Recruiters do not browse LinkedIn the way you scroll it. They run searches - typing job titles, skills and locations into a search bar - and your profile either surfaces in those results or it does not exist as far as they are concerned. That single fact should change how you write almost every field, because a profile that reads beautifully but contains none of the words a recruiter would actually type is a beautiful profile nobody finds. Most people optimise for how it looks to friends. Optimise for how it is searched.
The headline does the heavy lifting
Your headline is the line under your name, and it follows you everywhere - search results, comments, connection requests. The default just repeats your current job title, which wastes the most valuable text on your profile. Use it to say what you do and the terms you want to be found for: "Finance Manager | FP&A, budgeting and forecasting | manufacturing" beats "Finance Manager at Acme Ltd" every time, because it carries three more searchable phrases.
Keywords, where they count
LinkedIn's search weights certain fields more heavily, so put your important terms where they matter. Your headline, your About section, your job titles and the Skills section all feed the algorithm. Think about the exact words a recruiter hiring for your next role would type, and make sure those words appear naturally across your profile - not crammed into a desperate list, but woven through where they are true.
Write the About section like a person
The About section is your chance to sound human rather than like a CV read aloud. Write in the first person, open with what you actually do and care about, fold in the keywords, and keep it to a few short paragraphs. A wall of corporate text in the third person - "Emma is a results-driven professional who delivers..." - is precisely what people scroll past, and it reads as though someone else wrote it about you.
Open To Work, and staying visible
If you are job-hunting, turn on the "Open to Work" setting - and choose the option that shows it to recruiters only, not the green banner visible to your whole network, unless you genuinely do not mind your current employer seeing it. A few habits keep you in front of the right people:
- Activity matters - profiles that post or comment occasionally surface more than dormant ones, so a thoughtful comment a week beats silence.
- Ask a few colleagues for recommendations; they carry far more weight than the skill endorsements anyone can click.
- Fill the profile completely, because LinkedIn quietly favours "all-star" profiles in its results.
This all works - unless your profile photo is a cropped holiday snap with someone else's arm still in shot. Spend ten minutes on a plain, friendly headshot. It is the first thing a recruiter sees, and first impressions on a screen are decided in about as long as it takes to blink.