how to optimize your Linkedin profile to get recruiters in YOUR DMs (no frills)

we all know that job hunting is really difficult so if you knew that there were simple things that you could do to make it easier on yourself would you do it if you said yes then you came to the right video [Music] hi everyone my name is Sakura and I'm in Tokyo and today I'm going to be talking about ways you can optimize your LinkedIn profile so that instead of you reaching out to hundreds and hundreds of companies to land your dream job you can have companies reach out to you whether you like it or not whether you accept it or not it does not matter LinkedIn is one of the biggest platforms the professional recruiters use to find their candidates the reason why I'm making this video today is because I was personally laid off in mid-January of this year so I've been kind of keeping my eyes open for New Opportunities and I actually haven't had to do that much research or put in that much effort yet to look for a new job because I have quite a lot of emails coming in throughout the last several weeks and even the last several months and to be honest consistently throughout the last several years that I've been active on LinkedIn having been a recruiter myself and also being in this opposite position I feel like I have a good grip on the really important Basics that you need to get down to be noticed on LinkedIn so let's talk about all that in this video today let's get started throughout this video I want you to keep a few principles in mind first and foremost is that you should always be thinking through the eyes the lens and the mind of a recruiter the second thing is that LinkedIn is ultimately a social media platform having said that let's go to the first section of my video which is the mind of a recruiter if you don't already know this you should know recruiters usually use a very specific tool on LinkedIn called LinkedIn recruiter and essentially it is an advanced filtering search to search for specific candidates that you're looking for it looks a little something like this as you can see there are many parts of the search function that you can utilize right so as a recruiter what do they look at so let's talk about a tangible example when I used to work at Google Japan as a recruiter I was hiring for a very Niche industry and also company called Google Cloud that was looking for senior sales candidates who were in the tech industry but not only that they have to have 5 to 15 plus years of experience in the cloud industry already which kind of narrowed down my search to what kind of companies I will look at because potentially those kinds of people that we would be hiring into the company would ideally have already experienced working in Cloud so one of the easiest ways that recruiters will look for people is by Target companies job titles years of experience location and also if you need language right and another really important thing that I leveraged was what's called keywords where the search function looks for specific keywords in a candidate's profile so I would put in words like cloud or sauce yes pass you know very specific words that you might only find in the types of candidates that you are looking for all in all what you basically need to understand is that when a recruiter searches for a candidate on LinkedIn these are some of the criteria that they look for as well as how specific you can get in the things that you can look for so let's get down to the basics I'm kind of a No-Frills type of person I believe that a good recruiter will try to recruit candidates who are actually good at their job rather than have fancy headlines or whatever so I'm really just sticking down to the bare minimums here but these things are really important because if you can get the basics right that's honestly all you need to do for a recruiter to find you so let's talk about it the first thing that you need to do is make your profile clickable what does that mean kind of like the same thing as uploading a video on YouTube right there are hundreds and thousands of videos on YouTube that's being uploaded every single day so how are you gonna get the audience to find your specific video you're gonna have to make it searchable in the sense that you use words keywords you know thumbnails that will attract the views or attention and say okay that's relevant to me and you also have to make it clickable you have to have some kind of credibility around your profile or your video for people to be like huh okay that looks good same thing with LinkedIn let's go back to one of the first principles that I talked about which is that LinkedIn is ultimately a social media profile which means that people will look at your profile and judge you based off of it I'm sorry that's just the truth so how do you come across boss as a professional person on a social media profile first and foremost add a picture do it I don't want to hear excuses it is so easy pick something that is extremely neutral shows your face maybe not a selfie although it doesn't really matter professional headshot if you want it doesn't have to be anything special or anything that stands out you're not trying to date the person who is trying to recruit you but you should have a profile picture so that when someone looks at your profile they'll be like ah okay that is a real person company names of the places that you worked at as well as your job title the job title is going to be really really important because as I mentioned as a recruiter when your search for candidates you're going to be able to look at specific companies that you want to search for as well as candidates who have the specific job titles that they may be looking for you want to put a job title that is specific enough to share what you're actually doing in the job that you are doing right now but you don't want to make it too Niche so that it's not clickable or searchable the best thing that you can do is search for the actual jobs that you want that you you think you are qualified for and look at those titles and try to mimic that in your own profile obviously the caveat being that you should not lie about your title at all but I'm just saying make sure that it's clickable and searchable if you're doing something like sales professional which is extremely extremely broad you can narrow it down to let's say if you want a specific you know Business Development representative role you can write SDR bdr if that's what you've been doing basically you need to make it specific enough so that it gives the recruiter information about whether or not you would be a fit for that specific role that they've been looking for and also make it General enough in that it's not so hard to find or pop up in the mind of a recruiter when they're searching for you on LinkedIn keywords use a professional summary to summarize the things that you've been doing or at least the things that you've been doing in the most recent job that you had as I mentioned in the example with me hiring for a sales professional in the Google Cloud organization Cloud was a keyword I used pre-sales you know these are words that you would not just find in every single sales professionals profile for example let's say you're a sales leader in retail that's completely unrelated to Tech obviously you would not find those words there because there are specific words that I looked up as a recruiter that I knew would be in the candidates of the people that I wanted to find so one of the key words that you should put on your profile again another good tip would be to just look at the job descriptions that you are applying to that you are interested in and put those things that seem like they're important in that JD and put that on your profile education if you want you can put your University there I don't think recruiters nowadays look too hard into you know looking for people who came from a specific College because I feel like that's very biased and as I mentioned you can even put in a bulleted list of the things that you've done at your previous companies and jobs chronologically in order in your profile section last but not least I would recommend you to put open to work as recruiters can search that in the function as well they can search all of these qualities that they're looking for Plus open to work and they'll only show you a list of candidates who have that open it honestly sometimes doesn't matter if you put that on because if you look like a really solid candidate recruiters will reach out to you anyway because they want to take that chance but it does help to have open to work to let the recruiter know that you'll definitely probably get a response so that you might actually potentially be interested in the role that they're hiring for this is all easy stuff right this is something that you can do you don't need some fancy like magical wizard you know title for recruiter to want to that is a myth you just need to have the good basics down so that a recruiter will look at you and say that may be a potential fit you have to recognize that recruiters when they're on LinkedIn are not looking for the perfect candidate like of course in the sense that they're looking for someone to hire for their role but they are playing a numbers game they're going to be reaching out to tens maybe hundreds of people for the same role that you might potentially be getting asked for next let's talk about Connections right now LinkedIn is sort of like the really old version of Facebook where you can see every single person's activity and your visibility is very very high for example you know back in the days when Facebook you know was very new your friend would like another person's profile picture and you would get that notification in your feed so you're like huh okay I know my friend but okay that person looks like a mutual person that I may know LinkedIn exactly the same right now however what you may not know is that similar to when you search for a person on LinkedIn a recruiter will search for candidates with a specific criteria and then you have to visualize it they're going to be let's say hundreds of people on that list after searching right what you have to understand is that that list is prioritized first by first connection second connections third connections Etc I don't think it's that straightforward going one two three but basically what I'm trying to say is that the more connected you are to the Roku that is trying to find you the higher up on top on the list that you will be when they search for a candidate like you if you have mutual connections that's even faster you'll come right up to the top of that list first of all obviously add people to your network that you already know that you are working with for example people who are colleagues or ex-colleish just start building your connections and your network then start adding people at companies or places that you want to get hired at that you are interested in so that you can start to penetrate that Circle a little bit I'm not saying add anybody and everybody but you have to be strategic about growing your network so that not only you will get the benefit of seeing you know your networks feed and activity but recruiters surrounding that Circle will also see you and in the secondary part that you need to do is going back to the first point which is that everything is extremely visible so you see that a connection has posted about something that you're interested in a role that you're interested in comment on it basically if you are connected to the right people on LinkedIn recruiters will find you that much faster and easier so make sure you take advantage of that and don't let that go to waste the third and final point is talking about credibility as I mentioned LinkedIn is a social media profile which means that anyone can do anything and say anything so so how do you build a credible profile how do you build a profile that a recruiter will look at and say hmm this person seems very professional also this person does not seem like a fake person you can do this in a couple of different ways but here are the top two that I really recommend because it's super easy the first one is going back to my second point of connections just start adding people in your network when you have a certain number of connections people don't even think twice if your profile is real similar to if you were going to a Facebook profile and someone tried to add you and someone who had two friends with no picture try to add you would you find them suspicious same with LinkedIn so make sure you are visible make sure that you have connections I'm not saying there is a special number that you need to hit to become credible but just be reasonable about it just add people that you already know and you should be good to go I think ideally you would like to get to 500 plus but if that seems like a big number to you again don't sweat it just add the people already in your company and in your network that's all you need to do the second thing is actually it does require a little bit more effort but I think can do a really good job of not only getting you noticed and making credible but also to make you stand out which is to get LinkedIn recommendations by other people one cool feature about LinkedIn is that you can actually ask a specific person via DM to write your recommendation that is public on LinkedIn this is found if you go all the way down to a profile at the bottom where it says recommendations and there's two tabs saying received and given so given is the recommendations that you have given to other people and then received is the ones that people have written about you so this is a public credibility boost now the mistake to avoid is picking the wrong people for the recommendations controversial opinion but one of the wrong people to ask for recommendation is is a peer that is lateral to you let me explain why as I mentioned anyone can say anything about LinkedIn how do I know that you're not just friends with that person they just want to write a recommendation for you just for the sake of it if you choose your best friend who's in a random company to the recruiter and looks at your profile what is going to make them believe that this person actually believes in the work that you do that is how you have to think so the right types of people that I highly recommend getting a recommendation from that you already have a trusting relationship with is one your ex managers or your ex direct reports the reason why this is extremely credible is because these are people who actually managed you knows the work that you do and probably has a really one of the biggest insight into your performance right and vice versa if you're a manager it might not be as strong as having your ex manager say it for you because as a manager you know maybe you could get into a situation where you're like power harassing the person to write that about you hopefully not but I think a credible Report with a credible LinkedIn profile writing that about you advocating for you saying that you're a great manager that you're a great leader will speak volumes also the other types of people that you should ask is senior Staples that you work with or just someone more senior than you in general as my own example I have asked two of my ex managers who directly manage me for a long time time I've also asked the manager who managed me while doing the 20 l d project because l d is still kind of a newer part of my career so I wanted someone to advocate for that as well as my work that I did at Google in l d even though that was in my core role and lastly I asked my most senior stakeholder that I worked with in my most previous company he is the one that I did not report directly to but I was the Learning and Development lead for Japan for the CX organization so I asked the head of CX in Japan basically people who will vouch for you in your professional life about your attitude about your commitment about your performance is definitely going to help give you that credibility and help you stand out on your page if you get recommendations from great people who are who also look credible but you don't want to do it for the sake of it don't ask your friends to write a recommendation don't ask your peers someone who has credibility already will add more credibility to your profile too this is already unsaid but it would help if the person who wrote your recommendation also has a credible looking LinkedIn profile I don't think you have to worry about this this much because a lot of people already just have a LinkedIn profile to begin with but that is something to keep in mind so those were my tips on getting your LinkedIn profile optimized noticed it's in search for and clickable which is the most important thing when you want people to come look at your profile for opportunities that they have kind of as a last note here and this is extra because I do think it's important but it's not critical is making your profile stand up more right so what can you do to make your profile even better so that recruiters are like running to you instead of just searching for you I think something that has helped me personally Stand Out is making sure to highlight the unique you know values that I can bring to an organization for example being bilingual here in Tokyo makes you a very very hot candidate in the market so I make sure to put in my language skills another thing that I do is just add a touch more more of that like originality and authenticity so not only do I talk about my job experiences but I kind of talk about My Philosophy towards work in HR and Learning and Development that I have built over the years so that it's kind of like a I wouldn't say a catchy tagline in my summary but people will definitely after reading my summary think okay I know what this girl has done but I also know what she stands for so after you do the basics you know play around with your profile build those connections and I am sure that recruiters will start reaching out to you in no time if you've been laid off like me or if you are job hunting in general I know how difficult it can be to be in that process until much time and effort that you put into it so please just do these simple things on LinkedIn to make sure that you can optimize your profile and your time my name is soccer and I'm in Tokyo and this was episode I believe four of my layoff Diaries kind of documenting my after layoff honest thoughts and processes so if you do feel so inclined please feel free to give this video a like or follow my channel for more some more content I'm also always looking for feedback or suggestions on what kind of content that you want to hear from me so please feel free to let me know in the comments if this was helpful or things that you would want to hear personally alright thank you so much for watching I hope it was helpful for you and make sure you stick around in my channel to see more content like this in the future see you bye [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Sakurambo

Views: 79,071

Keywords: how to optimize linkedin profile, how to improve linkedin profile, linkedin for job seekers, how to get a job on linkedin, linkedin, linkedin profile, how to look for a job on linkedin, job seeker tips linkedin, job seeker advice, job seeker tips, big tech career, career in tech, jobs in tech, how to get a job, google, amazon, microsoft, big tech jobs, laid off, layoffs, big tech layoffs, tech layoffs, tech layoffs 2023, layoffs 2023

Id: M2Lh5Bj1PlQ

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023