With millions of online C.V.'s at your fingertips, we all know that LinkedIn is a fantastic site for recruiters to source new potential talent. But have you really taken the time to think about the impression that you are making to potential candidates and clients with your profile? Get back to the basics and follow these simple tips to increase your productivity on LinkedIn:
1. Increase your profile's visibility
• Edit your profile's visibility settings - Hover over the 'profile' link and click on 'edit profile'. Beneath your profile photo you will see your URL, click on the 'edit' link next to it. On the right hand side of the page under the heading 'customise your public profile', make sure that you have ticked the box for the setting 'visible to everyone'. Also, make sure that all the boxes are ticked below that so that every part of your profile can be seen.It is important that your LinkedIn profile is easily available for the public to access, especially through search engines; the more visible it is the more attention and authority your profile will gain. To increase your visibility carry out the following steps:
• Personalise your public URL - Follow the instructions above to get onto the correct page. Below 'customise your public profile' you will see the box with the heading 'your public profile URL'. Click the link 'customise your public URL. Remove the long numbers from your URL and replace it with the name of your recruitment agency, for example. This will make you LinkedIn profile much more search engine friendly.
• Be more specific within your headings - if you hold no connections with someone there is a limited amount of information about you that they can see. This is limited usually to your name and job title so make the most of that; specify what kind of recruiter you are not that you are just in recruitment.
2. Remember that candidates are checking you out too!
Once you have expressed some interest in potential candidates by connecting with them, they will check out your profile as they will now be able to see the entirety of it (if they couldn't already). You need to make sure that your profile makes a great impression because this is someone who you want to build a good relationship with. Make sure you complete your profile to give candidates all the information that they need about you including your work and how you succeeded within it.
Take that good impression one step further by building up your recommendations and endorsements. This is easy to do as you can send mail requests for recommendations, or you can simply endorse others and they will usually reciprocate. If you are someone other people have enjoyed working with then you want your potential candidates and clients to know that.
3. Increase your activity
If you're on LinkedIn every day searching for your ideal candidates it can be easy to slip into the false mindset that you are being active on the site. As well as making connections and sending mail privately you need to make sure you are being publicly active on LinkedIn. By being active you will draw people to view your profile and encourage them to interact with you. Follow company pages and join groups within the sector you recruit for. Regularly post updates and share relevant articles that your audience would be interested in, and like other peoples statuses. You will be actively showing, rather than just stating, that you share the same interests as your potential candidates and opening a potential conversation starter. This increased activity will also increase your visibility as people will be able to see you within the member’s lists in groups, for example.
4. Are you attracting the audience you wanted?
Make the most of the 'who's viewed your profile' page which gives you personal stats about your where your viewers are coming from and what kind of people you’re attracting. Is this the audience you had in mind? If not, make some adjustments your content and activity, and continue to monitor your hits - it won’t be long before you begin to see some improvement.
