Tips for optimising your profile

Whilst I can’t actually quote you any hard and fast figures, I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that social media plays a bigger role than ever in recruitment processes. Many candidates I speak to report daily approaches either from recruiters or companies directly on a platform such as Linkedin.  

Unlike perhaps an unsolicited phone call about PPI or one asking about your current heating installation, a simple mail asking if you might be interested in a role it’s not so offensive or indeed intrusive. In most cases, if not interested folk ignore them and they go away without further consequence. For many people I speak to now, unlike over a decade ago, they now report there last few roles found them, rather than the other way around!

If course, if you are in the market for a new job, it’s different, there’s nothing you want more than pro-active approaches from people who’ve already decided your profile fits looking to secure a role for you. But here’s the bit I thought I could help with. So often candidates report little or no pro-active approaches and wonder why. In these cases a quick look at their profile usually reveals a simple reason that is easily rectified.

Let’s start by revealing the basic approach for anyone using Linkedin trying to find someone else. It’s the same for a recruiter trying to find a candidate, or indeed a candidate trying to find a recruiter, they use a Boolean search. So for example, if I want to find a Medical director with experience in Venous Thromboembolism in Berlin, I would type into my search box “venous Thromboembolism” AND “medical director” AND Berlin. The AND is a simple means of combining different search terms or phrases. The “” are a means of searching for phrases other than just individual words, so above will find only profiles highlighting “medical director” together, if I remove the “” then it will find profiles with Medical and director but not necessarily the two together.

If you are with me so far, now consider it the other way around. If you are a Medical Director who is an expert in Venous Thromboembolism in Berlin, but on your profile you’ve put your job title as “ Medic - Pharmaceutical” and in the Headline listed “Cardiology” as a more general label of your expertise, then as the recruiter the search above is not going to find you.

So what am I saying? Who ever you are on social media, you need to consider who you would most like to be found by and what they will be searching for and construct the main parts of your profile accordingly.  

Your job title is an obvious starting point. The pharmaceutical industry can be a bit of a hotbed for creativity when it comes to job titles. As an example, a few years back one client renamed their Product Managers “Solutions Managers”.  Whilst I quite liked the narrative behind this change at the time, any individuals changing their job title to this on social media, immediately ensured they will no longer attract people searching for talented Product Managers.

So if you are keen to hearing about new job opportunities try to standardise your job titles to the industry ‘norms’ for what ever job type you are interested in, steer clear of company specific choices of job title.

Beyond the job title, the next most important piece of content is the ‘Headline’. If you click edit on your profile you’ll see the headline box, you’re allowed 200 characters. I suggest you use them all wisely with content to describe what you want to be found for. If you are a business development expert in clinical trials, and you’ve already listed your job title as “business development” the Headline is your opportunity to add content around your clinical trials background, perhaps therapy area details and such like.

To summarise, if you are looking to attract attention, rather than thinking of social media as an opportunity to list anything and everything about you or your business, focus the early part of what you would like to be found for, and ensure your key profile content is aligned to what people will most likely search for I looking for this.