10 Top Tips To Get Headhunted On LinkedIn

More than ever, people are being recruited on LinkedIn. But some people have a more “headhunter friendly” profile than others, and some are more accessible than others. Not everyone has taken the time to really look at the potential of LinkedIn to get them noticed. And its not just about recruitment – it’s also about business networking. The more that potential new clients can see about your skills set , the more they will buy into you.

1. Treat your LinkedIn profile like your CV – put a full amount of detail into each role, including clients, activities and highlights. This will give a clearer picture of what you do and also make it look like you’ve taken LinkedIn seriously. Make sure you add relevant dates and don’t make it confusing. Some people simply update their current job title and tweak the detail a little to reflect their new responsibilities – as you would on a CV. But many people add their new job title as a new employment entry, complete with the dates they’ve held each job title. This is also very useful, but make sure you add the details of what your new position entails
2. Write out entries accurately. If you’re an account manager, write out ‘account manager’, not ‘Acc Manager’ – this will put you down the job title search rankings. Forget the comedy as well. You often see financial directors list themselves as ‘chief bean counter’ – eliminating their profile from search results. LinkedIn has worked around this to a degree with tags, but it relies on you using the tags!
3. Treat it like a business tool – not like Facebook. That picture of you looking professional is probably more appealing than the one of you in a nightclub after a few drinks. Even a picture of you with your kids is probably too personal. There’s a reason LinkedIn doesn’t let you add a photo album; Nobody cares
4. Be thorough. Fill out your education, with dates, and your interests, just as you would on your CV. This is good for new business – if your potential new client has a shared interest for example, it can make a nice talking point at the end of a conversation
5. Optimise your profile. There are various different ways to do this, including adding more text, such as an intro paragraph, with key works such as ‘technology PR’ inserted. (Many people bullet point their key skills and sector expertise here, or even clients worked on overall). You can also use tags now to pin against your profile, such as ‘Corporate Communications’, ‘Public Relations’ etc.
6. Recommendations make your profile strong – but try to make them creative, or specific about projects, and a recommendation from a client is stronger than from your line manager (although both are great). There are no negative recommendations after all, so it looks better when it comes from someone who didn’t need to recommend you, unless they really wanted to
7. Don’t hide. Join groups to open up your network to a wider audience and/or share in discussions. These groups often have new business leads and you don’t have to take part in many (or any) conversations. They often have job board as well. It’s a good idea to let people from these groups contact you. Too many people close up their profile, so you have to have an email address simply to contact that person. If you open up direct contact to other people in the same groups instead, it’s much easier for both headhunters and business leads to contact you. In six years of using LinkedIn, I’ve had maybe 4 spam emails (touch wood!) – so this is not an issue (yet). And if you don’t want to connect to someone, you can simply ignore them without a problem. LinkedIn has good safeguards against nuisance – but don’t make them too strict
8. Extras. There are various apps you can add in to your profile, such as Slideshare, that lets you upload a PowerPoint presentations, or Blog Link, that allows you to connect your blog. It’s also a good idea to connect your Twitter feeds and website (personal and/or company). Not only does this provide even more insight into you, it also helps to optimise your profile for Google searches
9. Get connected. The more connections you have, the more you’ll get connected, simples. This also optimises LinkedIn’s suggested connections – and LinkedIn has become very good at doing this over the last couple of years. It’s almost a cardinal sin to describe your social media skills on your profile and yet only have a handful of connections. After 500 connections, LinkedIn stops counting them and just says "500+"
10. Delete duplicates. If you move job and you have to leave your old profile behind, you are quite within your rights to have that profile taken down or made anonymous after you leave. And you should do. This saves confusion, and makes sure you don’t miss out on leads. If you don’t, it can make you look ‘digitally messy’. Remember to rebuild your profile – don’t just start from where you left off

The other advantage of doing LinkedIn well is that you now have a CV template that you can tweak and adapt at any point in your career.

Gloom vs Boom: Who To Trust?

Let’s face it, it’s a pretty confusing time right now, marketwise, with seemingly conflicting reports on the health of the economy.

On the one hand, there have been some very promising predictions recently from PR business leaders such as Hunstworth’s Lord Chadlington (PR Week 6th April 2012) and WPP’s Martin Sorrell (Campaign, 1st March 2012).

Lord Chadlington, whilst acknowledging a sustained slump that led to a restructure in Huntsworth’s agencies, has predicted a strong improvement in profits for 2012 “…both in the first half, and for the year as a whole” and that there were “strong signs the market is improving in quite a big way”. Adding weight to Chadlington’s assessment, Martin Sorrell’s WPP had already, in March, announced an increase in revenues of over 7%, netting a record £10billion revenue – although it should be remembered that WPP does cover several marketing disciplines. Certainly, Chadlington’s comment that there is a ‘volume of business…primarily from clients that had previously been holding off…” is reflected in the market, with a surge of new job briefs in the second quarter this year so far. But still, the candidate feed isn’t keeping pace.

Could this be because, rather than listening to industry bigwigs (who might, as some must be thinking, have a somewhat vested interest in painting a rosy picture), candidates are instead listening to sources such as the BBC and Evening Standard droning on about job cuts and the recession, and watching the voters punishing Cameron and Osborne’s austerity plan at the ballot box? Very possibly. How many PRs read PR week as frequently as they click on BBC News online?

However, this would be the wrong mindset – the market is buoyant, and while some clients have indeed cut budgets, others have increased theirs. During the 2008 recession, it became clear that there was a steady, but sure, turning off of the taps across the board. There were no exceptions. With this double-dip, however, there is a great variety of responses, possibly reflecting different strategies. So really, candidates should be taking advantage of these opportunities and heading where the money is.

I would say that wouldn’t I. So don’t trust me, but instead take some advice from Sir Alan Sugar, and ‘smell what’s selling’.