Are You Invisible to Recruiters? How to Optimise Your Profile for the Algorithm

Let's talk about what we're up against. Recruiters have something called the Recruiter License. This means they use LinkedIn as a powerful recruitment tool, and they can search and filter on every single field and data point that exists on your profile.

It gives them extremely powerful searches. Theoretically, they can find the perfect candidate for every single job.

Therefore, it is critical that anyone who wants to get noticed for jobs understands all these data points and makes sure every box that needs to be ticked is indeed ticked. If you haven't, you are sabotaging your own visibility.

Even with all the sophisticated AI and machine learning, the algorithm is still very much based on matching words. Keywords are important. Here’s how you optimise your profile to make sure you are found.

Hack 1: Use All 50 Skills (And Get Them Endorsed)

Recruiters can filter on the skills listed in your 'Skills & Endorsement' section. You must do this properly.

• Add all fifty skills. You can add up to fifty. Use them all.

• Reorder them. Put the most important ones at the top.

• Get endorsements. If you are endorsed for a certain skill, that gives it more power with the algorithm.

Hack 2: The 'Assign Skills' Trick (This is the big one)

This is a tactic that came in about three years ago, but a lot of people still haven't gone back to do it. And it's really hurting your optimisation and visibility.

It's not enough to just list the skills. You have to assign those skills to other areas of your profile.

Here's how:

1. Go to your 'Skills & Endorsement' section.

2. Click on a skill (for example, "CV Writing").

3. LinkedIn will then ask, "Tell us where you put this skill to use."

4. You can then add that skill to any of your past jobs or projects listed on your profile.

This starts to push all those keywords all over your profile, which helps optimise it. If you have fifty skills listed and you have not gone and assigned them to the other areas of your profile, that's hurting you. I'd go ahead and do that.

Hack 3: Optimise Your Headings and Keywords

Keywords are still vital. Make sure you have mentioned each important keyword maybe two times in each section. Don't overdo it. You don't want it to read like some horrible SEO text. Just be natural, but where there's an opportunity to plop in a keyword, do it.

A great place to do this is in the 'Projects' section. When you add a project, create a heading that uses terminology your audience might be searching for.

Hack 4: Avoid "Orphan Words"

This is a small detail, but it makes a big difference. When you're writing your bullet points in your job descriptions, don't have orphan words.

An orphan word is when you type a sentence, you get to the end of a line, and then one single word just spills over to the second line. It makes your text look messy, higgledy piggledy, and not even.

You want to avoid that. Either work the sentence back to one line or artificially add some words to make it two full lines. It just looks more professional.

Your Questions Answered

Here is a great question that came in during our session.

Q: Is it worth paying for LinkedIn Premium to get more visibility with recruiters?

A: LinkedIn Premium is really useful if you want to be proactive. If you want to start doing more sophisticated searches, reaching out to more people, and being more proactive in networking into a job, then Premium will definitely give you more functionality and power.

Considering that about fifty to sixty percent of jobs are found through your network rather than the bunfight of making online applications, I would say it's not a bad idea if you can afford it.

If you're an interim, a fractional, a contractor, or a coach, you should definitely, definitely, definitely have it. It’s for those people who are being more proactive, and it definitely has its place.