Linkedin Advice for a Friend

Today I received an email from Linkedin that reads “Fourteen seconds. That’s how long it takes most candidates to decide whether to keep reading your company’s job post or to move on.” Ironically that may be fourteen seconds more than a recruiter will give your Linkedin profile.

Recruiters utilize Boolean searches understanding Boolean will help you become more visible. Linkedin actually has a place on the Recruiter platform that has search Job Title or Boolean. It is a keyword search that includes and excludes. It’s how they find you or make certain to circumvent you.

Linkedin charges you fees monthly to potentially be a premier member offering greater search function and visibility while offering recruiters a monthly subscription for special platforms that provide a certain number of InMails based on subscription rate along with expanded search functionality.

Ownership

Linkedin is owned by Microsoft and run by people who are genius at integration tools and monthly subscriptions for its platform. Linkedin charges you fees monthly to potentially be a premier member offering greater search function and visibility while offering recruiters a monthly subscription for special platforms that provide a certain number of InMails based on subscription rate along with expanded search functionality. A Recruiter platform user receives a set number of InMails that expire if not used. Each time an InMail is sent to a prospective candidate it may or may not count against their allotment of InMails. If there is no response to the InMail the InMail will be counted as used. However, if the recipient of the sent InMail responds in any way, (including not interested) within ninety days the InMail is restored to the recruiter to be used again that month or in their potential carry forward. InMails may be a scarce resource to a search consultant but they can they not just purchase more InMails? Yes, but a Recruiter platform user is blocked from LinkedIn Recruiter access if they have less than a 13% response rate.

InMail

Search professionals on the Recruiter platform will perform a Boolean search and receive results of profiles that meet criteria searched. The search results will allow the user of the Recruiter platform to highlight “More Likely to Respond”, “Have Company Connections”, “Engaged with Talent Brand”, “Past Applicants” and “Open to Work”.  If you reply to an InMail in any fashion (I want the job or not interested), from an InMail standpoint the result is the same for the sender – a return of their InMail credit. Reply to enough InMails and LinkedIn’s algorithms will deem you “More Likely to Respond”. Those more likely to respond are those more likely to not cost a Recruiter platform user an InMail. “Have Company Connections”, “Engaged with Talent Brand”, “Past Applicants” are impacted by you being connected to someone in the company they are searching, following the search firm or directly indicated interest in a prior position for the Recruiter licensee. The most obvious reason “most likely to respond” is often reached out to is that it costs nothing, but it more likely the guaranteed response to maintain their necessary response rate.

Boolean Search

Now back to Boolean. When evaluating your individual LinkedIn profile do so through the lens of a Boolean search. If you sought a position as restaurant chef certainly list in on your profile front of house, back of house, award-winning, James Beard, farm to table, and anything else someone might seek in a restaurant chef. Place them in past job descriptions and skills. Here I resist the urge to advise you to go cook up a spicy profile. Just as there are multiple ways people order a tuna sandwich (tuna salad, tuna fish or just tuna), you might never get a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich if your profile says you led a team in the development of the best BLT in the history of time.