LinkedIn Profiles That Get Found - Jobseeker Basics IV

Greg Wyatt • October 28, 2025

What follows is Chapter 32 of A Career Breakdown Kit, the guide to navigating the modern VUCA jobs market.


The 2026 version will be published in January to make sure it remains up-to-date. As I see it the context is evolving, but the advice will remain the same, in helping you find and execute a strategy individual to your unique jobs market.


Fwiw, this chapter was last updated in early July, 2025.


Like all the other chapters this refers to, and is deeply connected with, the rest of the book.


Having a well configured LinkedIn profile is key to getting found, and the principles reflect a good CV.


It's also why if you aim for the 'Beat the Bots' of ATS Compliance, this goal can set you back overall in your job search.


Because how humans search for LinkedIn profiles, mainly with boolean algebra, filters, and the prospect of light AI assistance - that mirrors how we try and find good candidates in a high volume of applications.


As usual this advice is 'human compliant' and implicitly tech compliant too.


32 - 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 search. They are a secondary priority in recruiter searches.


As an exercise, why not look for Simon on the standard LinkedIn search bar? It’s far more limited than Recruiter but has some similar qualities.


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 The truth about the ATS (p20) 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.


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 lazy, corner cutters or incompetent. 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.


On LinkedIn Recruiter, I couldn’t find him on a lazy 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.


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.


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.



Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026
So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026
What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).