LinkedIn has evolved over the past 17 years from just a site to add your professional experience and connect with other professionals to a tool that is used for connecting, hiring, starting your own business, and upskilling. If you are not on LinkedIn you are missing out on opportunities to be found.

LinkedIn by the numbers: there are 30 thousand companies that use LinkedIn to recruit and post over 3 million jobs every month with 63 million decision makers on LinkedIn. It is no surprise that 95% of recruiters regularly use LinkedIn.

Recruiters pay for some level of premium service monthly and source candidates within the platform as well as outside using Boolean searches and Google. LinkedIn is more than just your profile. LinkedIn is a large database that uses key fields to collect data that is searchable. As a job seeker your goal is to increase the amount of views you receive. It is not as daunting as you might think.

10 Simple Steps to Be Found on LinkedIn

1. Your profile needs to be visible by the public for the x-ray (Boolean) searching technique. You can control which sections of your profile will be visible outside of LinkedIn during a Google search. When you are in job search mode, you will want toggle these sections on and click Public.
2. Have a complete profile or an “All Star” status profile. Your LinkedIn profile has a Profile Strength meter which gauges how robust your profile is. According to LinkedIn users with a complete profile are 40X more likely to receive opportunities.
3. Your photo and a background photo. To achieve “All Star’ status you need a profile photo. By adding a profile photo you may receive up to 21X more profile views and 9X more connection requests. Add a background photo to support your brand and create a memorable story about you.
4. Customize your LinkedIn URL. This is a simple hack that takes under 60 seconds yet it is a powerful message that you are detailed oriented and technically savvy.
5. Ditch your old Headline. The default LinkedIn headline is your title at your last company. Your headline and your photo are the first two sections of your profile that recruiters see. A recruiter’s search begins with your headline so make the most of the 220 characters. Add multiple titles, key skills or a slogan.
   • Software Engineer , Frontend Engineer & Developer , Angular Developer
   • Vice President Sales Management & Business Development , Deliver IT Solutions to Change and Improve Lives
6. The About section has 2,600 characters and should be written in first person and entice the reader. Remember that there are millions of other people just like you with the same experience, skills and education but you are unique. The About statement is how you can tell recruiters, hiring managers and colleges about you and your unique selling position. Optimize this section by including industry standard titles, hard and soft skills, technical/computer skills, key career highlights, and your email address. Recruiters need a way to contact you and most of them are not connected to you so you need to add your job seeker email to the end of your About section.
7. Use Industry standard titles, certifications, and key skills. Utilize as many of the 100 characters available. Repeat your title as your first line of your job description (for example as a TITLE, I managed X researchers and was accountable for Y).
   • Certified Project Manager (PMP) & Program Manager Pharmaceutical R&D Development
8. Skills, add up to 50 skills to your profile.
9. Add Volunteer Experience to your profile. Volunteer work stands out on LinkedIn and you can include more details than on your resume.
10. Connections, by increasing your network you are increasing your chances of being connected to a recruiter or hiring manager. You can’t be found on LinkedIn if you are not connected to a recruiter either 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd degree.

Recruiters will find you by skills, keywords, and industry standard job titles. You can check your own statistics on how you are being found and by what words through your dashboard. The LinkedIn dashboard collects data on how many times your profile is viewed, what words were searched to find you, as well as how many times you appear in searches.