Imagine all the people, if I just told them right here that optimize this and that tomorrow you’re going to get noticed. Yes, sometimes it happens, but it’s the folks who really put the time into their LinkedIn profile that get noticed. And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. My name is Chris Villanueva, I’m the founder and CEO of Let’s Eat, Grandma Resume service. Today we’re talking all about LinkedIn’s hidden algorithm, how to actually boost your profile and get noticed on the platform. Listen, most people treat LinkedIn like their own static resume. They may just kind of copy and paste it into their pages and hope that it gets noticed, but LinkedIn has a very special and complex algorithm, and if you ignore how LinkedIn actually works, you’re going to be invisible in recruiter searches. According to LinkedIn, over 95% of recruiters use LinkedIn search filters and Boolean logic to find candidates, not just browsing feeds.

Chris Villanueva 01:01 
So your search appearance is going to be driven by five fields, and I’ll discuss them in some detail in this episode, but I want you to think about your role in your next position and how you are looking to get noticed. Now, listen, I have a lot of folks who are, they’ve been in some role for the last five, six years and they don’t like it. They want to go towards something different. So take this into consideration, where are you going next? And this is going to significantly influence whether or not you find a job through LinkedIn. All right, our goal, my goal here in this episode, let’s get noticed through LinkedIn. I’ll kick this off with the very first tip. It’s optimize your headline heavily. This is the most heavily weighted field on the platform. It’s your headline. It’s those little words that happen to be next to your picture.

Chris Villanueva 01:54 
This headline shows up whether or not somebody has clicked into your profile or they are simply browsing a bunch of profiles and want to find a good match. So don’t just let it be the default. Whatever position you’re in right now, heck go beyond just including a keyword or a position title that you’ve held. So for example, instead of just saying senior analyst, you can say senior analyst, put a spacer and say sql, Tableau, business Intelligence, and put another spacer and put healthcare ops. So in this technique here, I call this the keywords technique. I’ve talked about it ad nauseum, but it’s a good reminder. The first keyword you include is the position title. The second set of keywords are the nouns common to the position, and the third could be the industry. So keywords matter, but absolutely put a focus on relevance to these positions that you’re applying for.

Chris Villanueva 02:49
This forces you as a professional to get clear on the types of positions you are applying for, and that is the type of soul searching you should do before you even touch your LinkedIn profile. So it’s just going to make this a lot easier. Just know where you’re applying first and then start to optimize these things. Okay? The second thing to focus on is your skills section. Yes, your skill section is still important when it comes to the algorithm. LinkedIn is big on skills-based hiring, and this section is going to be something that is key here. In fact, a study by job scan found that users with 30 plus skills on LinkedIn get 13 times more profile views than those under five. So make sure to not only include skills, fill that sucker out, but make sure that they are absolutely relevant to the position you’re applying for.

Chris Villanueva 03:40
Now, you may want to remove skills that are not relevant because that could water down your profile and actually make it to where it’s not going to get noticed because there’s less relevance. So don’t just focus on the quantity here. Focus on making sure that you have relevant quality skills. So I recommend try to get 50. I believe you can get more than that, but I think it might be overkill. But get 50 real role aligned keywords, focus on tools, certifications, and those leadership skills. Okay, tip number three is your professional experience section. So your professional experience section should not just be a copy and paste from your resume. You want to make sure to include the keywords and have the alignment that is important for a good LinkedIn profile. So for example, your resume may just be one targeted focus on a specific position, whereas your LinkedIn profile, you may have more of a universal type of search.

Chris Villanueva 04:43
You may be applying to, for example, 2, 3, 4 different types of roles. So it’s important within your professional experience sections to cover those different roles. You may have a longer professional experience section on your LinkedIn profile than your resume. That is perfectly fine. In fact, I would certainly encourage that for the folks who are applying for more than one type of position, I think it could help. So don’t forget that that is also another thing that the algorithm will look at and scan and search on a LinkedIn profile. All right, the fourth section to focus on to get noticed on your LinkedIn profile. The thing that the algorithm cares about is your about section. I love this section because you have so much creativity here at your disposal. So this is used for secondary keyword matches. I recommend making this section human that’s talking in first person.

Chris Villanueva 05:35
It almost reads like a bio, but it’s kind of from yourself, maybe like an autobio, if that’s a word. But make sure it’s to talk about what drives you as a professional. Yes, make sure to include those keywords. So in the first example I talked about the senior analyst. So drive that home. Again, you can include the word senior analyst with x plus years of experience within healthcare operations. And you can follow up again, repeat some of these keywords that are found within your profile and your skill section because sometimes people will only look at your summary. The highly interested folks will, but this is another chance to really drive it home with the algorithm. Now, don’t just keyword stuff. That would be a really terrible AI crap summary. Not all AI is crap, but a lot of those initial queries do yield crap. But I would recommend making it human right from the heart here or collaborate with somebody to really come up with a solid profile that garners interest.

Chris Villanueva 06:39 
So I like to bring in stories. I like to bring in these mini accomplishments. Sometimes I will copy and paste kind of my best stuff that I’m most proud of from the resume. Say I have a few key accomplishments, I might put that in the summary as well. And another thing that I like to include is a call to action at the bottom of the summary. Because if somebody is interested enough to read your entire summary, then why not include a nugget at the bottom that says, Hey, if you’re still interested in contact or if you’re interested in connecting, reach out to me via, and then I would include a separate job seekers email. So your summary is the chance to really let that human aspect, that human part of you really shine through while also including those keywords. The fifth and last thing, the most overlooked part about a LinkedIn profile is your own engagement.

Chris Villanueva 07:34 
This has to do with your LinkedIn profile often because when you post comment, this ends up getting reflected on your LinkedIn profile. You can see that in the history when somebody clicks into your profile. So it’s most certainly tied together, but the more active you are, the more your network is going to grow and the more LinkedIn is going to prioritize your profile. And so when people who are second or third degree connections look at you, they’re going to see you come up in those search results. So make sure to comment and don’t always look to get a result out of commenting, like trying to get a certain amount of likes. That’s not the game that I like to play. But instead focusing on commenting and interacting with people in your industry, people in those position titles that you want. This is so important and this is something that’s going to keep your profile fresh in at the top of search results among the other things, of course.

Chris Villanueva 08:29
Okay, so this is not about gaming the system, this is about getting your profile active and visible and may take some trial and error because sometimes imagine all the people if I just told them right here that optimize this and that and tomorrow you’re going to get noticed. Yes, sometimes it happens, but it’s the folks who really put the time into their LinkedIn profile and have a little little bit of trial and error that get noticed and eventually use LinkedIn to land whatever position they’re seeking here. So a few other resources I can link out for you are the LinkedIn recruiter playbook. I’ll tell you also to look at jobs scans, LinkedIn optimization report. I trust them and I most certainly encourage you to keep listening to this podcast because we have amazing guests. We even had somebody who wrote the book LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Dummies.

Chris Villanueva 09:25
But I truly love this topic and I think if you use LinkedIn to your advantage, it can most certainly help further your career. Alright, so if you’re curious about me on LinkedIn, I would most certainly connect. My name is Chris Villanueva, CPRW. Let me know you are a listener and I will most certainly accept that connection request. I love hearing from fellow listeners and I can’t thank you enough for listening to this podcast. If you want a free resume critique, head on over to letseatrandma.com and we’d love to get that for you asap. Alright, take care. Have an amazing rest of your day Career Warrior Podcast. And before you go, remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at, Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search. And with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention, you’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.