How Unemployed Job Seekers Optimise Their LinkedIn Headline

One of the first priorities for a social job search is that job seekers optimise their LinkedIn headline.

“Unemployed at Unemployed.” 

That is some first impression…. not a good look.

If you have not taken the care to edit your profile, this is a default LinkedIn headline that can result from putting an end date on your previous employment. It shows that you don’t care about what employers think about you. You are putting pitifully little effort into your job search. You are likely sitting on the sofa playing video games and watching the employment benefits roll in. In any case, the green #opentowork hashtag on the profile photo can do that job (if you can be bothered to find how to change it).

If you don’t make any effort into your online persona (particularly on LinkedIn), potential future employers will immediately conclude that you do not deserve an interview. 

The opposite of this phenomenon is to be so desperate to shout from the rooftops to anyone listening that you are looking for a job:

“Seeking a job in sales. Ready to start immediately.”

The urgency in this headline variant is an improvement on the first headline. However, it is evident from your LinkedIn profile when you finished your last role (or it should be). Employers might question why you haven’t managed to find a job just yet. In addition to this, the headline does not indicate the specifics of your sales experience.

Okay, so enough of the bad examples. Here are five reasons why getting the LinkedIn headline right really matters for job seekers:

1.         LinkedIn is your digital job search calling card. Employers will read your headline first.

2.         The first part of the headline will accompany any activity on LinkedIn.

3.         Distilling your value into 220 characters will help you to be memorable.

4.         Influence employment decision-makers by telling them exactly who you are.

5.         Keywords in your headline will help the LinkedIn search engine to find you.

When job seekers optimise their LinkedIn headline, their value to an employer is crystal clear.

Job seeker LinkedIn headline thoughts

220 characters are more than enough to make your elevator pitch. Unlike someone using LinkedIn for business development (where brevity is vital), job seekers should use the space allocated to the LinkedIn headline to the maximum extent.

One initial consideration is that your headline should remain constant for the duration of your job search. Continually changing it might indicate that you are not sure about the direction of your future career, so it will have to be general enough to include as many of your potential career paths as possible. It does not need to be in complete sentences, so this is perfectly possible.

Remember that only the first few words appear when you comment on LinkedIn. Go with the hardest-hitting value here. Mentioning your industry and/or occupation amongst the first words is a powerful way of putting your job search flag in the ground, and you can then continue with the different layers of your expertise. Avoid subjective adjectives, keep it brutally factual and include some of your rarest skills if possible. The LinkedIn algorithm will look at your headline in terms of search results, but you should avoid keyword stuffing your title. – focus on the value you hope to bring to a future employer. 

If you have worked for a leader in the industry, mentioning that you are an “Ex-Google” (for example) employee might make potential employers take notice, but you shouldn’t only be defined by your past. You might also use the LinkedIn headline as a career manifesto for what you hope to achieve in the future.

It should be said that any prospective employer will likely quickly move past the headline to the rest of your LinkedIn profile (and digest it with great interest). The simple fact that you only have 220 characters in your headlines makes your choice of words about yourself particularly impactful.

I am sure that you can do much better than “Unemployed at Unemployed.”

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).