How to stand out to recruiters and employers on LinkedIn

No 1. Your Profile Picture

Although the photo you choose might seem one of the smaller points to starting your job search, it’s probably the first thing that a recruiter or potential employer sees when scrolling through a list of candidates. As with interviews, meeting new people down the pub and even Tinder! First impressions are really important.

The first step is to have a photo, we still see a number of profiles on LinkedIn without one and people who don’t are missing a trick. According to LinkedIn your profile picture is 14 times more likely to be viewed if you have a profile picture. This is your opportunity to convey some of your personality and relevance to the sector and specialism you’re looking to work in.

Smart, Smart Casual or Casual? We don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to this as long as you have a good quality headshot of you smiling. However, with interviews we are now seeing an increase in the number of clients, especially in the SME world who would prefer to see people dressed casually rather than suited. Think about your target market, if you’re looking to work for a start up or cool food or drink brand maybe consider something more casual and if you’re looking for a corporate employer select a suited photo. You could look at the profiles of the employees at some of your dream companies to work for and see what vibe they’ve gone for. If you’re a recent graduate consider using a photo from your graduation day.

Quite often a key factor in our clients’ decision making on a candidate is passion for their brand, product or mission. Dependent on the sector or role you’re looking for you can sometimes convey this in your photo. For example we see a lot of people working in food technology or NPD with photos of them working with food even in their chef whites if they’re hands on developers.

Make sure it’s a good quality photo, you’d never put a blurred, pixelated photo of your lunch on Instagram! This is one of the most important photos you have online so make sure it’s a good one. A poor quality photo might also give off the impression of lack of attention to detail and maybe inability to use technology.

We also remember faces and that helps us find candidates. At Lime Talent we recruit for Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Technical, NPD and graduates for the FMCG sector so we’re very specialist. We spend a lot of our time on LinkedIn (most of our day!) and when we get briefed on a new role we remember the profiles and particularly the photos of relevant candidates for these roles.

If you are looking for your next career opportunity please give us a call on 0207 0423800.