LinkedIn Profile SEO: How to Be Found

Based on my experience sourcing on LinkedIn, here is a list of profile hacks.

To be found more often, both on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Recruiter, do this:

• When you enter your data, follow prompts and selections – do not enter unusually spelled names
• Use your industry, not your company’s
• Your companies should point to company pages on LinkedIn; same for schools
• Use standard job titles (e.g., “Software Developer” not “Chief Coder”)
• Do not enter years of study – this way, you will be found by any range of years of study
• Add a degree or certification abbreviations to your last name (but only if it is relevant to your job search, e.g., add CPA, CISSP, etc., but not necessarily a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree.)
  • Otherwise, do not abbreviate words
• LinkedIn does not search for words in the “Accomplished” sections. If you graduated with honors, got certified, or won a competition, say so in summary
• Do not put the closing dates on the last few jobs – you will then be found for each keyword in the job titles or companies *)
  • You can add a fake job with just the title you want – or say it in the headline. This is all to be found
• Explain your skills and experience either in summary or in the last 1-2 position descriptions:
  • What have you done, and what was achieved?
  • Write concrete facts and figures; do not praise yourself
  • Vary the ways you speak about the job, phrase your skills in different ways
  • Run Grammarly
• Take skill quizzes
• Add 50 standard skills to your profile
• Add languages’ knowledge
• Go easy on your part-time activities, hobbies, and family
• Be alone in your profile picture
• Get at least 500 connections with LIONs
• Add a publicly visible email address to your profile
• Join relevant groups
• Share content on your timeline and run polls
• Respond to others’ professional content, @mention them
• Attach your resume to the profile and say so upfront in the summary
• Do not change default settings except email notifications
• Get a premium account and allow everyone to message you
• Turn on “Open to Work” when you are ready

To find LinkedIn members who will have missed this post, take LinkedIn Recruiter Mastery.

*) Note: the advice here is on how to be found. In your resume (perhaps, even attached to the LinkedIn profile,) and any interactions with recruiters and interviews is it better to be truthful. If you are out of work, you may want to write about your work history in the past tense.

(Also, check out How I Read Your Resume: a US Recruiter Notes)