Etiquette for Managing a Job Search

All right. Hello, welcome. We are the new members of Hirewell’s Managed Recruiting practice and On Demand team. I’m Michelle. I’m Chelsea. I’m Becky.

And today what we wanted to share with you is we have a crazy amount of experience, both from the corporate side, like what it looks like to be an in-house recruiter and also what it looks to be an agency recruiter. And we use this tool called LinkedIn that we all are on but for a recruiter, it has a whole backend piece of it that most people never see.

And what we wanted to share with you were three tips here on how to get the most out of LinkedIn recruiter, both in terms of building relationships with recruiters and how to have it help you manage your career and grow your career. And the three things we’re going to share with you real quick are how to work on the headline to make it most effective, how to handle all those InMail and connection requests

and finally what that about section is about and how to use it most effectively. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to Chelsea. Yeah. So first I want to talk a little bit about the headline and why should candidates put a headline?

What’s the importance of it? Yes. So the headline tells everyone exactly what you do. It’s the first thing they see. And for recruiters specifically, when we’re going through like the huge list of candidates, that’s like the main thing that we see and can help determine right away, if you’re like good for our role.

And if you would want to hear from us essentially as well. Awesome. So what type of information would be helpful to include in the headline? As Becky said, it’s what recruiters can see. If you load it from an iPhone, you have over 300 characters that you can put on there. So if you’re a senior software engineer and you include a couple texts, like say Ruby on rails and JavaScript, that all of a sudden helps someone who’s working on a dot.net, c-sharp role know that Hey, this maybe isn’t a good fit. On the other hand, it draws them in if it’s the right fit. Let’s say you’re a sales and a account executive and you work enterprise accounts and you work specifically accounts where you’re targeting C-suite, you can put that information in there.

The other thing to know is you can start to lead people to what you want here. Previously people often would say like relocating to Boston, right? If they were in one city and wanting to go somewhere else. People put open to new opportunities in there. Anything that’s going to catch someone’s attention and help them understand

in a really brief nutshell what you do, what you’re interested in and what your mission is. Yes. And then for when you do that and you’re getting all these messages and connection requests, let’s talk a little bit about how to manage that in some good ways.

How do candidates benefit from responding to all these messages and connection requests? Yeah. You know, you’re getting all of these connections and you’re like, what’s worth my time to respond to these? So if you think about it, you’re a passive candidate, you aren’t really looking for new opportunities.

So really what’s the point? But you never know when you need a relationship with a recruiter and it’s best to start that relationship when you’re not looking. You can find your two or three connections, build that relationship, and you always have somebody to reach out to you.

And the best way to do that is by responding to each and every one of those LinkedIn InMails from recruiters. Yeah. I think some people probably get like frustrated though, because I’m sure sometimes we get roles for like software or software engineering opportunities we get messages about and they’re not relevant to us. So should they still be responding to those? How can they make sure they’re getting more targeted and relevant? I would say the thing to think about again is that LinkedIn has a product here and they’ve built their AI and their algorithms in certain ways.

So if you’re so fortunate that you’re getting more than you want, right. Which is one end of the spectrum. And you’re getting more than it feels possible to respond to, it is in your interest to respond to them because there is an algorithm behind it saying, “Hey, are you responsive on this?” So even if they’re the wrong requests, you should be responding to them because basically if you ghost the platform by not responding to messages or to LinkedIn requests, then LinkedIn thinks you’re not engaged and they put you lower on the list.

So if something you’re interested in, you’re going to be lower on the list because you’re not active on the platform. So what you want to do is like something that’s completely irrelevant to you, just say, not interested. Don’t put any message, anything like that. They can’t respond back to you. It’s quick.

You just run through your list. Even just once a week, click, click, click, click, click decline, all those messages that are wrong. For the ones where, Hey, they’re on the right track. You know, I can tell I work in marketing and this is a marketing recruiter, but I’m not looking right now, you might decline in and say, thanks right now. Either through the canned messages that they provide or write your own message. And then you might choose actively based on how someone reached out

like, Hey, this one seems to know what they’re doing. And even though I’m not in job search right now, it makes sense to actually build a relationship with a couple of people in my industry when I don’t need something from them, so that when I do need something from them I’m not starting that relationship from scratch.

And then that’s how you choose hey, I’m going to invest a little bit of time here. I can make some time and have some conversations and there you might say, “Hey, yeah let’s connect on this opportunity or let’s connect just cause I like to have the relationship for down the road.” So take the time each week, look through them

and choose them and sort them into a pile. On the other hand, let’s say you’re not getting any or you’re only getting the wrong ones, it’s really important to respond to them if you’re only getting the wrong ones because you need to have it so that LinkedIn thinks you’re engaged in the platform.

Really, what you have to do is figure out how to build your profile out better so that the right people reach out to you. And that’s part of our next topic. So what we’re going to talk about now is the about section and the about section is the scary thing.

That’s the summary and it’s like what the heck is supposed to go in there? So who’s the audience for the about section and what do they want to see in this section? Yeah. So obviously recruiters are looking at this. I look at a million a day and I love when there’s something funny or unique and more than just the buzzwords.

It’s more of like a human connection. And then not only recruiters are looking at this. As you go through the interview process with the company, the hiring managers are going to look, anyone that you’ll be working with and that can help then get to know you a little bit better too and know what to expect and things to pull and ways to connect on a more human level throughout an interview too.

Okay. What does this section specifically do for candidates and how can they use this section really effectively to get what they want out of LinkedIn? Yeah, so it really builds engagement and creates a call to action. So it explains kind of why should we hire you?

Why should we reach out to you? Why are you special? And so some, some of those things that you can include in the about me section is say you are down one career path and you decide that it’s not for you. So you want to switch jobs, you want to switch careers, but your entire LinkedIn profile and resume has all of this experience from your previous career.

So recruiters are going to reach out to you most likely about your previous experience. But if you put in your about me section things like, I’ve done X, Y, Z in the past. And I am looking to make a transition in my life and my career, and I’ve done these certifications or I’ve done this or I’m just starting out,

you can put those things in your about me section and really make it stand out to recruiters. What I really like to see are fun facts. Like Becky was saying, we look at a bazillion profiles every single day. So it’s really fun. It makes them more human connection for us to see your hobbies and interests.

And it gives us something to reach out to you about if we have similar hobbies and interest, it just starts a conversation. Some other things, contact information if you’re actively looking. If you’re looking only for remote opportunities, put that in there. If you’re looking for a certain salary that is non-negotiable, put that stuff in there. Things like that will really help beat out your InMails for things that are not relevant to what you’re looking for.

Some other things, keywords for target jobs so that LinkedIn, when it’s pulling these KPI metrics, that will help put you at the top of the target list for us to screen and come to the top of our list. And then just let your personality come out. It doesn’t really matter.

You don’t have to be so straight laced like you do typically on your resume. You can be fun. You can be creative with it. So, you know, express yourself.