Why you need an error-free LinkedIn profile, or The Hiring Funnel (1)

Reflections in Retirement: I don't get a salary anymore, so I can write what I think

Old Canadian joke:

Two fishermen are walking in the woods. They get to a clearing, and there, eying them, is an obviously very hungry bear. One of them whispers in terror, “Do you think we can run faster than a bear?” And the other one replies, “I don’t have to. I just have to run faster than you.”

Back in the day, I used to give seminars in how to use body language effectively in job interviews. But as so often when you teach one subject, you learn something else. In this case: people on both sides of the desk have little idea of how the hiring process works, and what I'm calling the Hiring Funnel that companies go through from "job open" to "job filled". To start the seminar, I would tell that joke, then spend the rest of the time discussing what it means and how it applies in job searches.

So imagine an IT company looking for a developer. They have one position to fill, and they put an ad somewhere where they figure developers will see it. Within a week, they have one hundred applications. (Stay with me – the real number doesn’t matter.)

Now, sorting these and reading these and looking through the LinkedIn profiles for everyone who applied is somebody’s job, and it needs time and thought and some knowledge of what’s required in this developer position.

But here we come to the real point of this article: nobody wants to be wrong. Or let’s phrase that a little differently: people are much more afraid of making a mistake than they are happy at getting something right. Or even more pointedly: if a recruiter hires a screw-up, everybody in the company will blame the recruiter. If the recruiter hires a superstar, everybody in the company will give the credit to the superstar. The consequences of being wrong are much more serious and longlasting than the advantages of being right.

So the recruiter’s first and primary job is to locate the screw-ups – the unacceptables – and reject them, long before they are considered as candidates. The first step in the “hiring funnel” is to drastically reduce the number of candidates.

Now the definition of ‘unacceptable’ can vary from recruiter to recruiter. Some definitions are illegal: race, gender, and skin color, for example, cannot be legally used to put someone in the ‘unacceptable’ pile. Other definitions require effort – assessing someone’s background or education takes time, work, and knowledge.

But one definition is beyond argument, completely legal, and utterly impartial – and it can be implemented with remarkable speed. Mistakes in your LinkedIn profile simply and quickly disqualify you from further consideration. If the recruiter finds “their are several” – “I would of” – “acheivement” (just to pick really silly examples which I have actually seen) – then that recruiter can simply stop looking at your profile and go on to the next, reducing 100 candidates to, say, 10 in under 15 minutes. Any mistake at all disqualifies. You only get to move to the next level if there are no mistakes.

Now your non-obvious goal in applying to a position isn’t to get hired – it’s to reach the Top 3 Shortlist of Candidates. (The reasons why can wait for a future article.) To get there, you don’t have to be the best, most qualified candidate - you don’t need to run faster than the bear. But you do need to start by anticipating and correcting all the elements in your profile that would get you rejected – all the mistakes in spelling, grammar, consistency, usage. Otherwise, everybody else is running faster than you.

That means that you need a, well, perfect LinkedIn profile. You know all those times when you read that “a LinkedIn member looked at your profile” - and nothing came of it?

You did something worng.