Anatomy of a Passive Candidate's LinkedIn Profile

Anatomy of Your LinkedIn Profile as a Passive Candidate

In my last post, Are You a Excellent Passive Candidate or a Turkey?, I discussed why you want to be a passive candidate. I am following it up with how to construct your LinkedIn profile into a recruiter magnet.

The infographic below is provided Akken Cloud and has been used by multiple bloggers. I am going to explain how this applies to being a passive candidate.

I am going to break this down into two phases:

Being found by a prospective employer
Getting the prospective employer to contact you

How to Be Found as a Passive Candidate

This is all about job titles, keywords, and where they go within your LinkedIn profile.

The first thing I want you to do is start harvesting keywords from job descriptions and websites of your target companies. Use a word cloud for this endeavor. Please read the following post called, Finding Keywords to Manage Your Career. The post has a video that will demonstrate how to harvest keywords.

Once you have a list of keywords, you will want to carefully place them in your LinkedIn headline.

Next, you need to start thinking like a recruiter and configure the rest of your profile with recruiter search strategies in mind. Please read the following post, Why Are You Not Being Found? Try Thinking Like a Recruiter.

If you follow these strategies, your profile should be found more frequently. However, this is just the first step. The recruiter is now looking at your profile, but how do we entice them to reach out and touch you?

Enticing the Reader

Remember, you are a passive candidate. As the infographic below states, you want to create a profile that is eye catching. You want the reader to keep reading.

Header Image

All LinkedIn profiles now have a header image. The image is 1400×425 pixels. It should be eye catching and incorporate your personal brand. Here are a few tips from my good friend Viveka von Rosen.

Incorporate a call to action. For most of you, you want to include a google voice number or an e-mail address. The great thing is header image is exactly that — it is an image. Trolls cannot screen scrape your profile to harvest your personal information.
Show your personality – The image represents you.
Provide value – Share a tip or answer a question in the image.

For more tips, read Viveka’s post on Social Media Examiner, How to Use the New LinkedIn Header Image for Profiles.

The header image should encourage the reader to want more. Check out Viveka von Rosen‘s header image.

Remember, you are a passive candidate! Your LinkedIn profile is an extension of you.

LinkedIn Picture

Your picture should align with your personal brand. You might want to use the website PhotoFeeler to find out what people think about your current picture.

Plan your picture out. Check out my post, 3 Key Elements of your LinkedIn Photograph which will help you plan the elements of your picture.

LinkedIn Headline

By default, your LinkedIn headline has your current job title and company. The headline should be keyword enabled. If you have a tag line, use it in the headline. The headline is 120 characters long. Use all of it.

Check out my post, 1st Place to use Keywords is in your LinkedIn Headline.

LinkedIn Summary

Your LinkedIn summary should tell your brand story. Write it in 1st person. It is your story.

Read my post, 3 Themes for Writing Your Brand Story to give you an idea on how write your story. You will probably want to get some help. Some of my best client brand stories have been written by adult daughters. For more on why you should get some help, read Your Brand Story – Who Should Write It?

The LinkedIn summary is 2,000 characters which includes spaces. You story needs to written concisely and to the point. I have found it is usually best to write it without consideration of length and edit it down so that it fits.

Your brand story is key to getting the recruiter to want to reach out to you.

The Anatomy of a Successful LinkedIn Profile Infographic

Read carefully the following infographic from Akken Cloud.

Click To Enlarge

Great Content as a Passive Candidate

As the infographic states, you need to create some great content. When you write LinkedIn Publisher posts, it is an opportunity to demonstrate that you know your stuff. It is not about telling me you know your stuff, it is about showing me you know your stuff.

Make the content you create work for you. If you are lucky, your content may go viral like some of mine have done. Check out my post, Getting Noticed – LinkedIn Publisher and Shareability.

Closing the Deal

Once you get someone to look at your LinkedIn profile, you want to close the deal. It might be that you want them to connect with you. It might be that you want them to contact you. Either way, tell them what you want and make it easy for them to do so.

You are a salesperson and the product is—you. As a passive candidate, your LinkedIn profile is sales collateral. Make it work for you!

What changes are you going to make?

Marc Miller

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