10 ways to make your LinkedIn profile stand out to recruiters

By 

Sarah Fielding

 If you’ve ever applied to a job on LinkedIn, you've seen that message saying X and Y company has viewed your profile. Sure, that’s the outcome you wanted when you sent in your resume, though it's not who viewed your profile but what is in there that matters -especially if you haven’t done anything to it for a while.

According to the 2018 Jobvite Recruiter Nation Study, 77 percent of recruiters regularly use LinkedIn to find candidates, making it the most popular social media used for this purpose. So, if that job description is out of date or your photo is the one you took way back in your college dorms, you should definitely be serious about updating your profile. To ensure it stands out to recruiters, we spoke to career experts about the changes you can make: 

2. Customize your headline and profile background

LinkedIn assigns both of them automatically: your latest position fills in your headline, and a blue background that looks like a constellation is set to anyone that doesn't create their own. While this may be all you need, having a specific, eye-catching headline and background can attract recruiters to your profile.

“You want a customized headline that quickly tells someone who you are, and what you specialize in,” says Jenny Foss, a recruiter, job search strategist, and founder of career blog JobJenny. "And a lot of people don't even realize you can customize your background, but you can and you should." Not only does this set you apart, but it provides you the opportunity to give recruiters a further sense of who you are. "I'd make the most of it. It's valuable real estate!”      

6. Improve your profile's URL

While it may not seem like much, your URL is what recruiters use to look at your LinkedIn. Proctor recommends changing it from a mix of names and numbers to a smooth and concise link. If your name by itself is taken, or very common, add your degree, location or industry as well. This small move shows you took the extra time to clean up every aspect of your profile, not just the obvious parts. 

8. Explicitly say you're job seeking

There may be other reasons why you haven't heard back from a job application, but sometimes you just come accross as unavailable at LinkedIn. Foss suggests to take advantage of the Open Candidate feature, which allows you to alert recruiters who are using LinkedIn Premium Recruiter. "Let them know that you're interested in being contacted, and spell out what types of roles you'd like to hear about,” she says. While recruiters at your own company are unable to see if you’ve activated the feature, any outside recruiting agencies will be able to see it. But consider this: if you don’t want to disclose job searching to your current company, best to leave this off. 

See all 10 ways and the complete Fortune article