As recruiters, we always want people (clients, candidates, referrals) to know that we’ve viewed their profile.
At the very least, using LinkedIn alongside other social networks, isn’t about being bashful with our digital presence, it’s about making sure our target markets are aware of our existence… That’s essentially how a ‘recruitment network’ is built.
So why are so many recruiters still playing social recruiting hide and seek, by restricting their profile identity when they look at profiles?
Let us give you an example of what we mean. We know from Google’s research that when most people use a search engine, they typically only use 2 or 3 words to do a search – e.g. ‘Sales Job Birmingham’. Then you get the results page – typically of ten results (aside from all the sponsored posts). How many of you even look past page one? We don’t have the stats, but I would imagine that it’s not too many!
Due to the clever search engines, like Google, Bing & Yahoo, these ten results will likely yield the links to take you to the right sites to help you find what you need. This ‘minimalist’ searching method also prevails across all the social networks, as we all use the same search habits on whichever platform we use to find stuff.
Unless someone has your name, or you have been included in one of LinkedIn’s referral links such as ‘People You May Know‘, ‘People Similar To‘ or ‘People Also Viewed’ then the chances are, you are going to have to rely on being found in someone’s search.
So how will people find you?
Well, if you are a recruiter it would be natural for someone to use either of the words recruiting, recruitment, resource or recruiter, wouldn’t it? After all, these are the words that (from our experiences) most people associate with someone that is in a recruitment function. Then when they see the results of their search they see 10 search results (on the first page) showing pictures, names, headlines and relevant lines of their profiles that show the matched keywords.
Now here comes the hide and seek game!
What are some of the many job titles that companies and recruitment agencies give to their employees? Do any of these fit your role – Account Manager, Senior Account Manager, Sourcer, Talent Acquisition Manager, HR Advisor, Talent Scout, Talent Executive, Principal Consultant, Senior Consultant, Team Leader, Owner, Director etc etc
There is of course nothing wrong with these job titles UNLESS you are actively recruiting people via LinkedIn (or any other social media network for that matter). You are not going to appear in as many people’s searches if you use these titles on LinkedIn without the words – recruiting, recruitment or recruiter – associated to them. The recruitment and HR industry is brilliant at using job titles that mean ‘diddly’ to anyone outside recruitment, or even their own company! You may be an Account Manager for your recruitment agency, but for what or for who? It means nothing to the outside world. Just add the word recruitment to the front of the title and suddenly your job title has some meaning to someone outside your company – Recruitment Account Manager, or for other examples: Citrix Support Analyst, VMware Technical Consultant, HR Business Manager and so on…
Our favourite example of this is a financial recruitment company that had given all their many recruitment consultants job titles such as ‘Principal Consultant’, ‘Senior Consultant’ and ‘Managing Consultant’, to make them appear more finance related. They also deliberately wanted to distance themselves from other recruitment agencies. They had their profile summaries ‘professionally’ written for them (they were all the same!), and they avoided using the word ‘recruitment’ anywhere. The MD thought their profiles were brilliant and really put their company on a professional pedestal!
Then the MD was shown some simple Linked In searches that their typical candidates would do to find them. Upon reaching page ten of search results on LinkedIn, and still not one of his consultants appeared… he realised the error!
We are in a candidate driven marketplace and we all need to make sure we maximise every opportunity to be found by the right people – recruiters are absolutely no different.
We also need candidates to find us.
So remember, think of the audience you are trying to reach and use the language they normally use to describe your job function – and then use those in your social media profiles.
Jonothan Bosworth Recruitment Specialists currently have a host of job opportunities. Call us in complete confidence on; 0845 299 6369