Linkedin Profiles That Get Found

Greg Wyatt • June 11, 2026

What follows is an updated chapter for the Summer 2026 edition of A Career Breakdown Kit, due for release in July. It explains why you may have a strong profile yet be invisible to recruiter searches - and what you can do about it.

If you've already bought a copy, DM me with your receipt and I'll DM you the latest version - that will always be my commitment and where this book is unlike others on the market.

A few weeks back I published the follow up chapter - "LinkedIn profiles that convert". You see it's not good enough to only get found, you must also convert readers into action. Unless, I suppose recruiters rely on only the most basic searches and don't want evidence of suitability.

Indeed I had a couple of comments on that article... "Greg getting found is far more important!", which is true, though it highlighted they didn't read the article. It is indeed true that you can't convert if you aren't found, but the two go hand in hand.

So this chapter fixes it. I publish the update now due to my LinkedIn Live with Simon Ward on Wednesday, where I prove a simple truth that confounds much LinkedIn advice:

If you believe your Headline is the only thing to rely on, you are wrong.

We'll use this simple leetspeak term "h34dl1n3" to show what LinkedIn Recruiter looks for in searches. I use that term because no one else on LinkedIn has, so it shows point for point what results are brought from searches.

Here's the Link for Wednesday 10th June at 2pm BST: Job hunters helpdesk. If you can't make it the recording is available in the same place.

Or you can read the following:

36 - LinkedIn profiles that get found

 

Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a data repository for recruiters. Many of us rely on this data to fill our vacancies. That data is you and your competition.

This chapter shows how recruiters use the LinkedIn Recruiter Licence to enable us to search for potential candidates, how this reflects other CV databases, and how this might help you improve the odds that your profile can be found.

If you didn’t know, Recruiter Licence is an expensive resource for recruiters and one which many rely on as a core part of their hiring approach.

We do this sometimes at the same time as advertising, sometimes instead of.

I’m a member of a private recruiter group on LinkedIn. We’re all small independents, and it was set up for recruiters who both care about candidate experience and are skilled in their craft.

In preparation for one of my LinkedIn Lives, I asked them in our WhatsApp group what their common frustration with LinkedIn profiles is. These were their replies:

‘Headlines are always shit’

‘CVs not matching LinkedIn profiles are a big no, especially in targeted roles like sales’

‘Job titles that don't make sense’

‘No personal profile’

‘Don't have your current job title as 'looking for work', put the job title you are aiming for and change your headline to e.g. 'Software Developer looking for their next role in X where I can add X value'‘

‘Profiles in my domain all look exactly the same. It’s all job titles, qualifications and nothing to differentiate them.’

Common issues I see too.

It’s worth pointing out that this exercise was solely on LinkedIn Recruiter.

Recruiters have different ways of finding candidates:

  • Their own CV database of previously registered candidates
  • Subscription CV databases off the back of job boards (in the UK), e.g. Indeed, Reed, Totaljobs, CV Library or more specialist ones in your area of expertise
  • ATS-style software that scrapes candidate data from LinkedIn and other sources
  • Real-life networking, referrals
  • Headhunting through market mapping, prospect companies and people in viable roles

When it comes to searching data, these are based on Boolean search and filters.

It’s the same way we might search through a high volume of applicants, such as on an ATS.

I recently did an experiment with my co-host, Simon Ward, on our weekly LinkedIn Live.

Simon is an exceptional Job Search Coach in the UK. He chose this title to define his services because, from his perspective, it was the most relevant description of what he does.

If I were to ask you what does someone do who can coach you through finding a job, what would you answer?

My guess would be Career Coach or maybe CV Writer.

And if you searched on those terms for Simon, you wouldn’t have found him. If you took the ‘lazy recruiter’ approach to sourcing you wouldn’t find him under ‘Job Search Coach’ either.

LinkedIn Recruiter works much in the same way as Amazon. You run a general search for your item of choice, then filter by various elements - in this case by industry and location.

One of the features of LinkedIn Recruiter is that we can filter by ‘Open to Work’, if you have that turned on in your profile, it should be to your advantage.

I don’t use it, because I have better means of contacting out-of-work job seekers.

When I look at my dashboard, these are the basic search fields that come up:

  • Job Title
  • Locations
  • Skills and Assessments
  • Companies
  • Schools Attended
  • Industries
  • Keywords

I use Job Title, Location, Industry and Keywords for general searches, as well as Companies if I know they might be incubators for candidates.

There are also advanced filters. For the purpose of this chapter, it’s about getting the basics right.

These search fields map point for point with how you fill out your profile. Play around with editing your profile and you’ll see the same options.

The problem with Simon is that he defined himself as a Job Search Coach in his headline.

If I search for this specific term as a Job Title, he won’t come up, whereas 37 other credible results do.

It’s only if I search on this term in Keywords that he comes up.

Headlines don’t have a specific filter to search on them - they only get found in a Keyword filter search, in an advanced operator search, or when that term is also specified in a primary search filter like Job Title. See A note on headlines below for why this matters.

What if you were an HR Manager who was a 100% fit for a Head of People vacancy, yet the recruiter didn’t find you because you didn’t use that explicit job title?

As a recruiter I would build up a Boolean string of comparable job titles, then expand or reduce depending on the volume of results.

Which might be:

(‘HR Manager’ OR ‘Human Resource Manager’ OR ‘Human Resources Manager’ OR ‘Head of HR’ OR ‘HR Director’) etc

I’d use every iteration of HR above and (‘People Manager’ OR ‘Head of People’), maybe I’d even go old school with Personnel.

I do this because of the arbitrariness of job titles, and because an HR Director in one business might be a Head of People in another.

As well as other curiosities like People Business Partner, which might be any and all of those titles.

Once I have a comprehensive list, I can save this for future reference and build it iteratively if I come across any weird job titles in the wild.

If I need to further fine-tune, I’d bring in relevant qualifications, memberships and skills for that role.

MCIPD AND ‘Employee Relations’ AND FMCG… might be an example, although these are separated on LinkedIn by individual fields.

If you’re wondering about the capitalisation - AND OR NOT and others are Boolean operators that allow us to specify or separate data.

Sometimes I’ll even search on typos, because I know these aren’t searched for by many, but only if it’s a hard role to fill: ‘HR Manger’ (I realise HR isn’t obscure)

I do what it takes to find the right people.

It won’t help if you are a suitable candidate for the above and your job title is ‘Assistant to the Senior Manager, HR, Business Partnering.’ A real job title I once came across.

I explain in the ATS chapters (p29) that one area AI is enhancing work is through automating Boolean searches - this makes it easier for a less skilled recruiter to find candidates. If you have the basics above nailed, things will only improve.

For now, a skilled search will uncover candidates better than automation.

Here’s the first takeaway:

Ensure the keywords, job titles, skills and qualifications that reflect the job you want are explicitly stated on your profile and in the right fields. Ensure Industry is best fit with your ideal career industry (a specific filter we use, which can be amended where you edit your headline)

If you aren’t sure, print off all the jobs you’ve recently applied for where you are a 90%+ fit. What are the common terms? These should be on your profile - if and only if they are true and you have evidence.

If your current job title is ‘Looking for a new opportunity,’ it might be true and it might get you overlooked.

You’d probably want your current job title to be ‘HR Manager - looking for a new opportunity.’

In that fuzzy weird title above, I’d go for ‘Assistant to the Senior Manager, HR, Business Partnering - (HR Manager)’

Search fields do have additional filters, allowing a search on current or past jobs - can we guarantee recruiters won’t do anything more than the most simplistic of searches?

Now, you’d hope that recruiters aren’t actually lazy, corner cutters or incompetent. Though if you cater for the weakest link, you also cater for more skilled recruiters.

I asked a current job seeker what roles he is applying for.

His reply:

Compliance Assistant / Administrator,

Client Onboarding Assistant / Administrator,

Operations Assistant / Administrator,

Reconciliations Administrator.

I couldn’t find him on a basic search for the first line. This was my reply:

When I did a search using your ideal job titles, you didn't come up for ‘Compliance Assistant’ or ‘Compliance Administrator.’

You do come up for ‘Client Onboarding Assistant’ and Administrator because these are explicit in your profile.

You may benefit from making sure the exact terms you look for in adverts are represented in your profile.

The crux of being found is understanding what we search for. Give us what we need to find you. Inversion.

The principles are the same for a CV which you can use on job board CV databases.

Another exercise to improve visibility

What were the last 10 job adverts you read that represented a strong fit with where you are in your career?

Ones which reflect what you've been doing and would be a natural step forward.

What do these descriptions have in common, out of job titles, key skills, qualifications and technology?

Now look at your LinkedIn profile. In order of priority, do these use the same words you see in adverts?

  1. Your job titles - most recent and previous
  2. Your Headline
  3. Your About section
  4. The sections under each job title
  5. Your skills

Often, when recruiters do searches against similar roles, they'll use the terminology from the job description, which is commonly used as the basis for adverts.

They'll search under the same terms that you might read on those adverts - job titles, qualifications, skills, software, industry.

If your profile doesn't explicitly state these, you won't be as easily found.

For example, if you are a ‘Head of Affiliate, Digital and Offline Marketing’ and you are performing the duties of a Marketing Manager - that's what you need to show in your profile.

While your headline is important - it doesn't help you if your profile doesn't turn up in search results, given its lower priority in Recruiter Licence search filters.

Update your profile truthfully and see what happens.

How else can you help readers see you as a viable candidate?

Do the same for your CV - because these same principles will support your applications, speculative contacts, networking and use of CV databases.

Note: there is no global ranking of profiles. Search rankings are in part specific to the searcher, based on things like network proximity and the recruiter's own activity. So you might be #1 in one search, and on the 3rd page for a different recruiter.

The configuration layer beneath the visible profile

Everything so far has been the visible profile: headline, about, experience, the keywords a reader can see. There is a configuration layer beneath this that drives how the platform matches you to sponsored adverts and how recruiters filter their searches. I covered why this matters in The invitation that wasn't (p67). Here is how to set it.

The first thing to understand is that these fields are additive. They add the searches and matches you appear in. They do not subtract your existing visibility. Setting a stretch title in Open to Work cannot erase your real title from your Experience section, which is where Boolean searches actually hit. So there is no penalty for reaching, only the question of where you spend limited slots.

Open to Work job titles. Up to five slots, drawn from LinkedIn's pre-populated taxonomy. These titles make you findable for roles you have never held. Set Director of Operations and you surface in searches for that title even if your profile only shows you as a Business Manager. It is the single most useful mechanism the platform offers anyone trying to move sideways, level up, or pivot.

Five slots forces a choice, which is the right design. The balance to aim for is between titles you are genuinely suited for now and titles you would move jobs for. Where you sit depends on your situation. If you are passively open and not in a rush, weight the slots toward the next move up; you can afford to wait for the right conversation. If you are actively looking and need to land something soon, weight them toward your current level, where you are credible on paper and the conversation is easier. Most people sit in between, two or three slots at current level and the rest reaching forward.

Don't spend slots on minor variants of the same title. Operations Manager, Senior Operations Manager and Head of Operations sound distinct but are the same career step at different scales. Use the slots to span seniority, sector framings, or adjacent functions you would genuinely accept, not to maximise hits on one narrow lane. The taxonomy is incomplete in niche sectors; pick the closest standard option and live with it.

Employment types. Tick every type you would genuinely accept, including part-time and contract if you would. The match engine appears to read this as a permission rather than a preference, and unchecking a type closes a door. If you would consider part-time in the right role, say so.

Locations and remote flag. Specify your real location plus the remote flag if you would take remote work. The advice to limit yourself to two or three locations to avoid looking desperate is editorial commentary, not LinkedIn policy. Set it honestly.

Visibility. Recruiters-only versus all members. Both feed the same match engine, so this is a risk-management choice, not a leverage one. Recruiters-only is the right default for anyone currently employed. This is mainly invisible to your current employer - unless they are cynical enough to employ a 3rd party to see who is Open to Work. The public green frame adds reach but exposes your status to your current employer and to a great deal of low-quality outreach, including scams. The wider perception question I cover in #OpenToWork (p47).

Industry and current employer link. Your industry classification is pulled from your current employer's LinkedIn Page, not from anything you say. I have seen this fail for candidates whose employer was mis-tagged or whose Page wasn't linked: the classification is wrong and they never know. Check that your current employer's page is linked correctly in your Experience section. This is also the field that hides your Open to Work status from your current employer's recruiters. If the link is missing or wrong, that privacy guarantee fails.

Settings drift. Most candidates set these fields once, at the moment of activating Open to Work, and never revisit them. The titles you would accept change as you learn what the market wants. Treat it as a living configuration, not a permanent declaration.

The reason this belongs in a chapter on getting found is that it is the hidden half of discoverability. The visible profile gets you into recruiter Boolean searches. The configuration layer gets you into the platform's match engine. How that same profile then has to hold up to a human reading it, and how it serves your outbound approaches too, sits within the wider framework in Through-the-Line (p120).

A note on headlines

Headlines are a secondary priority in recruiter searches. The Simon Ward experiment from the LinkedIn Live illustrated this directly: searching on a specific job title term as a Job Title filter returned a different, smaller result set than the same term entered as a Keyword. Profiles where that title existed only in the headline - not in any Experience entry - surfaced in the Keyword search and not in the Job Title filter.

This is consistent with how LinkedIn documents its own search architecture. The Job Titles filter is defined as targeting job titles members add in the Experience section. The Keywords filter is defined as pulling from the entire profile page. Those are two distinct fields with two distinct search behaviours.

Independent cross-checking against platform documentation and practitioner testing found no evidence that it differs by tier. The Job Title filter appears to index Experience title fields consistently across Recruiter Lite, Professional and Corporate.

This morning (1st June 2026), I confirmed this using the unique term h34dl1n3, which only appears on one profile in the world - mine. This was on LinkedIn Recruiter Lite and confirmed expert Boolean sourcing practitioner findings, such as from Irina Shamaeva in late 2024.

This surfaces h34dl1n3 when it is solely stated in the Headline field when using the secondary filter "Keywords" and the advanced operator "headline:". If you search on the primary filter Job Titles - it does not appear.

Where the headline earns its keep is at the next stage. When the term appears in the headline, About or title, the results list renders it in bold. That bolding is what catches a recruiter's eye as they scan - a scanning signal, not a discovery one. It affects whether you get noticed among the results, not whether you appear in them.

To summarise: your headline matters for Keyword searches and for how a reader processes your profile once they've clicked through. It does not help you appear in Job Title filter searches unless your title also appears in an Experience entry.

A note on Resumes/CVs

Storing a CV on LinkedIn and turning on the backend "Share resume data with recruiters" button supports discoverability, through keywords and skills that are aligned with your Recruiter profile.

This can boost your return in search results, through compounding within your LinkedIn profile. The substance of this boost isn't quantifiable, given LinkedIn is opaque in how it ranks search results.

However, it's a good idea to have your current 'good enough' CV stored, as well as additional documents (up to 4) for different role profiles you are suitable for.

A note on Activity

Another ranking factor is your activity on LinkedIn. The logic is simple - active job seekers are more likely to be responsive to recruiter enquiries, therefore they prove effectiveness of messaging through Recruiter Licence and are prioritised.

While there are conflicting reports of what makes up effective activity, including between practitioner advice and LinkedIn help articles - my advice is simpler:

Be responsive and proactive whatever you do on LinkedIn, with the happy byproduct that action boosts your visibility.

However

Getting found is only the first piece of the puzzle, and when your profile is read, you need to convert interest.

This is why you need to get the balance right in how you present your information.

An inverted job search

By Greg Wyatt • October 7, 2026
I realise I've shared this chapter fairly recently, but there's good reason to revisit it. On Friday, I launched a new AI tool - Your Job Search Plan. You can find it here: https://your-jobsearch-plan.netlify.app/ It's based on the inversion principle below: the optimal job search is an inversion of how that job is optimally recruited. In other words, the first step in a job search should be to understand how recruiters and hiring processes seek to fill your ideal vacancy. Then to access all those channels while putting your best foot forward. It connects your applications, your networking, your CV, your LinkedIn profile, and so on, all of which should stem from your professional identity, the context of your career, the market conditions for that career, and therefore the work you'll need to do to boost your odds. One thing I'm pleased about with this tool is how it relates to the other tools and resources on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . So what seemed abstract, or painful activities without guaranteed outcome, become a practical arrow in the quiver of your search. I hope you find these tools helpful. They are a starting point, rather than a resolution. 20 - An inverted job search So, your broad approach to looking for a job is based on a product marketing strategy. How does this link to your job search and how companies hire? The next step is to recognise a job search is an inverted recruitment process. Whatever you can learn about the actual workings of recruitment, the better armed you are to navigate them. The first way in which this is true is around the routes to market employers take to fill a job. Employers want to fill vacancies in the most economical and efficient means possible. Sometimes they’ll rely on external advice, sometimes they’ll figure out their own way, and sometimes they’ll employ people to do it for them (such as a Talent Acquisition Manager or internal recruiter). When they rely on external advice, it may not surprise you it’s as varied and contradictory as job seeker advice. Take this nugget of wisdom: 80% of suitable candidates are not actively looking for work. By advertising, you’ll only have access to the 20% that applies to adverts. Hang on a minute! Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the hidden jobs market? Of course, candidates aren’t hidden - much like hidden jobs, the priority is to understand the channels through which candidates are found. These channels directly mirror the channels through which you look for that job: Job boards; LinkedIn; Recruitment agencies; Confidential headhunting; Internal promotions; Secondments; Temp-to-perm hires; Consulting-to-perm hires; Referrals; Networking; Speculative approaches; Careers pages; Talent pools; Candidate databases Every job is different, dictated by principles like supply and demand, confidentiality, reputational risk, wherewithal, budget and capacity. The hiring process of a Software Developer is different from that of a Sales Director. If an employer only hires through an advert - this means if you don’t apply for adverts, there’s no way in which you can be considered for that vacancy. A second way it’s accurate is the notion that what’s true for one may not be true for others. This relates to candidate resentment . You may read online that some recruitment behaviours are signs of a bad employer. Yet, you should always follow the instructions given when applying for an advert or through an agency. They may instruct you to: 1/ Write a CV, cover letter and duplicate it on their ATS 2/ Tell them your salary when they don’t list theirs 3/ Do 17 interviews before reaching a decision 4/ Deliver a 6-month strategy plan by presentation 5/ Or any other request deemed unreasonable by Career Coaches, Job seekers, or people otherwise uninvolved in that process What some consider red flags, others will deem acceptable practice. It becomes your choice to play the game or not. Either follow their instructions or step away. You don’t have to apply if you don’t want to. In a similar vein, if you hear a hiring process has a preference, or if there are gaps in their employment armoury - these might be biases you can lean into. The hiring manager loves Arsenal Football Club and is biased towards people who love the same? Now might be the time to switch allegiance, if you can fake it or make it. They love a one page CV? Apply with a one page CV. You know the hiring manager of an advert with 400 applications? Give them a call - they might give you an unfair advantage. Poor practice from the employer, yet these are problems you can turn into opportunity. A third way in which this is true is by comparing inbound and outbound activity Outbound activity is where you go to your prospect (phone calls, messaging). Inbound activity is where the prospect comes to you (job adverts, content). Yet an outbound activity for a recruiter is an inbound activity for you (you receive phone calls and messages). While an inbound activity has you getting in touch because of their advert or content. When we talk about optimising your work, whether your CV, profile or interviews, it has to give the process what it needs. How can you be more discoverable, so you receive more relevant calls and messages? How can you improve your return on applications and your outbound messages? What about inverse non-recruitment? A brilliant, if strange question, with the same answer. When networking, going direct, seeking to become a referral, doorknocking, or other, what is the inverse of that activity? How does that person find or recommend people, if they become aware of a vacancy? How might they see you as a person to solve their problems, even if it isn’t a vacancy? You do these activities because of how they might help you and because of the benefit the other party experiences. What’s in it for them? If there isn’t anything in it for them, why should they help you? For each and every stage in recruitment, there is an opposed force, as candidates and the hiring process meet each other. It’s rarely an equal force, because every vacancy has supply and demand, resource, skill level, biases and intent at play. This is why each type of role has a different method of looking for work. Executive vacancies typically prioritise headhunted candidates, with fewer public adverts. Here the priority shifts towards building relationships with, and being discoverable by, Executive Search recruiters. If executives rely mainly on job boards, they may never think to focus on more suited channels. If you can learn what the other needs for that process to be successful, you can deliver the same. Speak to peers, speak to hiring managers you know, speak to recruiters, speak to former job seekers. How have they found work, and how would they recruit for your roles? Research your market to find viable employers, to identify recruiters and to build your network.  Then execute an appropriate strategy to access these channels.

Hierarchy of Pain

By Greg Wyatt • September 23, 2026
I had an aborted conversation at a networking event on Tuesday. It was about a problem vacancy a fractional people lead was looking at. Her client had instructed various executive search firms and none had produced a viable candidate. It seems the consistent approach was to match CVs to job description - pureplay transactional - and none were candidates that met the goal of the vacancy. You see that organisational pain that the vacancy heals wasn't defined by documentation, and therefore if you rely on that documentation to find candidates, it's happenstance that you come across someone viable. It's such a common problem, and when I 'fix' problem vacancies, it's invariably something that isn't described which was holding back a successful hire. The irony is this shouldn't be a hidden pain - presuming it's appropriate to share, it should be front and centre. What complicates modern recruitment is that, instead of better specifying vacancies, both sides of the hiring fence increasingly rely on LLMs to produce documentation that shaves the edges off. And as a result a candidate that has extensively healed the hidden pain a vacancy might even remove the evidence from their application in a bit to better match an advert or job description. The more transactional recruitment comes, particularly through reliance on technology, the worse this problem becomes. Probably not an issue for business as usual vacancy, but when a vacancy has impact, standard process of "5 CVs by Friday" will invariably hold you back. The chapter below is from A Career Breakdown Kit , my guide for navigating a skewiff employment market. It may be for job seekers, but the problem and solution are directly mirrored by the hiring side. It's taken word for word from the book, so some of the content is interconnected with other chapters. You can read most of them for free in the Jobseeker Basics newsletter. Hierarchy of pain This chapter reflects on how buyers make decisions, how this is reflected in hiring and why it matters in how you put forward your CV, application, interviews and other messages. If you’ve ever encountered sales in your career or life you are likely familiar with the concepts of Features and Benefits. The product is what is proposed. Features are what it does. Benefits are how it helps. However there are actually three other components in this hierarchy that make up commercial messaging. Value is what the benefits mean to you. “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - the sizzle isn’t a benefit, if you don’t like sausages. Outcomes are the tangible long-term results from using that product or service. “Sell the picture frame, not the screwdriver” - or rather what’s in the frame. Why does it matter? The idea being these peel back the layers of the onion to help a potential customer understand exactly What’s In It For Them. Yet, it may not matter whatsoever if your brilliantly put together message doesn’t achieve one element - show how you heal their hidden pain. In that frame example above, this might be a photo of a loved one, no longer with us. The photo is for our memories and feelings. The frame has to be right, to commemorate them properly. While it needs to be mounted well, using tools that make the job easier. Could you market that loss to sell a screwdriver? Hopefully not, though the message might be, “For memories that matter,” instead of "High Quality Screwdriver". It's a common pain many share, yet not one you might discuss down the DIY shop. Early in my career I had a lesson on hidden pain and its importance. I recruited an HR Manager for a high growth business whose requirement was for someone with broad experience in a similar environment. I presented an excellent candidate who was only available due to the shutdown of her employer - she had to stay to the final day to manage the process well, which limited her availability to start work. That was the only reason I explained her current situation to this new employer, because redundancy management wasn’t on the job description. She got the job! On day one of her new employment, her role was made redundant and she was offered a retention bonus to shut down the local site - everyone was to lose their jobs. The hidden pain here was redundancy, something not even mentioned to me during the vacancy briefing, and something I never broached with Julie. IIRC, there was no mention of it during the interview process either. Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but it does show what can happen behind the scenes. And if you happened to be out of work, a fixed term contract with a retention bonus might be quite appealing. Were you to apply to that vacancy, it would be important to highlight your redundancy experience - customising your CV might even have worked against you! So how does this hierarchy fit within your job search? You are the product, with your next employer on a buyer’s journey. Your features are what you offer. In a CV this is a combination of job titles, qualifications, skills and areas of experience. It’s also your salary requirement, where you are based and other elements like Visa status and working arrangements. Get these right and a little luck might mean they are all you need, considering that these same elements are what we source and filter on. I expect in this market you’re in competition with many people that offer the same Features, so the differentiator is what you bring to the table uniquely. The contexts of your career combined with how you helped, your impact, your achievements, and what the outcomes were. Related chapters: Principles of a Good CV Should I customise my CV? LinkedIn profiles that get found LinkedIn profiles that convert These are all resources that will help you communicate the benefits of your experience, the value you bring, the problems you solve, and the outcomes of these solutions. As for the hidden pain question, which in many vacancies isn’t articulated, how can you unpick hidden? Go back to why vacancies are recruited. How did they come about in the first place? They only fit into two piles - new and replacement. However these two piles have many subcategories relating to the problems they solve and the pain they heal. Researching the company can help. Inside knowledge definitely helps - it’s one reason good agency recruiters will be a valuable ally. But this knowledge isn’t always available, and sometimes the employer may not even know! I always come back to the principle, “You can’t be all things to all people.” And when you try to do this, you appeal to no one. It’s one reason why using LLM style AI to customise CVs is so problematic. The output is necessarily same-same because it’s a probabilistic determination of what you want based on an aggregate of data. It’s why, when recruiters receive a volume of AI augmented CVs, they all look the same. Your ‘good enough’ core CV ( Should I customise my CV ) leans into your strengths. While you might tweak it to meet the essential requirements, in the language of the employer, this should naturally support your greatest strength - the unique fingerprint that is your career. The downside of relying on customisation against vague, and often misrepresentative, adverts is that you can deemphasise and even remove your biggest achievements. The same achievements that would have helped you stand out. If your application doesn’t heal the hidden pain of a vacancy, it’s either because you have not defined your strengths correctly or you aren’t that close of a fit with the actual needs of the vacancy. An example to show this pitfall in practice. I caught up with a friend yesterday who has resigned from a post that was missold to him. His career is based on commercial acumen and enablement in a field that is heavily focused on risk management and compliance. So he’s already unusual in a good way (though his CV didn’t show this). On day one of his new job, he encountered a literal unexpected disaster. While these things happen, and he managed the situation effectively, this proved a consequence of the business culture and strategy. These problems kept coming up and his functional area in the business needed a complete overhaul at executive level. Rather than the commercial enablement picture they painted, they needed someone who relished chaos - a master of disaster. Completely the opposite of the career Simon wants. This isn’t something they could publicise in their recruitment process, for reputational reasons, yet it was a fundamental baked-in aspect of the role. I’ve no doubt Simon’s CV is a match for their job description. Yet he is not a match for their job. What if they’d seen CVs of people who’d leant into strengths of healing dysfunction? What if he’d leant into his strength of enablement? He may not have left his previous job for something he went on to regret. If you’re sceptical about how crucial hidden pain is in recruitment, think about your own hidden pain when applying for jobs. What’s going on in your life that impacts which roles are ideal for you. The same points you might not divulge when you’re just trying to get back into employment. Perhaps you've even experienced the pain I did when considering a hardware purchase. How did that pain inform your buying decisions? It’s no different for employers when they consider the pain and problems inherent in their vacancy.