Article "I'm a designer at LinkedIn. Here are 4 tips to attract more recruiters" written by Katie Jacquez for UX Collective
Understand how recruiters source candidates on LinkedIn and how to optimize your profile to improve your chances of being found
Last month nearly 60,000 employees in tech were let go (Visual Capitalist). Economic headwinds, a change in leadership (hello Twitter and Elon Musk), and pandemic-fueled hiring sprees are cited as a few of the varied drivers (Q.ai. November 2022. Waves Of Tech Layoffs — Which Tech Companies Are Cutting Their Workforce And Why? Forbes).
If you are one of the many people impacted, you’re likely looking for your next play. The good news is that companies are still hiring, it’s just a matter of identifying and landing the right position (Estrada, Sheryl. December 2022. These 10 employers are still hiring tech and finance talent like crazy. Forbes).
Your job search should include a push and pull strategy, where you actively reach out to people at companies you’re interested in, and one where recruiters and hiring managers come to you. This article will help your pull strategy; I’m going to show you how to optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract recruiters and hiring managers.
BACKGROUND
Before we dive into actionable tips, it’s important to understand how LinkedIn works.
YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE IS A SEARCHABLE PAGE
Your LinkedIn profile is a page, like any other page on the internet, with keywords that can be searched. When a recruiter is looking to hire a candidate, they use a tool called “Recruiter”. Recruiter basically is a search engine that combs through LinkedIn profiles. To give you an example of how it works, let’s say a recruiter is looking to hire a UX designer in New York or remote and is looking for someone with systems thinking, wireframing, and usability testing skills. Each one of these is a keyword they type into Recruiter. LinkedIn profiles with these terms will be more likely to appear at the top of the results page.
RECRUITER SURFACES CANDIDATES MORE LIKELY TO BE INTERESTED IN A ROLE
It’s important to understand how recruiters matching algorithm works so you can make the most of it. Think of it as seeing the rubric for a class before starting the semester; you will then know what to do to succeed.
LinkedIn Recruiter “require[s] not just that a candidate shown must be relevant to the recruiter’s query, but also that the candidate contacted by the recruiter must show interest in the job opportunity.” (Sahin Cem Geyik, Qi Guo, Bo Hu, Cagri Ozcaglar, et al. 2018. Talent Search and Recommendation Systems at LinkedIn: Practical Challenges and Lessons Learned).
Recruiters matching algorithm uses a variety of signals to determine how likely a candidate is to be interested in switching jobs, such as turning on the ‘open to work’ feature, response rate to recruiters messages, and overall engagement on the platform.
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE
Before joining LinkedIn, I thought the experience section was the only way to attract recruiters. I’m going to walk you through small steps you can take to optimize your LinkedIn profile for visibility with recruiters with your work experience and beyond.
Name and headline
This is an underutilized portion of your profile. Rather than just stating your name and current role, you can use your headline to provide more context about you. For example, Harrison Wheeler, is a design manager at LinkedIn and the host of the Technically Speaking podcast.
People actively looking for a job can use this real estate to indicate what types of roles they’re going after. For example, Emma indicates that she’s “looking for 2023 internship”.
Use a headline that is consistent with your industry; recruiters typically are not looking for a “Design ninja”. Furthermore, be specific. “Design @ LinkedIn” could mean a variety of positions with different levels of experience, from associate, to mid-career, to management. “Senior Product Designer @ LinkedIn” is specific and will attract recruiters with open roles appropriate for your career goals.
ABOUT SECTION
Next is the about section. This is especially useful for career switchers who likely do not have work experience in their desired field. When I was going from marketing to UX design, I was still getting messages from recruiters for marketing roles.
The about section is where you can weave your prior work history to the new role you’re going after, highlight your strengths, and tell your story. For example, Kristine Yuen is a design manager at LinkedIn and previously worked as a consultant for Deloitte. She uses the about section to explain why her consultancy work makes her a better designer.
As a career shifter, your prior work history gives you a unique perspective. In fact, teams with diverse experiences, thinking and background perform better than homogenous teams (Beilock, Sian. 2019. How Diverse Teams Produce Better Outcomes. Forbes).
To illustrate how your non-design work can be a strength and not a hindrance, I previously worked as a marketer and strategist. Today I’m a designer at LinkedIn building products for the people and teams I used to work with. This experience helps me empathize with customers to build better advertising products.
EXPERIENCE
Daniel Dinay, a hiring manager at Marqeta, says his recruiting team leans heavily on the experience filters in LinkedIn Recruiter. If a profile comes up in the search results, he may have less than a minute to look at a profile, so keep the experience section pithy and scannable. For each role, show the core responsibilities, any results or value you brought to the team, and awards or top accomplishments. If you’re a career shifter, you can tailor your prior work experience to highlight any relevant experience to the new role you’re going after. Staying at a company for several years shows loyalty and success within an organization so add any promotions to show career growth and progress. This will show up as a timeline in each role.
Christine Liao, ex-manager on the Recruiter team at LinkedIn, encourages users to add contextual skills to specific roles in the experience section; it helps a recruiter understand the recency of a skill.
SKILLS
In addition to adding skills in the experience section, there is a dedicated section in the profile. Skills directly surface in LinkedIn Recruiter so list any skills that align with the type of role you are seeking. If you’re not sure what to include, cross reference profiles of people with the job you want. UX designers may want to use terms such as:
- UX design
- UI design
- Product design
- Interaction design
- Systems thinking
- Wire framing
- Prototyping
- Usability testing
Reorder your skills so the top three skills shown on your profile align with your job search. These skills will be most likely to be endorsed by colleagues which help with credibility. You can do this by hitting ‘show all skills’ and the ‘reorder’ button in the overflow drop down.
If you’re shifting careers, remove skills that are no longer relevant. For example, I removed most skills related to marketing and replaced them with UX design skills. After making this change I received more messages from recruiters for UX roles than marketing roles.
Finally, you can have up to 50 skills. Max them out — it only increases your chances of appearing in recruiters search results.
NEXT STEPS
Once a recruiter has reached out, it’s time to start networking. If you’re interested, keep the lead warm; respond promptly and set up a discovery call. Even if you’re not ready to apply, you can use the opportunity to build a relationship, learn more about the role, and the company culture. At the end of the call you can ask for a referral to a designer at the company to get an insider’s point of view and see if the company and the role is the right fit.
CONCLUSION
Looking for a new role during industry wide layoffs can be discouraging. But have hope; when one door closes it creates space for another to open. Companies are always hiring and there are tools at your disposal to attract recruiters and hiring managers. Optimizing your headline, about, experience, and skills for the role you want will help you appear higher in recruiters search results, ultimately helping you find your next play.
*This article was inspired by conversations with job hunters and a deck created by and co-presented with Kristine Yuen. It was reviewed and vetted by design managers on the Recruiter (Christine Liao) and Profile team (Lisa Chen) at LinkedIn.