How to make your tech profile more appealing to recruiters
Are you feeling frustrated, defeated or overwhelmed by today's hiring landscape? Do you find yourself applying for jobs but aren’t landing any interviews? Your technical profile, including your LinkedIn page and resume, might be the issue.
Recruiters typically allocate around 5-10 seconds to assess a profile before deciding to look deeper into a profile or move on to the next candidate. Within 60 seconds, a decision is usually made whether to contact a candidate for a specific role. While it might appear brief, years of recruiting have shown that about 50 candidates need to be contacted to find 1-2 suitable matches. This entails sifting through approximately 200 filtered profiles. Let’s discuss the criteria for a strong profile and effective strategies to differentiate yourself.
Optimizing your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn generates revenue through its backend recruiter platform, which enables companies and recruiters to perform incredible searches. This platform offers over 60+ different filters, including job title, skills, keywords, years of experience, and current/former companies. Within the recruiter platform, there is access to your profile picture, tagline, location, industry, most recent three roles, education, and skills match section. It's crucial to optimize these elements if you want to capture a recruiter's attention and encourage further exploration of your profile.
When it comes to your profile picture, here are a few tips to consider:
- Visibility of Your Face: Ensure that your face is clearly visible in your profile picture. Surprisingly, many profiles lack a picture altogether or feature images of buildings or logos. Recruiters are more likely to engage with profiles that convey a human presence rather than potentially automated ones.
- Expression of Happiness: Displaying happiness in your profile picture can make a positive impression. Recruiters typically look for individuals who project positivity and convey a compelling narrative through their photo, increasing interest and overall engagement.
- Comfort and Confidence: Aim for a picture that shows confidence. Casual, relaxed photos tend to resonate more with recruiters than formal shots taken by professional photographers.
Taglines
Now that you've got a compelling profile picture, let's focus on taglines. This section offers an opportunity to convey more about yourself beyond just your job title and company. You can specify the role you're seeking, highlight your favorite technologies, mention programming languages you're proficient in and more. The key is to keep it concise. Instead of listing your entire skill set from your resume, focus on 2-4 key areas you excel in.
Below the tagline, recruiters see your three most recent work experiences. This includes the title, company, and years of employment. It's crucial to ensure that your job title aligns with the position you're seeking and accurately reflects your role within the company. For example, if your company titled you as a Software Engineer but your actual role was a Site Reliability Engineer or Platform Engineer, it's acceptable to use the title that best describes your responsibilities. Similarly, if your company labeled you as Client Consultant II but your role was closer to that of a Senior Systems Analyst, it's appropriate to use the title that reflects your actual duties.
Experience
When discussing experience, it’s crucial to incorporate both skills and education. When it comes to education, only list the degrees you've actually obtained, including the type of degree earned. While the significance of a degree can vary depending on the company, this information offers insight into your overall years of experience.
Skills can be scattered throughout your profile, so it's crucial to list technologies by their specific names. However, approach this section with caution. Some individuals are selective, only listing skills they are highly proficient in, while others include every skill they've ever heard of or are willing to learn. For instance, when seeking candidates with experience in AWS and Kubernetes, it's helpful to filter out profiles that lack these skills to streamline candidate searches. On the flip side, profiles with an incomplete skills section may be overlooked and denied consideration.
Conclusion
It's essential to ensure your profile reflects the positivity you'll bring to a company. Complete your profile with details similar to what you'd include in your resume, emphasizing your strengths while remaining clear and concise. Your profile should align with the type of role you are seeking. While many people are satisfied in their current roles, positioning yourself as the top choice for your dream job with enticing benefits is always advantageous. You never know what opportunities await.
