What You Need to Know to Get on a Recruiter’s LinkedIn Radar

March 31, 2014 in Career and Job Search Tips

 

 

Every food & beverage professional knows that you need to be on LinkedIn to: increase your visibility; widen your sphere of influence; build your reputation; and move your career forward.

But the savviest job seekers take LinkedIn activity to a whole new level – by optimizing their profiles for LinkedIn Recruiter.

What is LinkedIn Recruiter (LIR)?

Recruiters have been using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool for years. In fact, 20% of Kinsa’s placements over the last four years came directly from our LinkedIn sourcing and networking / connections. The LIR feature adds robust search and organizational tools that corporate and third party recruiters can use to source and cultivate relationships with both active and passive candidates.

Use these tips from Kinsa to optimize your LinkedIn presence – and get that call for the interview:

  1. Make your resume and profile easily searchable. Searchability is a key feature of LIR, so aligning your profile information with search fields increases your chances of being found by a recruiter. Edit your profile and resume so that they address as many of the following search fields as possible: title, status, source, current company, location, industry, school, degree, field of study, relationship, past company, company size, company type, function, seniority level, years in position, years at company, years of experience, my groups, all groups, profile language, interested in, and when joined.
  2. Optimize your resume. Upload a simple MS Word version of your resume, taking care not to use headers, footers or text boxes. Your file name will display at the bottom of your LIR candidate profile, so choose it wisely (e.g., “Meg Wilson Food Processing Operations Manager.doc” is better than “2014wilsonres.doc”).
  3. Incorporate essential keywords. Food & beverage recruiters are often looking for very specific skills, so compare your resume and profile to the type of position you want and be sure you thread critical keywords throughout both. In addition, include the term “seeking” near the top of your resume, as recruiters are now searching for this word to identify candidates seeking contact about new career opportunities.
  4. Get recommendations right. More is not necessarily better when it comes to attracting recruiters. They may only spend a few moments reviewing your profile and won’t want to scroll through dozens of recommendations. So make every one count. As a rule of thumb, include at least one recommendation for each job you list. Beyond that, only include recommendations that are truly impressive and that showcase your soft skills as much as the measurable results you’ve delivered.
  5. Be selective with the jobs you apply to on LinkedIn. A recruiter can see the number of jobs you applied to with their company, so apply with care. If you indiscriminately submit applications for every job they list, it smacks of desperation.
  6. Be careful with customization. With LIR, recruiters can literally view multiple versions of your resume alongside one another. So if do you apply to multiple jobs with a single employer, be sure that the resume customizations you make don’t confuse your overall personal brand.
  7. Before uploading a profile photo on LinkedIn, read this post.

Get noticed by Kinsa recruiters on LinkedIn.

Looking for your next professional or executive food & beverage position?

  • Follow Kinsa’s Company Page on LinkedIn (where we post our open positions).
  • Join our Group page and network with Kinsa recruiters.
  • Connect with our recruiters on LinkedIn by visiting the “Contact Us” page on Kinsa.com. If you click on each of our name(s) it takes you right to our personal Linkedin Profile(s) where you can invite us each to connect with you… we’d love to!
  • If you see a job posting that interests you on our job board, click our button “Apply with LinkedIn.” It’s an easy way to provide the comprehensive information our recruiters need to get to know you as a professional.