We’re almost done with our LinkedIn like an All-Star series, and your profile should be fantastic if you have been following along and implementing our suggestions. This time, we are going to discuss three very important sections: Experience, Education, and Skills. These areas are very important to your profile because they contribute to SEO (search engine optimization). What does this mean exactly? Breaking it down, it means that when a recruiter, using LinkedIn, is looking for talent to fill a position, initially he or she will enter keywords as parameters for the search. Keywords are words that are relevant and specific to the position for which is being searched. When the candidate’s LinkedIn profile contains these keywords, whether in the Headline, Summary, Experience, or Skills sections (or preferably in all of these sections), then the keyword presence and occurrence increase the likelihood of the candidate being part of the recruiter’s search results.
Using computer algorithms, the recruiter’s search profile and search criteria (part of which are keywords), LinkedIn will recommend promising profiles to him/her in the form of search results, very similar to the way LinkedIn recommends jobs of interest to the job seeker. Again, these promising profiles are placed in the search results due to the presence and occurrence of the keywords, as well as their specific applicability to the position. There are also other factors involved in how LinkedIn’s algorithms calculate search results, but we will focus on what we can control, ie the robustness of our Experience content. So, let’s unlock the mystery of how to make these sections of our profile “search-friendly”!
Experience: To achieve All-Star status, LinkedIn requires a current work experience and two previous work experiences. If you aren’t currently employed, however, do not fret. The content of your experience, if robust, can contribute greatly to your profile’s performance in a given search, and compensate for not having All-Star status. The easiest way to complete this section is to copy and paste your work experience from your resume. This way, you can complete your profile fundamentals without getting overwhelmed. But this is not the most effective way, because resume descriptions are usually brief. Remember, the key to SEO is to make your experience rich in keywords and descriptive. In this manner, the more effective way to populate your experience would be to use wording that makes it more marketable: use relevant keywords (per your industry), job descriptions that will resonate with recruiters, skills that describe your value to an organization, and performance indicators such as metrics that quantify your organizational impact.
When clients are stuck on what words or phrases are appropriate for their current position, or the position they are seeking, I advise them to find a similar job from one of the ubiquitous job sites. Once that is done, the next task is to locate key descriptors in the description, and those that are applicable to their experience. Finally, I instruct them to work the descriptors into their Experience section in LinkedIn. For an example of a keyword rich, value-added, performance-indicating experience, view the work experience for the “Corporate Commissioning and Validation Engineering Services Manager” position in my LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/nykkymccarley.
Education: Simply add schools, institutions, and relevant training to validate your credentials. Education can also be used to network on LinkedIn, as you can increase your connections by connecting with alumni as well as by joining alumni groups.
Skills: To get started, choose at least 10 that reflect your capabilities, relevant to the job you seek. Once you become familiar with LinkedIn, add more because you have at least 50 skills you can select. Based on the information with which you’ve populated your profile, LinkedIn will also suggest skills for you, making it even easier to select ones that are appropriate. Skills are also used in the search criteria recruiters use to find talent, so maximize your ability to be found by selecting all of the skills you can!
Hopefully you are finding this information helpful as you proceed with your job search. As always, feel free to contact me with any questions. Stay tuned for the final installment of this six part series, where we’ll discuss Connections, Recommendations and Endorsements!