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tags: Module 10
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# Think like a recruiter

One of the core messages we hope to have transmitted throughout our course is that empathy, or putting yourself in someone else's shoes, is a core skill for successful salespeople.

This, of course, also applies to job hunting!

**Before we can start building an attractive LinkedIn profile that opens up the door for new opportunities and attracts recruiters, we need to learn how to think like a recruiter.**

In this section, we will show you how recruiters think and how they source candidates on LinkedIn.
 
## How LinkedIn Recruiter works
LinkedIn offers many different types of premium accounts, one of them being LinkedIn Recruiter. It's a tool that helps companies scour the vast forest of professionals that is LinkedIn to find suitable new potential employees.

This is what it looks like.


 
### How are these profiles ranked?
Ever heard of the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? For a website, it means "optimizing your website and content so that a search engine (for example Google) is more likely to show it as a top result when searching for a certain keyword".

LinkedIn works in a similar way!

:::info
**LinkedIn ranks profiles based on keywords.** The more optimized your profile is with the right keywords, the more likely you are to be found and contacted by potential employers.
:::

In fact, in LinkedIn Recruiter, users can actually search by putting a string of keywords. See the example below!


 
## How to improve your LinkedIn SEO (or your chances of being found)...

Here's an example search from a recruiter 👇


See the two tabs highlighted by the red arrows? Those are potential filters we need to be aware of.

1. **Open to new opportunities**

As a recruiter, you want to increase your success rate by reaching out to people who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. The "open to new opportunities tab" filters the search results by whether or not a person has indicated that they are potentially available.

We want to have this function turned on! (Don't worry, we will cover this in the next step-by-steep tutorial)

 

2. **More likely to respond**

How on earth does LinkedIn know that we are more likely to respond to a recruiter's message than to other people?!

LinkedIn tracks your response rate to InMails. InMails are an exclusive feature for LinkedIn premium accounts that enable the user to send private direct messages to a person outside their network. That's how recruiters are able to reach out to you without connecting.

Every time we don't respond to an InMail, our response rate goes down.

So while you're job seeking - make sure you reply to InMails 😉

3. **Optimize your keywords**

This is how a recruiter sees your profile.


What's the difference between the normal LinkedIn profile view and this one?

- All important keywords are marked in ==**bold and yellow**==. As a recruiter, you have a lot of profiles to scan. Therefore, you want to spend ideally as little time as possible on a profile to identify whether the person could be a great fit for the position. Having all things you're looking for "pre-marked" helps you direct your attention to the things that matter.
- There is no cover picture. This condensed profile view contains only the most important information.
- Recruiting Activity. Here you can see whether another recruiter from your company has already interacted with the profile and to what extent.

What does all of this mean for us?

**Keywords. Are. Important.**

Consider the following when building your profile:

- What are the important keywords for your discipline and/or desired job?
- Where can you put those keywords? Header, About section, Experience, Education, Projects...

:::info
**Mini-task: What Are My Keywords?**

In order for us to know what keywords we need to include in our profile, we need to do a little bit of research. What is the market demanding?

- Go to the LinkedIn "Jobs" section
- Find 3-5 relevant vacancies in your area (For example search for: Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep / Account Executive)

Analyze the vacancies and try to identify the 10 most important keywords for your discipline. Write them down.

:::

Once you've done this, we're ready to begin building your LinkedIn profile 😉

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