST have personal email/phone number listed. If you don’t, you make the recruiters hunt for you.
- Summary : Your Summary is good, but you need to include a few major results of your accomplishments. You’ve got plenty, list a couple of unique biggies. Think bullet items, stay away from very long narrative paragraphs.
- Experience : Your experience section all reads like a job description. You gotta use some bullets and add your business results of the work you did. It must focus on results of what you did, not just what you did or how you did it.
- Recommendations : You need more recommendations from the right people. Target 8-12 recommendations, max! More than that and it starts to get questionable.
- Groups : Once you craft the list of what companies you want to work for and the hiring managers you need to meet, locate their recruiters. Get involved in the LinkedIn groups they have joined. Start making some innovative, smart comments to those discussions. This is a great way to expand your network and warm-up your introduction opportunities.
- Jigsaw : Check your name in Jigsaw and ensure it has your correct work and contact information. Recruiters also use this tool to get contact information for you.
- Facebook : If you are not already in it, get there. Believe it or not, recruiters are using Facebook more and more to find hard to get candidates. This is not their #1 tool, but I would bet it’s in the top 5. Make sure your profile (the public part) includes good information about where you work, what you do and your work history. You don’t need to make everything public, just the work experience part.
- Resume : Try to keep it to 2 pages. Focus on results, not job descriptions. Results are exciting. The people looking for you know what those roles do already. Tell them who you reported to, a little bit about the scope and dive right into results. I can send you mine if you are interested. Ensure the dates on your resume and LinkedIn are in line with each other. Don’t give recruiters a reason to ask unnecessary questions.
The idea is to get many different online tools working in your favor while you work the people connection. One supports the other. Let me know when you have updated your profile and best of success to you!
I’d love to hear your comments about this…agree, disagree, any aha moments for you?
