Explore the profiles of people that have the job that you want and see what you're missing. It's a good idea to filter by alumni of where you went to college/bootcamp. This will help to have “role models” to copy from.

Play it safe!

Your life preserver is to be The Obvious Candidate. And what makes a candidate obvious? Well, if you were a recruiter tasked with finding a Sales Manager, would you want to take a chance on someone who earned a master's degree in art history and has spent a few years fundraising for a human rights nonprofit? Or would you prefer someone who's been a Sales Manager at a firm where you personally know a few people?

Your profile

Profile picture and background photo

Have a great profile picture. I recommend you to see photos from the people that is working where you want, since in some cases is better to have a suit on and in other cases just a t-shirt. 

Use a nice background image. Like the profile picture, check other people's background. You can use something related to your job, an architect that builds buildings, can use…a building background. Usually the most obvious thing is the best, specially in a risk-averse scenario. Go to a royalty-free image website, like pexels.com, for access to thousands of beautiful photos.

Headline

Search for your desired job and word cloud all the job titles. Example: Front End Developer | Software Engineer @Accenture. 

Cover Story

A Double-Edged Decision One of the things that elevates a LinkedIn profile above a resume is that it can provide a deeper sense of the human being behind the accomplishments—your photo, your story (in the About section), and the lives you’ve touched (via the Recommendations section). So it comes as no surprise that when 1,009 hiring managers were surveyed about their preferences, 76 percent felt that seeing a video of a candidate would be useful.

Example: “If you’re looking for a Customer Success Manager for your start-up, you’ve come to the right place. As the second Customer Success hire at Trindle, I helped build our very first CSM dashboard and reduced churn by 27 percent. And now I’d love to bring that relationship-building expertise and passion for working with clients to an organization that’s ready to grow quickly.”

About Section

LinkedIn automatically condenses the About section to 330 (computer) or 130 characters (phone). This works out to about one to three sentences before you're cut off by a "See more" link. So make that first impression count by focusing your first couple of sentences on the key job titles, locations, and skills the recruiter is looking for.

You never want a recruiter to bail on you just because they're running up against their limit of thirty InMail's per month. So always include your email to make it easy for the recruiter to reach out: Looking for an amazing Accountant? Contact me at jsmith@gmail.com.

First part example:

Accountant with a passion for leading complex ERP projects. I'm thrilled to take my project management and forecasting skills to Seattle to help an amazing Energy firm plan for the future.

Second part example:

► Helped manage the Debate Team's budget through careful forecasting and controls, leading to surpluses the last three years. ► Created a cost accounting system as an intern with local start-up, allowing company to balance its books for first time. ► Provided pro-bono investment advice to Boys & Girls Club, helping generate a 10% return.

The keywords are the bold ones. The key points gives the value provided by the candidate to the role and gives measurable results. Adapt this to your desired job.

Job experience

When describing jobs, you need to storytell with the added value that you brought to it. Also, when in doubt about which hard skills to include, check out a site we love called Jobscan.co. This site automatically compares your uploaded LinkedIn profile or resume to the job descriptions written by the recruiter. Keyword + Impact = Amazing Bullet.

Example: Led a team that managed a 50+ client portfolio, launching the firm’s first app download campaign while partnering with stakeholders to minimize risk and streamline client communication. Increased annual revenue by 150%, and team performance by 33%.

This is very similar to the About Section.

Educational experience

Don't just name-drop an academic accolade; contextualize it. For instance, instead of saying "GPA = 3.5," show them the full picture: "Earned a 3.5 GPA while working full-time to put myself through school." Instead of, "Received the Susan Smith Scholarship," give them the whole context: "Was one of just three students out of a student body of 20,000 selected for the full-ride Smith Scholarship, based on outstanding community service."

PS: The way of writing this section is exactly the same as the about and job experience sections.

Skills

Add all the skills that you want to work with. If you know SQL but don't want to work with it, don’t add it. Also try to reach the maximum (50). Don’t bother on endorsements. If you have time do the tests, it will rank you a bit higher in the searches.

You should add your keywords and skills not only in the Skills section, but also in About and Experience sections.

What to avoid in your profile

• Spelling errors on your resume.
• No headshot photo on your LinkedIn profile - or, increasingly, not a good one.
• Not having relevant experience in your background.
• Not explaining exactly what you did in your previous roles.
• Not demonstrating a clear impact in your previous roles.
• A lot of buzzwords.

Settings

• Open to work. Go to your LinkedIn profile, select "Open to" and then click "Finding a new job". Fill in your job preferences. You can list up to five specific job titles. You can choose to share with all LinkedIn members that you're looking for opportunities (which will add a #OpenToWork photo frame to your profile pic) or share with recruiters only. It’s also important because LinkedIn lets recruiters limit their searches to only candidates who are open work.
• Head over to your Settings, click the “Data Privacy” tab and then “Job seeking preferences.” Toggle on the “Signal your interest to recruiters at companies you’ve created job alerts for” button: This is a little-known way to not only raise your hand to recruiters at a specific company, but to raise your whole arm.
• Make sure you have an email address connected to LinkedIn that you check regularly rather than some old account gathering dust. In fact, LinkedIn may even block you from receiving new recruiter messages if you don’t respond to recruiter messages within a certain time period, or turn off your “Open to Work” Bat Signal (see here).
• Change the industry on your profile to where you want to work (Example: Energy).

The Bigger picture

How the algorithm works

LinkedIn is based on keywords and connections.

Use keywords to rank higher in searches:

• The Headline is the single most important part of your entire profile - to both the computer and the human. Make yourself an Obvious Candidate by including the exact job you want - Project Manager, Sales Development Representative, ER Nurse, etc.
• A well-written About section is like a 30-second highlight reel of your career. It's the second place for the algorithm to crave for keywords so use as many as you can.
• Your location must be either where you want to work or if remote, the most useful place. Example: you live nearby a big city, put that big city on your location.
• Follow the company. You can follow all the companies that you want to work. Also the ones that you don’t known but are in your industry.
• Connect with people working at the companies that you followed. Prioritize to connect with 2nd degree connections, former colleagues and fellow alumni.

Build a great network:

• Follow people who work at places that you want to work, specially the recruiters but as well other employees. Follow those companies.
• This will help you to appear higher in the recruiter searches and if you are not connected, at least be a 2nd grade connection.

Make the keywords work for you. Maybe you did some part-time accounting for the debate team. Don't only talk about your parliamentary gifts (which the algorithm couldn't care less about); Mention how you balanced the team's budget. You now get credit for that critical keyword "budgeting," even if it took place in an extracurricular context.

Recruiters

Your goal here is to catch the limited attention of the recruiters, which in average expend 7 seconds to read a resume. Your LinkedIn profile will have the same luck.

Recruiters are risk averse. Which means they're looking for candidates that look exactly what they're looking for (ps… they don't exist). No recruiter in history has ever been fired for screening a Senior Software Engineer for . . . a Senior Software Engineer role. Your goal is to look like exactly like the position that you’re looking for.

Recruiters must say no. If they have for example 200 applicants but can do only 20 interviews, well they need to find the most little thing to disqualify you.

Recruiters checks your digital footprint. According to a Jobvite survey, 93% of recruiters are likely to look at a serious candidate's social media profiles. CareerBuilder reported that of those who do, 57% have found content that caused them not to hire a candidate.

Is it fair? I don't know but I do know that we need to keep controversial profiles private and the public profiles, red flag-free.

What the recruiter will have in mind when sees your profile

Can this person do the job? There must be a match between the job posting and the person experience and skills.

Am I excited about this person? Basically, what is the impact that the person made on the job. You can complete this with metrics and your value provided, not just what your job was like.

Referrals

Apply the School filter. First, select your target company to identify current employees, then click the “All Filters” button and search for your desired school. Now you can find fellow alumni.

With your employee directory in hand, let’s take a tour of six different ways to get a referral—no matter how small or selective your desired firm is.

Example: Hi Leena, Long time no talk! Hope all’s well. I just came across this role at Disney [insert URL here] where I think I could be a great fit. Any chance you’d be willing to refer me for the role? If so, I’ve attached my resume here. Thanks for considering—it would mean so much to me! Truly appreciated, Daria

LinkedIn Premium

“Is LinkedIn Premium worth it?” Short answer: Nope. Longer answer: It depends. But there’s a free month so you can make your choice.

One advantage is that you can use LinkedIn Insights to get information about your desired company and show it in your interviews. Example: “I noticed that your sales team is growing at a rate twice that of comparable companies . . . ”.

Applying for jobs

Recruiters are eight times more likely to grant you an interview when you apply in the first ninety-six hours. If you see a job is open, do not delay. The sooner you apply, the sooner you can be considered and hired (Don’t worry, however, about applying within the first hour, since that doesn’t make much of a difference).

Set up your job alerts. Then, set aside time in your schedule to review the newest postings every day. Ideally, do so in the morning; recruiters tend to review candidates earlier in the day.

Apply Broadly. Don't worry about being underqualified. Lots of candidates won't apply for a job unless they meet all the criteria. But that's a huge mistake, given that recruiters generally want or expect candidates who meet only 50 percent of them.

Don’t care about being underqualified. Lots of candidates won’t apply for a job unless they meet all the criteria. But that’s a huge mistake, given that recruiters generally want or expect candidates who meet only 50 percent of them.

Do apply strategically. Now, just because you have to apply to ten+ jobs per week, it doesn’t mean you should apply randomly. To increase your hiring odds beyond 1 percent for any given job, consider adding these “All Filters” parameters for your search: Under 10 Applicants: LinkedIn keeps tabs on how many candidates have applied to each job.

Take action

Set aside a time - ideally the same time - every day for the job search.

Focus. All those actions won't yield results unless they're focused. While firing off your resume far and wide like a bazooka or clicking every "Easy Apply" button you see on LinkedIn may feel productive, it's not.

Figure out the right role for you. Identify at least five target companies that you really like, even if the right role doesn't (yet) exist there. Example: I want to work at a crypto startup, let's see exactly what I need (keywords for the resume, skills, companies where to apply, etc.) and position yourself for that specific role.

Set a weekly goal for job applications—ideally, at least ten per week. Why that number? Well, if we stick with our 1 percent chance of getting hired per application, then you’ll have a pretty sound chance of landing a job after several weeks of applying at this rate. Even if these applications don’t lead to offers (and one eventually will), just getting more interviews along the way will give you both positive feedback and valuable experience to sharpen your interview skills. Have your friend hold you accountable—by empowering them with a shared goal.

Check LinkedIn Learning. It has hundreds of short modules on how to rock your interview.

This was based on my reading of Linked: Conquer LinkedIn. Get Your Dream Job. Own Your Future by Omar Garriott and Jeremy Schifeling. I highly recommend you to read the book.