Are you tired of spending countless hours on LinkedIn searching for the right job and applying for open positions with no response? Does it feel like you are spinning your wheels?
Well, if you are reading this post, I suspect the answer to both questions is “yes”.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find a way to just sit back and let recruiters find you? Well, guess what? You can! It is called “pull job searching”. When you are implementing pull job search strategies you are attracting employers and recruiters to your brand with relevant content. “Push job searching”, on the other hand, means pushing your brand to employers and recruiters. That typically comes in the form of applying for a job.
Keywords
Plain and simple, recruiters use keywords to find you. If you have the right keywords in your profile, you are exponentially more likely to be found. Applying the principles of SEO to your LinkedIn profile, you can boost your LinkedIn profile visibility by incorporating keywords. According to JobScan, “you need to make sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized for LinkedIn’s search algorithms by incorporating relevant keywords into your profile sections. This way, you can appear in the search results and increase the chances that the recruiter will open your profile.”
Hiring managers use simple keyword searches or Boolean searches to uncover profiles that match the criteria in their job openings. The more targeted your profile keywords are to a specific occupation or industry, the more likely you will be found in a search. Without keywords, your profile will be lost among the other 830 million members on LinkedIn.
PRO TIP: The top six LinkedIn fields most searched for by recruiters are Job Title, Professional Headline, Skills, Industry, Location and About Section.
There are dozens of SEO keyword research tools to uncover top keywords to use in your profile such as Moz Keyword Explorer, SEMRush, and Google Keyword Planner. However, these platforms are typically designed to help businesses or consumers drive traffic to their websites, not job seekers to their LinkedIn profiles. The best and simplest way I have found to find occupation-specific keywords is ChatGPT. At the prompt, type in “What are the most popular and searched-for keywords when sourcing for [name of occupation]?”
You are hopefully convinced now of the importance of keywords in your profile to pull recruiters to you. Start by incorporating these keywords in the fields most searched by recruiters followed by additional searchable fields like Experience and Recommendations. After your profile is bursting with relevant keywords, direct your attention to developing Creator content which stands as another great method of pull job searching.
If you get stuck and need some help with your pull job search strategies, call on me anytime via LinkedIn or email. I am here to help.