How To Stand Out On LinkedIn
By Blog

LinkedIn is one of the best ways to establish your professional identity, grow your network and exchange insights and opportunities with other professionals. An always accessible version of your CV, it’s available for other professionals to discover, even when you’re busy elsewhere.

Think of LinkedIn as a powerful people search engine. Searching for and connecting with new contacts is one of the most popular activities on the site, including employers and recruiters, searching for prospective candidates.

The digital world can be an impersonal one. If you want opportunities to come your way, you need to make it personal. Between filling out past job descriptions and coming up with the perfect summary, it takes some time to make a page that will stand out to employers and peers. But in the current job climate, LinkedIn will be quick to become your best resource, even if you’re not actively looking, it’s in your best interests to regularly build up your network for the future.

Our Recruitment Team has put together their best advice for standing out on LinkedIn. Read on and let us know your top tips in the comments!

An Overview:

  • Your LinkedIn profile should give the reader a quick overview of your strengths, skills, and unique attributes at a glance. So, include a couple of paragraphs in your profile summary to let people get a feel for your personality and skill set.
  • Include key facts and figures that detail recent accomplishments and keep these up to date to ensure you don’t leave anything out.
  • You can also elevate your profile with endorsements and recommendations from others. A few kind words from a respected and successful individual can go a long way in validating your employability and highlighting key skills to prospective employers or recruiters.
  • Keep your current location updated on your LinkedIn profile. This will help you be discovered for local opportunities and will make you up to 23x more likely to be found in LinkedIn searches
  • Use simple and clear language, don’t overload your profile with industry jargon.
  • Include your email and/ or phone number. Tell people how they can reach you. This is the first port of call recruiters will look at so its important to make sure you’re accessible for opportunities.
  • Be warm and enthusiastic in your profile and your responses to people, you never know the future relationships you may have with people when networking.
  • Don’t just tell someone you are results-driven, demonstrate this fact by showing results in your profile;
  1.  Ask yourself, “How did I make money, save money, streamline a process, improve the outcome or contribute to culture?”
  2. Another way to ask this question is, “How do I know I did a good job?” And then describe what that good job looked like.

A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words:

  • A smart profile photo is the first thing that’s expected of you. Your profile is much more likely to be viewed if you’ve included a professional looking profile picture. Studies have shown you’re likely to receive more connection requests and messages if you include a photo on your profile as it puts a face to your name.
  • Use a photo that is professional and appropriate for the type of industry you are in and the type of job for which you are applying. Recruiters and hiring managers want to feel a personal connection with you as a candidate.

Include Keywords:

  • Put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter or a potential employer. What keywords might they be searching for and how? Google Keywords is useful if you are trying to understand what terms employers might be using to locate candidates. Incorporate these words into the summary, experience and skills sections of your LinkedIn profile to increase your chances of being found by the right people. It’s possible for recruiters to land on your profile through search engines like Google, another reason to make your headline stand out.

Stay Current:

  • Recruiters often search for new candidates by searching for their ‘Current position’ so include relevant words in this box, even if you’re not currently in employment. Updating your current position and industry can lead to 8x more profile views.

Summarize:

  • Use the summary section. The summary section is your opportunity to provide the reader the lens with which you want them to view you. This is your opportunity to control your narrative, your story. Consider using first person to tell that story. Also and at the end of the summary, consider highlighting a few of your personal interests that suggest the type of professional you are.
  • A summary that highlights not only your activities, but HOW you achieved those things.
  • Optimizing your tagline with keywords and phrases is very important to your LinkedIn profile. In your tagline, also known as your headline, use the keywords and descriptors for which you want to be found for by hiring managers and recruiters. Use this 120-character area to give the reader a snapshot of who you are and your personality, motivating them to click on your profile link to read further. You can get direction for the keywords to use from target job descriptions.

Use Your Network:

  • Sending an invitation to connect on LinkedIn isn’t enough to really connect. Be one of the few individuals that follow-up on the LinkedIn connection, and send a note to the person. Show that there is a person behind the LinkedIn profile, and reach out. This is how you begin to build relationships. When sending invitations, include why you wish to connect with them.
  • You should only add those people you know or can be of use to you and your career goals. LinkedIn has a mechanism that checks if all the people in your network actually know you. If the majority say that they do not know you, then you’re doomed. Your profile might actually get closed down.

Utilize Recruiters:

  • Recruiters are actively using social media to search for those interested in the current job market. They are constantly searching LinkedIn’s database for candidates that meet the specific criteria and qualifications that they are looking for. It saves them time and it keeps their own profiles active as they often find like-minded people or valuable connections along the way. This is why its crucial to include relevant keywords to the position you’re looking for throughout your profile so it comes up on a recruiters radar.
  • Your profile needs to stand out. In addition, if there are many candidates with the same set of qualification as you, your profile needs to rank higher than the others by utilizing LinkedIn search optimization for you to catch the eyes of recruiters and job hunters.
  • It’s important to optimize your profile in such a way that you can easily be found by recruiters. To do this effectively, you must identify certain keywords and industry terms that you would want your profile to be associated with.
  • Add these keywords to your:
    • Job title
    • Specialties
    • Career experience
    • Personal interests
    • Key achievements
  • Doing this ensures that whenever a person searches any of the words that you want to be associated with (keywords), your profile will appear in the search results. You can also use LinkedIn profile writing services if you need some help in this regard.
  • Recruiters are always on the lookout for discrepancies in the information you give them. If you have a downloadable resume on your website that lists slightly different details of employment to your LinkedIn profile, look out.
  • (*Top Tip – check out our article here to learn more about working with recruiters)

What To Avoid:

  • Avoid all lies, white lies and ‘stretched’ truths. Ensure that all your details of employment including dates, positions held and any other relevant information are correct.
  • Avoid buzzwords and clichés!
  • Obvious, but so many ignore the warning. There’s no point filling everything in and sitting back – keep it current, keep it relevant, keep adding to it.

At Recruitment by Aphex, we’re with our candidates every step of the way, from the submission process right through to the acceptance of an offer. We’re on hand to answer any questions you may have about your role, potential company, CV, or interview technique. We also provide our candidates with mock style preparation interviews with our in-house experts and engineers to ensure you’re feeling completely prepared and confident in your abilities. Want to find out more about how we can help you in your search? Contact us to set up a conversation with our team to discuss how we can help you.