90% of recruiters, both in and out of tech, use LinkedIn for hiring purposes. Hence, having a powerful LinkedIn profile is as important for your tech career as a strong resume. Follow these points to polish it up, and recruiters will flood your inbox with prospective offers.
Include keywords… Recruiters strongly rely on keywords and boolean search when looking for prospects. For instance, here is an example of the boolean search string for finding a Python developer: (programmer OR developer) AND python AND (mysql OR postgresql) AND (django OR flask) AND (chef OR puppet OR sentry). As you can see, all the relevant keywords must be present in the headline and summary of your profile, as well as in other sections.
…but don’t do it if you’re quite selective. If you want to be reached only by the most determined recruiters, omit the primary keywords, (e.g. ‘Java’), and mention only the relevant technologies, (e.g. ‘Spring, Hibernate’).
Know your Zing. It’s something that differs you from other candidates. Find your Zing and add it to the headline of your profile. For example: Software Developer at Amazon | NodeJS, React, Ruby, Rails, AWS | Agile Evangelist, Public Speaker.
Get visible. To let recruiters know that you’re up for a new challenge, click on the ‘Career interests’ section of your profile, and choose the appropriate status. (‘Actively looking’ might be the best choice.) Also, go to ‘Me’ > ‘Settings & Privacy’ > ‘Edit your public profile,’ and switch on ‘Show’ for all the components.
Describe your experience properly. It might take some time to do this, but the end result is worth the effort. Instead of just listing your past jobs and companies, describe your most notable achievements, (ideally with numerical proof). Trim down your less important responsibilities so your really impressive accomplishments stand out. Focus on the most recent projects and don’t bother describing your old work experience in detail.
Avoid buzzwords. ‘Familiar with,’ ‘team player,’ ‘proactive,’ ‘hardworking,’ ‘thought leader’… These and similar collocations should appear neither on your resume nor your LinkedIn profile.
Highlight the scale of your projects. LinkedIn already has basic information about almost every company, (its size, location, etc.) When describing your past experience, focus on more interesting facts like the number of users, TBs of data, revenue, or transactions per day. (Surely, if it’s not under the NDA).
Voila! Your profile is now ready for the job search, and all you have to do is to enjoy the recruiters’ attention.
What about your resume? Use CV Compiler to see how it stacks up compared to the best practices in the industry.
Top comments (1)
Thank you so much for sharing this detailed information. Some time ago I wanted to create the linkedin profile then I consult with theinacademy and they guide me all of these and some other rules to create attractive and authentic profile. I followed all the rules what they told me and now my profile is getting more views.