Quick Adjustments To Get Found By Recruiters Faster

How can we improve your SEO capability so Recruiters like me find Candidates like you - faster.

April 01, 2023

Intro

Searching for a new job can be so grueling. Ironically, a job search can be one of the hardest jobs out there to do.

While you are actively searching for a new job, you should also have your resume posted online & your LinkedIn profile updated.

When they’re fully updated and SEO friendly, you can attract recruiters like me to reach out to you while you are out there applying to jobs and networking, thus doubling your job search effort.

Now you might already have your resume posted and LinkedIn updated, but here are some tweaks below you can make to get better results.

Job Titles via Resume

Most ‘corporate’ job titles are extremely generic. Software engineer…Application Developer…Staff Engineer…etc.

Each of those titles can mean a million different things from a Java Dev, .Net Dev, Python Dev, UI Dev, or even to DevOps or Data Engineers.

When recruiters like me go on job boards like Dice or LinkedIn, we have the option to search candidates by title. A lot of us search for “Java Developer” since it is more specific to narrow down our searches vs “Staff Engineer”.

Here are some tweaks you can make

Old: Application Developer

New: Full Stack Java/Angular Developer

Old: Software Engineer

New: AWS/Cloud Engineer

Old: Staff Engineer

New: Data Engineer

LinkedIn Headline

This is the first thing we see on your profile when we are searching on LinkedIn.

Remember - recruiters use a separate platform called LinkedIn Recruiter - it’s a completely separate site that somewhat mimics a job board to source LinkedIn profiles.

On this site, recruiters can search by title, keywords, boolean, skillset, location, and more. Further, it will help make it SEO friendly so you continue to end up in specific searches.

So if you fix your headline to make it a bit unique, it will help ‘stop the scroll’ from recruiters to click your profile so they don’t keep scrolling down pass you.

Here is a quick framework to help rewrite your headline: What you do, With what tools, What you’ve done

Old: Senior Software Engineer

New: Sr. Software Engineer | ReactJS, NodeJS, AWS | Building Out Consumer Credit Platforms

With this new headline, not only will it “stop the scroll”, but it will further help you pop up in keyword/skills based/boolean searches.

LinkedIn Bullet points

Continuing the momentum of my last point: recruiters have the option to search by boolean (like a job board), keywords, listed skills, title, etc. Just like a job board.

What does that mean we should do? Have your work experience mimic your your resume.

We don’t need to include every single bullet point, but the top 3-5 of each position will do the trick.

Most people leave out bullet points here and save them for their resume. Let me tell you, recruiters and HMs will not think less of a candidate if they have the same or similar bullet points on their LinkedIn profile with their resume.

When you make this adjustment, you’ll pop up in more relevant searches and get more relevant DMs from recruiters like me.

Open to Work via LinkedIn

Recruiters on LinkedIn Recruiter have the option to search by a candidate’s job search status.

One of those options is filtering out candidates that have “open to work” listed.

You have the option to let everyone know you’re open to work (green banner will show up on your PFP), or just to let recruiters know and that banner will not show up on your PFP.

Here’s what it looks like. Recruiters like me can check off any of these boxes to help narrow down the search. So, I can click the open to work tab + active talent to help narrow down the candidate pool.

Job Board Activity

When we are on a job board - let’s use Dice for example - we can search by a few different filters when conducting a search:

  • By most recent resume updated: it will pull candidates in order by who’s resume was uploaded or updated most recently that’s relevant to your search

  • Most relevant resume: regardless of when it was uploaded (could be today or a year ago), it will show in order what it thinks is most relevant to your boolean search

  • By activity: a combination of relevancy but also by who’s logged into their Dice profile most recently that also fits your boolean

All you need to do to hack this is log into Dice (or whatever job board) every few days, click on a few jobs, and you’ll go right back up to the top of the list for when recruiters search by activity.

CTA

Make these quick adjustments and you’ll be on your way to your next job!

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