These LinkedIn Profile Tips Will Get you HIRED in 2026

Do you want to get noticed by recruiters on LinkedIn so they can send you messages like this about job opportunities? Then you're going to want to watch this video right here because I'm going to give you the best LinkedIn profile tips. And stay to the end because I'm going to show you what recruiters actually see and how they search for candidates on LinkedIn Recruiter. So go ahead and open up your LinkedIn profile and you can follow along with me from top to bottom and I'll walk you through exactly how to optimize your profile to get noticed more by recruiters. Now everything we're going to do in this video is going to cover two main objectives. The first one is to increase your SEO ranking so that recruiters actually can see you near the top of their list whenever they're doing a search for their jobs. And the second thing is that you want to actually optimize your profile to encourage recruiters to send you messages. One thing you may not know is that LinkedIn charges recruiters a lot of money just to be able to send a message to a candidate. They can do this because LinkedIn basically has a monopoly on the job search market. So, they charge ridiculous prices to recruiters and companies to be able to send you a message. So, that's why recruiters are only going to spend their hard-earned dollars on candidates that they think are active on the platform. So, we're going to be doing things in this video to show recruiters that you actively use LinkedIn and you do check it. So, starting right here at the top, you want to make sure that you have a professional photo added to your profile. You don't need to pay someone to take this photo for you. If you just have a pretty good phone, like an iPhone or something like that, just go ahead and put it on portrait mode and then just take a photo of yourself and upload it. Any photo will do as long as it's not you at the strip club. It's proven that LinkedIn profiles with pictures actually receive 21 times more views than profiles without. And as a recruiter, I can personally tell you that my first red flag to me as a recruiter if I should send someone a message is if they don't even update their picture. That shows me they don't take LinkedIn seriously at all and they probably don't even check this that often. Next, you're going to go down to this section right underneath your photo here. And you're going to want to fill in all of this basic information. And I highly encourage you to actually put your last name on your profile because then that will allow recruiters to search their ATS database to see if you're already in there and if you have your resume in there. Next, the most important thing you're going to want to update after that is actually updating your headline here. So, whenever you think about your SEO ranking for LinkedIn, they're going to be using your headline as well as your summary and your job titles. Those three carry the biggest weight in your SEO score. So, for your headline here, what I always recommend is you have two parts to it. The first part is you're going to put your job title or the industry common job title that you want to get in your new role. And then you're going to put one of these lines here. Put down in the comments if you know what this thing is called. I don't really know. But you're going to put this this line here. And then you're going to add some hard technical skills that recruiters would typically use to search you. So for example, if you're a data analyst, you're going to want to put your core technical skills here like Python and SQL and Tableau. So all of your hard skills, no soft skills. Now for me, in my case, I'm a recruiter. So I would put things like sourcing, ATS, and talent mapping. And just to make sure I reemphasize a really important point, you want to use industry standard job titles whenever you're describing yourself in your headline and in your current position. Even if the job title that your company gave you doesn't match industry standards. So for example, if you are a project coordinator, but you know in reality you're actually a project manager or a program manager, then go ahead and add that to your job title. Or in my case, my company actually calls me talent acquisition specialist, but most people would try to find me as a recruiter. Another really important thing to point out here in your introductory section is your location. So, you do and should put in a city very specifically as to where you currently live or where you want to work. You can add more locations later on in a different section, but you should include a city. Don't just leave it as United States, for example. The reason why is because one of the filters on the back end that recruiters use to find candidates is location and it's driven based off of this section. Especially now with a lot of companies moving back to hybrid or in-office jobs, they're going to be looking for local talent. After you've updated that section, go down to this section right here and click this one. This is also a very important section because at the top you're going to be able to write down and list all of the target jobs that you want to be found for. And this is what I was talking about earlier where you can add the locations as to where you would want your job to be even if it's not where you currently live. And then here down in this visibility section, if you don't want your co-workers or manager to see that you're openly looking for a job, then just change this to recruiters only. But if your company culture is not really that toxic and you just want to be found by as many people as possible, then go ahead and click this button down here for all LinkedIn members, not just recruiters. Next, go down here to your about section. This is basically like the equivalent of your summary section on your resume. But I do want to point out something very important here. They only allow a preview of up to the first three lines in your about section. So you can see here after I write this third line, it's going to get cut off. So recruiters will only be able to find and read whatever they see in the first three lines. So in your about section here, it's going to be a little bit different than what you put on your resume. You should lead off with your job title or target job title that you want to be found for. And then you want to include your overall years of experience. And then if it's important for your job, you may want to list the domain or industry or product expertise that you focus on. So in my case, as a recruiter, I really specialize in hiring for silicon, hardware, AI roles. And so I'm going to include that here because if there is a hardware, AI or silicon company that's looking for a recruiter, I am actually going to be their number one candidate and they're definitely going to send me a message. So all of that should be included in your very first sentence. Now your second sentence should actually be one of your greatest accomplishments that shows how great you are at your role. Now very important note here. You want your accomplishment to match the scope of role in which you are applying for. So for example, if you are applying for a director level position, you want your accomplishment here to be something really strategic and big picture that has huge impact on the bottom line of your company or your division. You do not want to highlight something you did as an individual contributor before you became a director, even if you think it's more impressive than stuff you've done as a director, because the accomplishment will not match the scope of work for the job that you're targeting. Next, you're going to go down to this skills section here and add as many relevant hard skills as you can that are related to your role. And I'll show you this towards the end of the video, but the skills section is actually one other really common filter that recruiters will use to fin

profile tips. And stay to the end because I'm going to show you what recruiters actually see and how they search for candidates on LinkedIn recruiter. So go ahead and open up your LinkedIn profile and you can follow along with me from top to bottom and

I'll walk you through exactly how to optimize your profile to get noticed more by recruiters. Now everything we're going to do in this video is going to cover two main objectives. The first one is to increase your SEO ranking so that

recruiters actually can see you near the top of their list whenever they're doing a search for their jobs. And the second thing is that you want to actually optimize your profile to encourage recruiters to send you messages. One

thing you may not know is that LinkedIn charges recruiters a lot of money just to be able to send a message to a candidate. They can do this because LinkedIn basically has a monopoly on the job search market. So, they charge

ridiculous prices to recruiters and companies to be able to send you a message. So, that's why recruiters are only going to spend their hard-earned dollars on candidates that they think are active on the platform. So, we're going to be doing things in this video

to show recruiters that you actively use LinkedIn and you do check it. So, starting right here at the top, you want to make sure that you have a professional photo added to your profile. You don't need to pay someone

to take this photo for you. If you just have a pretty good phone, like an iPhone or something like that, just go ahead and put it on portrait mode and then just take a photo of yourself and upload

it. Any photo will do as long as it's not you at the strip club. It's proven that LinkedIn profiles with pictures actually receive 21 times more views than profiles without. And as a recruiter, I can personally tell you

that my first red flag to me as a recruiter if I should send someone a message is if they don't even update their picture. That shows me they don't take LinkedIn seriously at all and they probably don't even check this that

often. Next, you're going to go down to this section right underneath your photo here. And you're going to want to fill in all of this basic information. And I highly encourage you to actually put your last name on your profile because

then that will allow recruiters to search their ATS database to see if you're already in there and if you have your resume in there. Next, the most important thing you're going to want to update after that is actually updating

your headline here. So, whenever you think about your SEO ranking for LinkedIn, they're going to be using your headline as well as your summary and your job titles. Those three carry the biggest weight in your SEO score. So,

for your headline here, what I always recommend is you have two parts to it.

The first part is you're going to put your job title or the industry common job title that you want to get in your new role. And then you're going to put one of these lines here. Put down in the

comments if you know what this thing is called. I don't really know. But you're going to put this this line here. And then you're going to add some hard technical skills that recruiters would typically use to search you. So for

example, if you're a data analyst, you're going to want to put your core technical skills here like Python and SQL and Tableau. So all of your hard skills, no soft skills. Now for me, in my case, I'm a recruiter. So I would put

things like sourcing, ATS, and talent mapping. And just to make sure I reemphasize a really important point, you want to use industry standard job titles whenever you're describing yourself in your headline and in your current position. Even if the job title

that your company gave you doesn't match industry standards. So for example, if you are a project coordinator, but you know in reality you're actually a project manager or a program manager, then go ahead and add that to your job

title. or in my case, my company actually calls me talent acquisition specialist, but most people would try to find me as a recruiter. Another really important thing to point out here in your introductory section is your location. So, you do and should put in a

city very specifically as to where you currently live or where you want to work. You can add more locations later on in a different section, but you should include a city. Don't just leave it as United States, for example. The

reason why is because one of the filters on the back end that recruiters use to find candidates is location and it's driven based off of this section.

Especially now with a lot of companies moving back to hybrid or inoff jobs, they're going to be looking for local talent. After you've updated that section, go down to this section right here and click this one. This is also a

very important section because at the top you're going to be able to write down and list all of the target jobs that you want to be found for. And this is what I was talking about earlier where you can add the locations as to

where you would want your job to be even if it's not where you currently live.

And then here down in this visibility section, if you don't want your co-workers or manager to see that you're openly looking for a job, then just change this to recruiters only. But if you're if your company culture is not

really that toxic and you just want to be o as found by as many people as possible, then go ahead and click this button down here for all LinkedIn members, not just recruiters. Next, go down here to your about section. This is

basically like the equivalent of your summary section on your resume. But I do want to point out something very important here. They only allow a preview of up to the first three lines in your about section. So you can see

here after I write this third line, it's going to get cut off. So recruiters will only be able to controlf find and read whatever they see in the first three lines. So in your about section here, it's going to be a little bit different

than what you put on your resume. You should lead off with your job title or target job title that you want to be found for. And then you want to include your overall years of experience. And then if it's important for your job, you

may want to list the domain or industry or product expertise that you focus on.

So in my case, as a recruiter, I really specialize in hiring for silicon, hardware, AI roles. And so I'm going to include that here because if there is a hardware, AI or silicon company that's looking for a recruiter, I am actually

going to be their number one candidate and they're definitely going to send me a message. So all of that should be included in your very first sentence.

Now your second sentence should actually be one of your greatest accomplishments that shows how great you are at your role. Now very important note here. You want your accomplishment to match the scope of role in which you are applying

for. So for example, if you are applying for a director level position, you want your accomplishment here to be something really strategic and big picture that has huge impact on the bottom line of your company or your division. You do

not want to highlight something you did as an individual contributor before you became a director, even if you think it's more impressive than stuff you've done as a director, because the accomplishment will not match the scope of work for the job that you're

targeting. Next, you're going to go down to this skills section here and add as many relevant hard skills as you can that are related to your role. And I'll show you this towards the end of the video, but the skills section is

actually one other really common filter that recruiters will use to find and short list candidates. Now, we're going to scroll down here to your actual work experience. Good news is this section matters a whole lot less than everything

else that we've talked about so far. So, go ahead and click this pencil button here to start doing your edits. Now, the number one most important thing, as I mentioned before, is that your job titles should match either the industry

standard or whatever job it is that you are targeting because this is going to affect your SEO as well as what recruiters will use to actually find you. And it is okay to list multiple different job titles here in parenthesis

to help optimize your ranking. So I can put recruiting lead, I can put head of talent, I could put technical recruiter and recruiting manager. And then as you scroll down here, fill out all the information. But now we get to the

description or if this is like your resume, this would be the bullet point section and what you would put here. Now do not just copy and paste what you have on your resume into this section on LinkedIn because LinkedIn is very

different. You need to think about what our two main objectives are, right? The first objective is to actually increase your SEO ranking. So instead of listing the bullets like you would on a resume which talk about your results and your

accomplishments and all the numbers and metrics and stuff like that, you actually want to optimize this section to be filled with all of the keywords that are important for recruiters to find you in that job that you're targeting. So, for example, again, if

you're a data analyst, you're going to want to talk about how you are proficient in SQL, Tableau, PowerBI, right? And all of those other tools that you use. You could write a sentence kind of like this that covers a lot of the

potential keywords that recruiters are going to use to try to find you. And you only need to write about two or three of these sentences per job that you're showing. Now, a pro tip here is if you've been at the same company for a

while like I have and you've received promotions while you've been there, you should actually list them out on your LinkedIn profile like I have here because then it shows that you are actually a top performer because you've gotten all these promotions. Now, on the

flip side, if you've switched different types of jobs within that company, but it's not relevant or related to the job that you actually want recruiters to contact you about, do not include those on your profile because it will actually

hurt your SEO and ranking. And they actually won't find your profile or they'll click off of your profile because you're marketing yourself as someone who doesn't have the relevant experience because you did a career switch. They don't need to know that.

They just need to be encouraged enough to message you, which was objective number two. So, for example, in my case, I actually did a career switch. I started in management consulting and then I became a recruiter. So, me

leaving this on my recruiting profile actually hurts my ranking and it will honestly just confuse recruiters. So, I actually should just delete this. Next, make sure you fill out your education section down here. Now, if you are trying to avoid agism, then I would make

sure you remove the year of graduation. And also, if your degree is unrelated to the job that you also want, then I would also remove that as well because it's going to hurt your ranking. Next is the skills section here. Go ahead and click

this pencil icon and then just basically try and add as many as you can without getting too bored. Now, I get asked about this recommendation section all the time. It does help increase your profile completion up to 100% which is

supposed to increase your SEO ranking and viewership, but I don't actually think it's mandatory. And honestly, I don't know a single recruiter who actually reads the recommendations from people's profiles. But we do use recommendations to find other more

qualified candidates than you sometimes. So, I'd actually think for selfish purposes, you don't actually need to include one here. And then next is the coursework. So for those of you who have technical roles like data analyst, software engineering, hardware

engineering, AI, you should probably list out all of the relevant courses that you have taken. Now, in my case, my degree does not match my current job now. So I'm actually going to remove these courses because it's probably

hurting my search ranking for recruiting position. Next is the honors and awards section. Now, if you've received any of these from your companies, I would include those here and then add a brief description as to what it stands for and

how you earn it. Especially if it's one of the more prestigious awards that you can win at your company. And for those of you that are in software engineering roles or any type of technical position or research position, this is one area

or section that recruiters do use to find people based on like patents and awards or if you've been asked to speak at certain conferences. Next is the organization section. And this is actually one of the more common fields I

use to search for candidates. Almost every type of job has a very famous and popular professional organization associated with it. Like in HR, it's Sure. And this is actually going to be a very common search term that I would use

as a recruiter to find top candidates. So go ahead and add all the relevant ones that you are associated with for the job that you want. So again, I'm going to remove all of my accounting stuff because that was before I became a

recruiter. Next, this is very important. I would definitely add your contact information to your profile if you are really serious about getting a new job.

You should include your personal email so that recruiters can actually just message you directly and not have to spend money to send you a message on LinkedIn. This is also going to show them that you are serious about getting

a job. And then go ahead and add your phone number as well. You don't need to include your own personal address or your birthday or anything like that.

Now, another one of the pro tips is that one of my key search criteria that I use in LinkedIn recruiter is to filter by years of experience because I know that I can't hire a candidate, for example, that has less than 10 years of

experience, but they I don't also don't want to hire someone that has more than 15 years of experience, for example. So, one of the things that's going to hurt your search quality as a candidate on your LinkedIn profile is if you have

irrelevant jobs here that are adding to your years of experience or internships or things that you've done while you were in school. Yes, those would be helpful on your profile when you're trying to get your first job out of

school. But now that you've been working, you don't want to add other internships on your work experience section because it's actually going to increase your years of experience in the search filter, which may be excluding you from the target jobs that you're

actually fit for. Now, my next pro tip is to constantly check the email address that's associated with your LinkedIn profile. The reason is you'll get emails that look like this, which will say who has recently viewed your profile. And

sometimes you'll be able to see if a recruiter viewed your profile. And if so, go ahead and add them back and send them a message because once you guys are connected, then they'll actually be able to send you a message for free. And

also, if you want more ideas about how to optimize your profile so you can be at the top of the search, another thing you can actually do is just type in your job title and hit enter and see who is

actually appearing at the top when you search for people. and then go ahead and click on their profiles and try to copy all of the things that they've done. And then you can actually see how to also optimize your profile so that you end up

at the very top of the list. And as I mentioned before, one of the things that also helps your SEO ranking on LinkedIn is being active on the platform. So, you could either do that by posting and writing articles like I've done here, or

you can actually just provide commentary and engage with the community on LinkedIn and other posts and reshare cuz being active, logging in and using your profile is going to tell the algorithm that recruiters should find you. Now, another pro tip to be at the top of the

search list for recruiters is that this is also organized by degrees of connections here. So you can see that secondderee connections will appear before any thirdderee connections on my network. So what that means is you should try to grow your LinkedIn

connection list with people either at the company that you're targeting like your dream company or recruiters at your dream company or people who are in similar roles as you. Cuz as long as you are a secondderee connection and not a

third degree connection, there's a greater likelihood that you're going to end up at one of the top pages of the search. So, if you want to know how to professionally network on LinkedIn, you're going to want to watch this video

that I have right over here. And by the way, if you're finding this video to be helpful so far, make sure you click subscribe down below because I post free weekly content just like this to help you accelerate your career, get new

jobs, and make more money. So, let me show you the behind the scenes of what recruiters actually look for and how they search for candidates on LinkedIn Recruiter, which is a different user interface than what you see with just

regular LinkedIn. So, we have all of these advanced filters that we can use to find candidates. The most common ones that we're going to use obviously are job titles, which is why I mentioned you're going to want to make sure you're

using a common industry job. We're going to filter by location, especially now because we have hybrid work environments as opposed to fully remote. And then we're going to typically type in certain keywords for the job that we know that

we're hiring for, like SQL or Tableau or things like that. And then another really common one that recruiters will use is years of experience right here.

And so this is why I was mentioning earlier where you want to make sure that you actually present the right years of experience and not adding any additional jobs like internships or irrelevant positions that don't have the skills

related for the job that you're trying to get because it's going to put you either short of this range or too far above this range and then you won't be able to show up in the job searches that

you want. And in case you're wondering, years of experience is calculated by the work experience section. It does not calculate using your date of graduation down here and then assuming how old you are. So it goes based on the years of

experience that you present. And another thing to keep in mind is if we're looking for certain candidates from very specific companies like our major competitors or companies that we know build certain types of AI products, for example, then we're going to want to use

this filter over here and type in specific companies. But what is important to know is that as you list your company, make sure you're choosing the matching company from the LinkedIn dropdown. Do not enter this as free text

because this is only going to show me people who have linked the company of Open AI through LinkedIn's user face on their profile. If instead you just wrote Open AI as your employer, you are not going to show up. Now, if you're a

recruiter watching this video, I'd love to actually see in the comments what other common fields you use for LinkedIn advanced search in order to find candidates. That way, all the other viewers can see what they also need to

optimize on their LinkedIn profiles. Now, if you want to know how to actually ace the interview that you're going to get because you've optimized your LinkedIn profile, you're going to want to watch this video that I have right

over