Is Your Linkedin Fit for Purpose? (5-10 minute read)

The first thing I'm going to suggest is to decide on your why - Why do you even have LinkedIn?

For myself, as a recruiter I'm obviously here to connect with the best candidates for roles I'm working. However there's much more to it than that, which would be a very short term way of looking at what we do. Our roles require us to always be building on that network to keep us up to date with the regular changes, as well as preparing for future roles even 12-18 months down the line. For this we need to remain visible to the right people too which means altering our profiles to accommodate that. On the other side, I'm not looking to make myself highly visible to being approached by other recruiters, so there's no CV or big team/individual revenue figures on my page either, which would probably be detrimental to my objective: To support my professional network, particularly in the commercial areas of the life science industry.

So, first things first, decide what you want and tailor your LinkedIn to fit that. If you are actively looking, tailor this in the same way you would do your CV because a major point to make here is to ensure you understand how LinkedIn works.

As the biggest job board in the world, LinkedIn is an integral part to any job search whatever your industry and, at 2 new members every second, is rapidly growing further beyond the 660 million users it has every day.

If changing roles is your purpose, understanding how to find the right role out of the 20 million live jobs, at the right one of those 30 million companies registered is key.

That starts by understanding that everything that is written is searchable - every title, adjective & bit of punctuation on profiles and job boards. As recruiters we don't leave it open to happening to stumble across your profile, we use what is known as 'Boolean searching'. In a way this is almost like very simple coding to narrow down your profile out of the 660 million. This usually involves including "AND" + "OR" to seek the key things we are asked to find and filtering out those that may hinder that search using "NOT".

So, for the typical Business Intelligence role I'll work on, a simple version of a search could look like this...

("Business Intelligence" OR B.I OR insights OR intelligence) AND ("Sales force effectiveness" OR SFE OR "Commercial Excellence") and I could run this same search in 'jobs' to find the kind of roles that suit the candidates I've just connected with.

So if your profile doesn't include your experience written as at least one of the words in each of those brackets, you won't be appearing in the search. This does also challenge us as recruiters to ensure we include every different way possible of writing certain things. E.g. If you've put "BI Manager" without the full stop, or "field force excellence" instead of "sales force", you might have the perfect experience but you won't appear in the search. That's why in reality a search we would run looks a lot more complicated than the above.

There's two sides to this point: use Boolean phrases when looking for jobs relevant to your profile and ensure your LinkedIn makes you visible to people searching for you.

• LinkedIn isn't Facebook but content & engagement is key still. Posting relevant material to your market adds a value to your network's newsfeed - whether that's relevant job adverts, industry news or whatever, you will know what works best. According to data-driven marketing experts Omnicore, less than 1% of users share weekly content, despite "91% of marketing executives listing LinkedIn as the top place to find quality content". Source:https://www.omnicoreagency.com/linkedin-statistics/

Try to remember these five simple tips;

1. (Why?) Decide the point of what you're doing with content. If you're purpose is to add value to your market then keep it relevant and to the point.
2. (What?) There's a lot online about not overthinking your content, a lot of online/digital marketeers will tell you we aren't posting enough and the majority of posts are left to a select few. You should know what suits and what would add value, which is a lot easier to do if your network is within one profession (see my next point on connections later on).
3. (When?) Timing is everything - posting on a Saturday night is unlikely to grab many people's attention (I don't feel there's too many times you can make the point about LinkedIn and Facebook being separate). There's a reason this was written on the weekend but not posted until lunchtime on the first Monday most people are back. I tend to post job adverts on Fridays for those who are actively looking on the weekend and may not have time to search on their desks at work, but I would save content to a time people aren't trying to switch off from their markets/jobs and head home.
4. (How?) The how you post is more of a visual point I wanted to make. The homepage/newsfeed whatever you want to call it has obvious social media traits that many may not have properly thought about. In particular, everything is a scrolling action - seen once then gone). If your post is to be read then you'll need to quickly catch the attention of people with a catchy headline or a picture to stand out from the mass of text (and pet/children photos - cue the Facebook quote reminder). I've also found an increase in views on posts I've added symbols on. Brynne Tillman has written an article you can simply copy and paste symbols from which can be found here (LinkedIn Symbols), but there are also plenty more online. I would advise those actively looking to add some form of symbol/colour to their Headline for the same reason.
5. Personalise it. In a way forget all of the above, because your CV, your profile, the content you create etc. are all an image you want to portray - so make it your own.

Connections. You will have probably seen the 1st, 2nd, 3rd connection icons. Having a focused network within a similar profession to your own will help with your searches when connecting to like-minded people. This is particularly important for specialist recruiters who focus on a specific market, but also candidates who may be/become hiring managers, and those who wish to engage in the conversations relevant to their market only. To help you understand it I've broken down the meanings below:

1st connections - Those you have actually connected with (and hopefully plan to engage with?)

2nd connections - Those who share a 1st connection with you (good for introducing you or bringing up mutual connections in interviews to break the ice).

3rd connections - Everybody else basically. If you have a lot of these when you run searches it's likely your network is more social than professional.

Headlines. If you're actively looking to engage for whatever reason then don't underestimate headlines. I've mentioned to add in some colour to stand out above but that's a very minor point, your headline in reality should be around a 100 character intro into what you're trying to do or who you are. If you're actively looking then be upfront about that: "Actively looking for a Pharmaceutical Brand Manager role". It doesn't have to be clever, it also doesn't have to be just one thing (I've used symbols on mine to break things up) but that is something that can definitely be personalised.

Realise that your headline plays a huge role in attracting people to your profile as it shows up whenever you appear on another post or timeline. Every comment you make when you're engaging with others will carry your headline underneath & maximise reach...

LinkedIn Recruiter/Open to new opportunities?

LinkedIn recruiter is a completely separate view to what the standard account has. One of the many privileges is to view additional statuses & stats of our network. When viewing our search results, two of the categories candidates are divided into are; "More likely to respond" (means you are active - another reason to engage not just hold an account) & 'Open to new opportunities'. If you are open to hearing about things then make sure you have this option selected. It can't be seen by your current employers and it also doesn't mean you are actively looking to leave, more, open to approaches to see what's out there. LinkedIn will regularly check in with you to make sure that is really the case, if you don't respond they'll turn it off.

Tips that shouldn't need an explanation:

1. Don't post your CV on your LinkedIn with your full address on (better yet, take your address off your CV and just put the town, it's irrelevant at this stage)
2. Make sure you have a professional photo
3. Be careful who you're following (in all seriousness this is a big one for the 'This isn't Facebook' moan, going through security clearance for a pharmaceutical company who find you're following multiple anti-animal testing groups is going to be a problem)
4. Connect with recruiters relevant to your field (use a Boolean search to find them)
5. Keep your personal updates/photos to other platforms
6. Keep unpopular opinions away from your keyboard (strong political, religious, socialist views have a place, be wise!)
7. Double check for errors and get a second opinion
8. Keep your profile updated - your roles/achievements, your charitable work everything. Remembering to involve key words to appear in our searches.
9. Remove irrelevant or basic key skills
10. Make it yours! Personalise it, after all this is basically your modern day CV it should be specific to you.

I've tried to focus more on the do's than the don'ts, ultimately how you portray things is up to you but if nothing else, understand how LinkedIn works so you can tailor your idea to get the best out of it.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on the above, directly or via the comments and of course reach out if I can help.