Why recruiters don't find your LinkedIn profile? 🐙

You don't show up in LinkedIn searches. Here's why.

739 views. 324 applicants. 3 days. 1 job post experiment.
Here’s why recruiters on LinkedIn cannot find your profile ↓

Keywords might not bring up your LinkedIn profile in people & candidate searches.

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The Inspiration 🌀

It’s a tough job market out there.
Generic advice like reaching out to people for connections or referrals isn’t working like it used to. You should be “discoverable”.

I wanted to see how my profile ranked for a “Software Engineer” role among the 100s of other applicants. And get it to the top.

PS: I have minor experience in technical recruiting at a previous company.

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The Setup 🧰

I didn’t use LinkedIn Recruiter (the de-factor portal for recruiters) since there’s a whole “Contact Sales” process I did not want to get involved with. They also charge a hefty fee for access.

Instead, I made a free job posting:

• Position: “Software Engineer”

• Company: “Stealth Startup”

• Location: “San Francisco Bay Area”

• Workplace: “On-site”

• Job type: “Full-time”

I also used the most generic default job description template & default skills LinkedIn suggested for “Software Engineer”, along with an honest message describing what I had in mind.

The generic job description provided by LinkedIn for a Software Engineer, with the added message of this job posting being an experiment.

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What I observed 👁️

For candidate applications using LinkedIn Easy Apply, here are some things I observed:

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Profile sections visible to me:

• Name

• Profile Picture (smaller version)

• Headline

• Experience

  • First 2 experiences are immediately visible. Rest lie below the fold “Show x more experiences”.

• Education

  • First 1 education is immediately visible. Rest lie below the fold “Show x more educations”

For each applicant, only their name, profile picture, headline, top 2 experiences, and top 1 education sections are visible.

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Other things visible:

• Email (submitted via Easy Apply)

• Phone (submitted via Easy Apply)

• Resume (submitted via Easy Apply)

  • You get notified when the job poster downloads your resume

• Screening questions’ answers (submitted via Easy Apply)

  • Each answer is check-marked, whether it satisfies the job post requirement or not

Submitted details such as email, phone, resume, and screening question responses are visible for each applicant

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Job Poster actions I could do:

• Rate a profile as:

  • Good fit

  • Maybe

  • Not a fit

• Message candidate

• See full profile

• Download resume

• Forward application to someone via LinkedIn messaging

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Positive signals 💚

• If your profile’s Skills section and the job’s Skills desired have overlaps, you rank higher.

• If your “Open to work” / “Open Candidates” / “Job preferences” section has a job location same as the job post location (just the state is fine too), you rank higher.

• If the job post text has similarity to the text on your profile (descriptions, bio), you rank higher.

• If the recruiter messages you on LinkedIn, an automation can mark you as a “good fit” (can be disabled by job poster).

• If the recruiter has previously reached out to profiles similar to you, you rank higher.

Job Preferences section on your LinkedIn profile shows work intent + preferences

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Negative signals ❌

• If you don’t have an active “experience” / job

  • All the candidates who ranked lowest did not have an active job experience at the time of posting.

  • Sadly, this doesn’t consider current ongoing education.

  • If you add in an experience after applying to a job, thankfully, LinkedIn immediately considers it for a rank change (higher or lower).

• If you don’t meet the screening criteria

  • an automation can mark you as “not a fit” (needs enabling by job poster)

• If your location is out-of-country

  • default automation can mark you as “not a fit” (can be disabled by job poster)

Interestingly, whenever a recruiter makes a new connection, the rankings change too taking that new connection into account! ​

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How can you improve ✅

Some obvious recommendations based on the previous insights:

• Always have an active experience “20xx - Present” 🏎️

  • If you’re studying at a university, add it as an experience entitled “Student / Masters Student” or “Teaching Assistant / Research Assistant..” or any on-campus job title if you have one.

  • If you’re spending time on personal projects, add it in with “Personal projects” or something similar.

  • If you’re self-employed or have a company, add it with “Founder” etc.

• Skills. Skills. Skills 💃🏻

  • Skills are aggressively used to match your profile to job listings for both job recommendations & candidate rankings.

  • Add in all skills you’ve worked on in the past, and don’t worry too much about remembering everything about it.

  • If a skill has multiple similar entries, eg: “Javascript, JS, javascript”, pick the first one in the suggested list. That’s usually the most popular and most likely selected option on both job poster & candidate ends.

  • You get 50 skills. Pick wisely!

• Optimize your “Open to work” status ⛳️

  • Try keeping it visible to all LinkedIn members. Some non-recruiters who don’t necessarily have a job posting up might want to contact you. They simply use the green ring to find potential hires.

  • Ensure you enlist all desirable work locations ( popular cities like San Francisco, New York, etc. get more eyeballs )

  • Add similar job titles for the role you want ( software engineer / software developer / full stack engineer … ), don’t just keep one.

• Improve your headline 🎩

  • It’s the only “custom” thing visible to recruiters unless they view your full profile.

  • Use it to impress your recruiters. Mention moonshot achievements.

  • You need not fill it with unnecessary keywords; it doesn’t seem to help rankings, but could assist in profile search.

• Impress with your profile picture 🍷

  • Not necessary, but good for visual stand out

  • Ensure it’s decently visible from a distance (alternatively, the picture on your LinkedIn home page’s left column is a good approximate size that recruiters might see)

• Signal interest to company recruiters 👏🏼

  • Create job alerts on a company’s LinkedIn page to signal interest to recruiters.

  • It is unclear if this helps in ranks, but doing so can only have upside.

  • Also, send out those connection requests! Do not hesitate. If you’re out of invites, try joining LinkedIn Groups (connecting via them apparently does not have a limit).

• The ATS doesn’t reject you 🤷🏻‍♂️

  • For the record, the ATS does not automatically reject you. It’s always a person judging your profile / resume / skills who ends up rejecting or pushing your profile ahead (confirmed by several recruiters)

• Side projects always help 🦋

  • A good indicator of your skills in action + willingness to solve a real problem

  • Check out this TikTok for assurance

• Keep an open mind (general advice) 🧠

  • Consider being open to all job types - Full-time, contract, part-time, internship, temporary. Negotiate with the hiring manager once you set up a call.

  • Consider being open to all workplaces - On-site, hybrid, remote. Negotiate.

  • Reach out to recruiters & job posters on LinkedIn. Interact with their posts using likes & comments; you need to get noticed. Get their emails. Set up 1:1 calls on priority.

  • Use LinkedIn power queries like “<role name> AND hiring” to find posts and people who are willing to hire & probably talk too. Set up calls.

  • Give it time. Give yourself a 1-year head start.

  • Keep engaging and interacting. Something will definitely fall into place!

LinkedIn introduced the signal interest to recruiters feature when you create company-specific job alerts.

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Real people who help ❤️

Having a hard time navigating roles?
Interact with these helpful souls (more coming soon):

1. Taylor Desseyn - https://solo.to/tdesseyn - Amazingly helpful job hunt resources 🤙🏻

2. Tom McCormack - Check out one of his LinkedIn posts - instant value 💪🏼

3. Recruiters Anonymous - Recruiter community + discussions - get insider info 👀

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As always, I’m available on LinkedIn to help you out any way I can ✌🏼

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Some references

1. Learning Hiring Preferences: The AI Behind LinkedIn Jobs

2. Improving job matching with machine-learned activity features

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PS: A lot of this advice is anecdotal, and based around a specific role. I’ve referenced certain LinkedIn blogs with mentions of certain model parameters.

PPS: LinkedIn “Easy Apply” will always have the most number of people applying, so there’s a very low chance of getting picked in spite of ranking high. Reaching out to a recruiter / direct employee is a much better bet at securing a role.

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