With more than 330 million people registered with LinkedIn, the opportunities for finding jobs, and being found by hiring managers/recruiters is great. But many people haven’t adapted their profiles to facilitate being found and to encourage recruiters to call.
Keep reading to learn how you can get recruiters to call you, by using your LinkedIn profile.
Connect with as Many Recruiters as Possible on LinkedIn
Adding many connections on LinkedIn including recruiters in your industry, has many benefits. Because 93% of recruiters on LinkedIn use it to search for candidates, you’re opening up your potential job search/career network.
Also when recruiters search for candidates on LinkedIn, the results are organized by the degree of connection (1st, 2nd, Group, etc). While the LinkedIn search algorithm is a mystery, keyword density/placement, number of recommendations, degree of connection, and having a picture all play a role in getting to the top of the list.
The more recruiters you have in your network, the greater the chances of you showing up on their search list. By connecting with recruiters, you’re also making their job easier since they now have another qualified candidate to add to their database.
How to Find Recruiters in Your Industry/Function
In order to get recruiters to call you, you need to find them and get connected on LinkedIn. Find the recruiters in your industry in just 5 simple steps.
- Open up the advanced search feature.
- Filter by the location you want to work in.
- Then filter by the industry or current company.
- Then try keywords such as “recruiter.”
- You can also search by specific roles like ‘Marketing’ to get more specific results.
As you start to search for recruiters to connect with, start with as many specific filters as you can and then gradually take some off in order to grow the size of the list.
Now Connect to Recruiters
Using the list you created from the previous step, send the recruiters an invitation to connect.
For many second degree connections, you’ll be able to simply click the “Connect” button to the right of their name and an invitation will be sent.
If that doesn’t work, try clicking on their name to open up their profile, then click Connect from inside their profile.
If that doesn’t work either, and also for third degree connections, you will see the following options:
You’re in luck if you have some overlap in your work/education background. If not, then go to the recruiter’s profile and scroll to the bottom to see which LinkedIn Groups they are a part of. You can try joining one of those Groups and then often you’ll see another option for Groups, on the ‘How do you know XYZ’ screen. Select that and send your invitation.
Where possible, customize your invitation message to tell them that you noticed they were a recruiter, you’re open to opportunities and why you are a good/relevant candidate.
Now that you know how to use your LinkedIn profile to get recruiters to call you, start getting connected!
Sources and references: Joshua Waldman, who is a job search expert and author of the book Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies.