Depending on the statistics you look at as many as 50-97% of recruiters use LinkedIn, Xing or Facebook at any given stage of the sourcing or recruitment process. Somebody is probably looking at your profile while you are reading this. Now the most important questions are:
- Will they include you in the recruitment process?
- Will they get in touch with you based on the information they find on the Internet?
- Or maybe: will you be excluded from a hiring process based on search results?
Exercise: search yourself and be particularly cautious about unfavourable information that can be found on the Internet, like embarrassing photos, “likes” or your private phone number used in dating or gambling websites etc. People very often forget about everything they have published on the Internet.
Tip: Use “ “ for exact results and search for:
- Your full name
- Your full name + company name
- Your private email address
- Your professional email address
- Your private telephone number
- Your professional telephone number
The impression your target group will have can be divided into 3 categories:
1. Visibility: how easy it is to find you
2. Connectivity: how many people you know
3. Professionalism:
- How professional the overall information is
- Quality and type of photos
- Variety of media (videos on YouTube, articles, profiles, media mentions)
- Professional context of the found information
How important is this really?
To underline the importance of your online presence, but particularly your LinkedIn profile, here a snippet of an email one of our clients received when contacting a Consultant with one of the leading, global, retained Top Executive Search firms:
“With Social Media becoming more and more important in the recruitment process, we decided to no longer maintain a candidate database. Keeping such database up-to-date at all times requires a high amount of work. Additionally, we are facing more and more rigorous data privacy laws that reduce the amount of data that is allowed to be stored from a legal point of view. As a result, the World Wide Web has become our most up-to-date database.
Therefore we suggest potential candidates to create a career profile on social media platforms, i.e. LinkedIn, XING etc. On these platforms it is not only possible to show the career path but also to emphasize on strengths, skills and expertise by using key words. This helps recruiters such as head hunters (or companies that are hiring directly) to find potential candidates via selective key word searches. The candidate himself/herself is responsible for the maintenance of the profile, remains the owner of the data and is able to omit confidential or otherwise sensitive information.
We recommend that you connect yourself on these platforms with consultants of the Executive Search industry. By doing so you will increase the possibility to be found, seen and contacted, when consultants are working on assignments that match your profile, skills, strengths as well as interests. We, for example, possess recruiter licenses on a global level and actively work with social media to find potential candidates.”
In other words: yes, you must have a professional profile on Linkedin.
How is your LinkedIn profile? Ready for recruiters? Have you been contacted by headhunters lately? Would you like us to review your LinkedIn profile objectively and confidentially? Send an email to Bichl.Sandra (at) CareerAngels.eu or by click. Please note: the LinkedIn Report is non-obligatory and free of charge.
