Chapter 4. How Recruiters Search on LinkedIn

This chapter matters because your LinkedIn profile must be built with recruiter search behaviour in mind, recruiters do not usually search for vague personal qualities, they search for terms connected to roles, skills, sectors, systems, locations and seniority.

They may search using:

job titles

skills

keywords

industry

location

current or past companies

seniority level

education

Career Social | LinkedIn Writing Guide | For member use only

languages

systems

certifications

A recruiter, depending on the role, using LinkedIn Recruiter might search for: “Finance Business Partner” AND “commercial analysis” AND “stakeholder management”

or:

“Project Manager” AND “digital transformation” AND “Agile”

or:

“Operations Manager” AND “multi-site” AND “process improvement”

If those words do not appear naturally on your profile, you reduce your chances of appearing in search results.

LinkedIn Talent Insights also helps employers understand talent pools, skill availability, competitor hiring patterns and market trends; this means the language on your profile should reflect how your profession is described externally.

Boolean search is another important part of recruiter behaviour; boolean simply means combining search terms using words such as AND, OR and NOT. For example:

(“HR Business Partner” OR “People Partner”) AND (“employee relations” OR “organisational change”)

This means you should consider variations of your role title and skill set where truthful; for example, if you are a People Partner but target HR Business Partner roles, your profile may need to include both. Your aim is not to keyword-stuff, but to use natural, accurate market language.