how to optimize your linkedin profile

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Presents !

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Agenda • How does LinkedIn rank profiles?

• What steps to follow to improve rankings?

• What would a recruiter type to find your profile?

• How to find the right keywords?

• How to optimize your LinkedIn profile search?


•93% OF ALL RECRUITERS USE LINKEDIN to find candidates

•200 million registered LinkedIn users !

With so many people signed up how do recruiters find us? • Recruiters use search strings to find registered users

• A simple search string would be BA + Job Title

This would show candidates who have a bachelor’s degree and have either held or are currently holding “Job Title”.


Try it yourself:

1.Go to LinkedIn.com!2.Click on Advanced Search right beside the search bar!3.Enter in your city + your Job Title!4.Look at the total search results

http://LinkedIn.com


How does LinkedIn rank profiles? In other words how come some people show up first in search while others with the same job title and a bachelor’s degree ranked 50,000?

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LinkedIn much like google uses an algorithm to show profiles in search. It checks for keywords users type into search in a few places and returns the

one profile who has that “search string” in his profile in the right places.


“We can drastically improve our rankings if we follow a few steps” !

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What would a recruiter type in to find your profile? In order to rank number one we first must find out what an HR department or a recruiter would type in for a certain job position.

For Social Media Manager we would want to find keywords like Facebook, Twitter, paid advertising etc.

For a Sales Associate we would want keywords like customer service, prospect, cold call, sales, etc.


How to find the right keywords? •Pretend that you are a recruiter and do a few searches using the advanced options •Analyze the top 10 result •Write down keywords that you see coming up frequently •Do a search for your desired Job position and gather a few job descriptions •Write down the skills, qualifications, requirements, programs etc


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How to optimize your LinkedIn profile for Search Assuming that we know what job we are after and what keywords we

need to include in our Profile, it is time to start optimizing!


LinkedIn Headline

This comes right after your name

Example: For our sales person this section could look like this:

Include a minimum of one major keyword you are after and don’t go over 3.

Account Manager, Salesforce expert, and Sales Manager


LinkedIn Profile Summary • Here we have 2000 words to use. Don’t write an essay but make sure to

imbed all of your keywords in a professional statement.

• Read it over and make sure it flows naturally, we are writing for recruiters and not for machines primarily.

Example: “Achieved 20% increase in Sales while building long lasting relationships with major sales accounts”. Utilized Salesforce on a daily basis to generate prospecting lists etc.


Work Experience •Feel free to add to your titles

Example: Company Name: Account manager and Customer Service Specialist

•Naturally use keywords in the description of your position •Use keywords in jobs where they do not go naturally

Lets say that you held a part-time job as an administrative assistant. Here I would also use the words “sales” and “account manager”. You can simply state “Provided support to sales team and account management staff”.

•If we use a keyword in all of our job descriptions and job titles we will naturally outrank most profiles. •Read it over and make sure it makes sense to human eyes


Skills • List all the skills we found on the job descriptions (Make sure you know them,

even slightly familiar will do the trick)

• Do not list skills, programs that you have no idea of (Think about the interview, this will not go over well)

• List all the major requirements

Interests • List all the keywords in your interest


Optimize your profile and then experiment. Change

keywords around and do a search to see if your profile comes up.

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For more career hacks and awesome giveaway contests visit thecareerhacker.com

http://thecareerhacker.com


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