Recruiters use search terms and filters to find the right candidates. Landing in a recruiter's search results doesn't take to be a matter of happenstance. By crafting a search-optimized LinkedIn profile, y'all can rank more highly for the types of jobs you're most interested in.

What are LinkedIn Recruiter and Recruiter Lite?

LinkedIn recruiter is a talent conquering solution that assists enterprise recruiters in locating and engaging prospects for their sourcing needs. Recruiter calorie-free is as well a talent conquering solution, but it assists individuals working in small-to-medium firms with low-book employment needs.

LinkedIn Recruiter and Recruiter Lite make use of search phrases and filters to source the best prospects in the industry.

While recruiters have their method of compiling a listing of tiptop applicants, LinkedIn Recruiter and Recruiter Calorie-free will take into consideration a variety of profiles and user activity to rank its results. Although talent sourcing methods differ, almost every hiring manager either makes use of LinkedIn recruiter or Recruiter light during the recruitment procedure.

How LinkedIn Recruiter Search Works

Ranking highly in a LinkedIn search requires optimizing for both LinkedIn'southward tech and the human tendencies of recruiters. LinkedIn'due south search algorithms consider a variety of profile sections and user action to rank their results, while recruiters have their ain preferences and tricks to compile lists of summit candidates.

A modest business hiring manager might use LinkedIn's advanced search filters to observe task candidates within their network. An agency recruiter might pay for LinkedIn Recruiter to expand their networking and search capabilities. While sourcing techniques vary, virtually everyone uses LinkedIn during the hiring process. In whatsoever of these scenarios, you can improve your search ranking past optimizing key sections of your LinkedIn profile.

Jobscan'southward LinkedIn Optimization tool helps automate this process by analyzing your profile against relevant task descriptions and industry data. Try information technology now.

Headline and Job Titles

The profile headline and contempo task championship are weighted heavily in LinkedIn's search algorithms also as recruiter beliefs. A recruiter is likely to begin their search with specific task titles, and candidates with a matching task championship in their headline and experience headings will announced higher in results.

The headline is the offset major piece of data seen in search results aslope the proper name and profile photograph. You have 220 characters to use in your LinkedIn headline, plenty of space to communicate exactly what you do, your specializations, and/or what role you're pursuing.

The next near prominent slice of information shown in search results is current and past job titles, which might be weighted more heavily in LinkedIn'due south search algorithm than the headline.

"I would argue that [the job title] is your virtually important field, and would strongly recommend that you use the [available] characters to its full potential," wrote Levi Lewis, a search engine expert who researched LinkedIn's search functions during his ain job search. "Instead of project manager, I might say 'Project Manager, eCommerce customer experience for checkout, cart, and post-club.'"

LinkedIn Recruiter search - keywords
LinkedIn Recruiter top results for a "Data Scientist" keyword search in Seattle, WA. Top candidates have the job title/keyword in their headline, electric current chore title, and at least one past job championship.

Across adding boosted data into your task championship fields, the specific diction of your job titles tin can besides be important. It is acceptable to tweak your job title to contain mutual terminology used in your manufacture.

"With championship, at that place's non necessarily a standardization," Jonathan White, a senior recruiter with both bureau and in-house experience, told Jobscan. "You can be a front end engineer, simply perhaps at your visitor they call you front end end developers, software developers, or web developers. There'southward a lot of unlike titles for any given skillset."

Bank check out this video for specific examples of winning LinkedIn headlines:

Keywords

Past experience tin give recruiters and hiring managers a skilful idea of a candidate's capabilities, simply they are highly likely to search for specific skills or keywords as well, either past using LinkedIn Recruiters built-in skills filtering or past plugging all relevant terms into the search bar.

Keywords are the building blocks of your LinkedIn profile. If you want to attract hiring managers, ensure yous make utilize of the right keywords.

"I get into a keyword search and put in different buzzwords that I pull from the specific task clarification," says White. "If I was looking for a front finish programmer, I would put in Javascript, CSS, HTML, HTML5…"

LinkedIn Recruiter Skills
Skills filtering in LinkedIn Recruiter (Data Scientist).

Keywords brand the biggest impact on LinkedIn search ranking when they appear in a profile headline or chore title, but can besides be placed in chore descriptions and the LinkedIn profile summary. Skills and keywords listed in your "Skills & Endorsements" section are searchable but not weighted as highly equally keywords in other sections.

Jobscan LinkedIn Optimization scans your LinkedIn contour and analyzes it confronting three or more job descriptions you provide, adding a level of keyword personalization missing from general advice and best practices.

LinkedIn optimization for recruiter search

About

Your about section can comprise relevant keywords. These keywords could exist industry-related or experience-based. Withal, a mixture of both would be helpful, depending on your experience.

To heave your LinkedIn profile's visibility, employ keywords in your contour summary that a hiring manager could blazon into a search box.

URL

Having a custom contour URL is beneficial to ranking in LinkedIn search results. When a hiring director using LinkedIn recruiter or Recruiter light searches for keywords you have used, a custom URL tin can help your profile rank higher.

You tin can create a custom profile URL past changing the default URL from "…/john-doe-08b73111b/" to "…/john-doe-san-francisco" or "…/john-doe-projection-manager."

Location

"When I searched for candidates in LinkedIn Recruiter, I'd typically begin with the location," said White. "I'd keep it under a 20 mile radius. Sometimes I would even [search within] five miles."

Recruiters aren't just looking for the right skills, they're looking for candidates who are likely to have the task offering. Because of this, some recruiters are more likely to target local candidates at the beginning of their search.

LinkedIn Recruiter location filtering

You tin can't authorize for localized searches without adding your location on your LinkedIn profile. Similarly, listing your current location rather than the city in which you lot'd similar to work tin have the same effect. Explaining to a recruiter that you are willing to commute or relocate is more than effective than hoping they search broadly enough to find y'all.

You should also specify which cities you're willing to relocate to in your "Career interests" settings. When logged into LinkedIn, click "Jobs" in the top navigation bar. Then, click "Career interests" under the search bar to update your location preferences and other settings.

LinkedIn Jobs career interests location setting

Profile URL

LinkedIn contour default URLs are tidier at present than they were in the past, but users are nonetheless wise to customize.

Creating a custom URL has benefits beyond the minimal effect it might have on a user'due south ranking in LinkedIn search results. It looks improve when included on a resume and helps your LinkedIn profile bear more than weight in external search results. If a recruiter or hiring manager googles your proper noun and position, a custom URL tin can help better your profile's rank. For example, change the default "…/john-doe-08b73111b/" to "…/john-doe-san-francisco" or "…/john-doe-project-manager".

What else is keeping recruiters from finding y'all?

Thousands of chore seekers have already optimized their LinkedIn profiles using Jobscan. The Jobscan LinkedIn profile study too checks for:

  • Measurable results
    • White: "Bullet points are good, but knowing what you really did and accomplished is even better."
  • Task hopping and temp gigs that should exist explained
    • White: "If they have inverse jobs every year for the terminal 5 or six years, what's gonna keep them hither?"
  • Consummate education info
    • Every bit with location, forgetting to include your complete educational information (including grad date) could cause you to be filtered out of search results right off the bat.
  • Number of connections
    • Lewis: "The more common connections y'all have with a searcher (recruiter or hiring managing director), the college your profile will be in the results when they search words relevant to your profile." Recruiters can besides specify degrees of connexion in their searches. The more than connections you accept on LinkedIn, the more probable y'all'll be a second caste connection to a recruiter.

Ranking highly in a LinkedIn search is about knowing what information to spotlight for both the LinkedIn search algorithms and the recruiters themselves. LinkedIn users can ameliorate their profile'south performance by strategically including key information in all the right places.


Check out Jobscan LinkedIn optimization to receive tips tailored to your profile and job search.

linkedin optimization