The Invisible Man - Part 1

Dear recruiter,

I am currently employed, but I am secretly looking for a new, better role. My colleagues shared that they receive many messages from recruiters on LinkedIN about new opportunities on regular basis. We work at the same company, have the same title, same amount of industry experience and skills, yet I have not been approached once!

What am I doing wrong?

Yours truly,

The Invisible Man

Dear Invisible Man,

I feel your pain.

But first, let me say this: don't believe everything your colleagues say.

Sure they may have received couple messages here and there from recruiters, but trust me, it's probably not as much as they would like you to think, so don't feel bad or jealous.

Luckily, there are few ways you can improve and optimize your profile so that recruiters will be able to find you.

So what is it that recruiters look for?

Let's first look behind the scenes and at the different search criteria recruiters can utilize with LinkedIn Recruiter.

The image below shows what the Advanced Search looks like. (I know it's small so feel free to zoom in)

As you can see the options are endless.

We can search by job titles, seniority, years of overall experience, years of experience in current role and/or company, company size and type, location, current and past companies, current industries, college and university degrees, year of graduation, field of study, skills and my favorite, KEYWORDS. We do love our Boolean search, so for each category mentioned above we can also pick and choose to exclude profiles with specific job titles, companies, schools etc.

You get the idea.

So what does this all mean for you, job seeker? How can you optimize your profile so that you will appear in a recruiter's search?

1. Complete your profile

I know this may seem like a no-brainer but it's a good place to start. Take a look at your profile. How complete is it? What is your profile status? What can you add to get to the next level?

You can add many sections to your profile including current and past roles, education, licenses and certifications, skills etc.

The more sections you complete, the better. You should aim to be at least on the Intermediate Level, or higher.

Make sure your current location is correct, and you always keep your profile up to date and include any new changes like promotions, new role etc.

2. What's in a [job title] name?

Especially in the localization industry, but in many other industries as well, job titles could mean different things company to company, so having no information about what you do day to day is of great disservice to your profile.

For example, your title is Account Manager, but what do you really do? Are you managing a book of business? How big? Are you cross-selling/upselling? Are you responsible for a specific territory? Are you hunting for new accounts? OR are you managing projects? What kind of projects? For what clients?

You get the idea. Including as much detail about your role and accomplishments will increase your chance of appearing in a recruiter's search.

Which also brings me to my next point...

3. Keywords, keywords, keywords

Remember how I mentioned BOOLEAN search earlier? Most of our searches are done this way, so having as many relevant keywords throughout your profile is extremely important. They don't have to be in just one section either, sprinkle them as many times throughout your profile as applicable, especially in your "About" section and under each role. Good things to include are (depending on your background and industry):

• Software and tools you use (or have used in the past)
• What type of clients do you work with? What industry are they in?
• What type of services do you sell or provide and to whom?
• What kind of projects do you work on? In the localization industry these may include voice-over, subtitling, e-learning, website, etc.
• What languages do you speak?
• Have you lived/worked in other countries than your current base?

It's also a good idea to think about the roles you want. What keywords do you see in job ads for those roles? Do you have those skills or experience? Add them as keywords to your profile!

4. Open profile, privacy and communication settings....

Now this one is extremely important. You could have an All-Star profile with all sections beautifully filled out, and containing as many industry-related keywords as possible, but...

if your profile privacy settings are too restrictive, recruiters may not be able to find you, or contact you

First, under privacy settings make sure you enable messages and InMails.

InMails allow others who are not connected with you to message you. In most likelihood, a recruiter will not be your immediate connection at first, so if you block all InMails, a recruiter will not be able to message you.

Second, edit your Public Profile Visibility.

This image shows all the options you have.

While it's not necessary to share your profile or background photo with everyone if you are not comfortable with that, I'd highly recommend that at a minimum you set the following items to "Show"

• Headline
• Summary
• Current Experience AND Details
• Past Experience AND Details
• Education (you can skip the details on this one)

If you make everything private, our search will not correctly pick up on your profile, and you will continue being "invisible" to us.

5. To be or not to be....open to work?

Now I know there's been sooooooo much endless debate all over LinkedIN about this one. But did you know that you do NOT need to add the green banner and still be able notify recruiters that you are open to work?

Why is this important?

When we search for candidates (sometimes, but not always) we may look at and consider only those candidates that are open to work first, before looking at everyone else. So if you are looking for a new role, it's a good idea to have this feature turned on.

You can select the type of roles you are looking for and where; I created the above just as an example to show you what it looks like, and what the options are.

At the very bottom you can also choose who can see that you are open to work.

If you are currently employed, but casually (or not so casually) looking for a new role, I'd suggest going with the "Recruiters Only" option. This option is private and will only be visible to recruiters.

If you are not currently employed and are very actively looking for a new role, I'd suggest the "All LinkedIn members" option, which will also add the green "open to work" banner to your profile picture.

Contrary to certain influencers trying to sell you stuff you don't need and random posts on LinkedIn from people who have never done recruiting, I actually don't know any recruiter who would use that green banner against you! So if you are comfortable with putting it out there, do it!

Optimizing your profile is the first step in increasing your visibility in recruiter searches, so go back to your profile and see what you can improve and what settings you might need to change.

Then check this space for part 2 in which I will share few details about the LinkedIn algorithm and how to make it work in your favor, the power of networking, and give you some additional tips that will boost your LinkedIN profile and catch the attention of recruiters.

Till then,

Your favorite translation industry recruiter,