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?

Your job titles - most recent and previous
Your Headline
Your About section
The sections under each job title
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.

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Jump the shark. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 13

By Greg Wyatt • January 29, 2026

May 2023 You’ve heard the phrase, I take it – “jump the shark”? It’s the moment when one surprising or absurd experience can indicate a rapid descent into rubbishness and obscurity. When it’s time to get off the bus. Typically in media. Jumping the Shark comes from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz does a water ski jump over a shark. 👈 Aaaaay. 👉 A sign creators have run out of ideas, or can’t be bothered to come up with fresh ones. In movies, sequelitis is a good example of this – an unnecessary sequel done to make some cash, in the hope the audience doesn’t care about its quality. Sometimes they become dead horses to flog, such as the missteps that are any Terminator film after 2. It’s an issue that can lead to consumers abandoning what they were doing, with such a precipitous drop in engagement that the thing itself is then cancelled. Partly because of breaking trust in what was expected to happen next. And because it’s a sign that the disbelief that was temporarily suspended has come crashing down. If you don’t believe that your current poor experience will lead to further, better experiences, why would you bother? Once you’ve had your fingers burnt, how hard is it to find that trust in similar experiences? It doesn’t have to be a single vein of experience for all to be affected. Watch one dodgy superhero movie and how does it whet your appetite for the next? You didn’t see The Eternals? Lucky you. Or how about that time we had really bad service at Café Rouge, a sign of new management that didn’t care, and we never went again? Just me? Did they sauter par-dessus le requin? Here’s the rub – it matters less that these experiences have jumped the shark. It matters more what the experience means for expectation. So it is in candidate experience. It’s not just the experience you provide that tempers expectations – it’s the cumulated experience of other processes that creates an assumption of what might be expected of yours. If you’re starting from a low trust point, what will it take for your process to ‘jump the shark’ and lose, not just an engaged audience, but those brilliant candidates that might only have considered talking to you if their experience hadn’t been off-putting? Not fair, is it, that the experience provided by other poor recruitment processes might affect what people expect of yours? Their experiences aren’t in your control, the experience you provide is. Of my 700 or so calls with exec job seekers, since The Pandemic: Lockdown Pt 1, many described the candidate experience touchpoints that led to them deciding not to proceed with an application. These were calls that were purely about job search strategy, and not people I could place. However, one benefit for me is that they are the Gemba , and I get to hear their direct experiences outside of my recruitment processes. Experiences such as - ‘£Competitive salary’ in an advert or DM, which they know full well means a lowball offer every time, because it happened to them once or twice, or perhaps it was just a LinkedIn post they read. Maybe it isn’t your problem at all, maybe your £competitive is upper 1% - how does their experience inform their assumptions? Or when adverts lend ambiguity to generic words, what meaning do they find, no matter how far from the truth? How the arrogance of a one-sided interview process affects their interest. The apparent narcissism in many outreaches in recruitment (unamazing, isn’t it, that bad outreach can close doors, rather than open them). Those ATS ‘duplicate your CV’ data entry beasts? Fool me once… Instances that are the catalysts for them withdrawing. I’d find myself telling them to look past these experiences, because a poor process can hide a good job. It’s a common theme in my jobseeker posts, such as a recent one offering a counterpoint to the virality that is “COVER LETTERS DON’T M4TT£R agree?” Experiences that may not be meant by the employer, or even thought of as necessarily bad, yet are drivers for decisions and behaviour. I can only appeal to these job seekers through my posts and calls. What about those other jobseekers who I’m not aware of, who’ve only experienced nonsense advice? What about those people who aren’t jobseekers? What about those people who think they love their roles? What about all those great candidates who won’t put up with bad experiences? The more sceptical they are, and the further they are from the need for a new role, the less bullshit they’ll put up with. What happens when an otherwise acceptable process presents something unpalatable? Might this jumping the shark mean they go no further? Every time the experience you provide doesn’t put their needs front and centre or if it’s correlated to their bad experiences…. these can prevent otherwise willing candidates from progressing with your process, whether that’s an advert they don’t apply to, a job they don’t start, or everything in between. Decisions that may stem from false assumptions of what a bad experience will mean. Instead, look to these ‘bad experience’ touchpoints as opportunities to do better: instead of £competitive, either state a salary or a legitimate reason why you can’t disclose salary (e.g. “see below” if limited by a job board field and “we negotiate a fair salary based on the contribution of the successful candidate, and don’t want to limit compensation by a band”) instead of a 1-way interrogation… an interview instead of radio silence when there’s no news - an update to say there’s no update, and ‘How are things with you by the way?’ instead of Apply Now via our Applicant Torture Sadistificator, ‘drop me a line if you have any questions’ or ‘don’t worry if you don’t have an updated CV - we’ll sort that later’. Opportunity from adversity. And why you can look at bad experiences other processes provide as a chance to do better. With the benefit that, if you eliminate poor experience, you'll lose fewer candidates unnecessarily, including those ideal ones you never knew about. Bad experiences are the yin to good experience’s yang and both are key parts of the E that is Experience in the AIDE framework. The good is for next time. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg

How To Network For A Job - Jobseeker Basics XIV

By Greg Wyatt • January 26, 2026

The following is Chapter 42 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . In a sense it's a microcosm of how any commercial activity can see a better return - which is to put the needs of the person you are appealing to above your own. It feels counterintuitive, especially when you have a burning need, but you can see the problem of NOT doing this simply by looking at 99% of job adverts: We are. We need. We want. What you'll do for us. What you might get in return. Capped off by the classic "don't call us, we'll call you." If you didn't need a job, how would you respond to that kind of advert? In the same vein, if you want networking to pay off, how will your contact's life improve by your contact? What's in it for them? 42 - How to network for a job Who are the two types of people you remember at networking events? For me two types stand out. One will be the instant pitch networker. This might work if you happen to be in need right now of what they have to offer or if mutual selling is your goal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this but it’s a selling activity pretending to be networking. If you want to sell, go and overtly sell rather than disguise it with subterfuge. Lest we mark your face and avoid you where possible in future. The second is the one who gets to know you, shows interest and tries to add to your experience. You share ideas, and there’s no push to buy something. They believe that through building the relationship when you have a problem they can solve, you’ll think to go to them. It’s a relationship built on reciprocity. One where if you always build something together there is reason to keep in touch. And where the outcome is what you need if the right elements come together: right person, right time, right message, right place, right offering, right price. Job search networking is no different. The purpose of networking in a job search is to build a network where you are seen as a go-to solution should a suitable problem come up. In this case the problem you solve is a vacancy. Either because your active network is recruiting, or because they advocate for you when someone they know is recruiting. It is always a two-way conversation you both benefit from. Knowledge sharing, sounding board, see how you’re doing - because of what the relationship brings to you both. It is not contacting someone only to ask for a job or a recommendation. A one-way conversation that relies on lucky timing. That second approach can be effective as a type of direct sales rather than networking. If you get it wrong it may even work against you. How would you feel if someone asked to network with you, when it became clear they want you to do something for them? You might get lucky and network with someone who is recruiting now - more likely is that you nurture that relationship over time. If your goal is only to ask for help each networking opportunity will have a low chance of success. While if your goal is to nurture a relationship that may produce a lead, you’ll only have constructive outcomes. This makes it sensible to start by building a network with people that already know you: Former direct colleagues and company colleagues Industry leaders and peers Recruiters you have employed or applied through Don’t forget the friends you aren’t in regular touch with - there is no shame in being out of work and it would be a shame if they didn’t think of you when aware of a suitable opening. These people are a priority because they know you, your capability and your approach and trust has already been built. Whereas networking with people you don't know requires helping them come to know and trust you. Networking with people you know is the most overlooked tactic by the exec job seekers I talk to (followed by personal branding). These are the same people who see the hidden jobs market as where their next role is, yet overlook what’s in front of them. If you are looking for a new role on the quiet - networking is a go-to approach that invites proactive contact to you. Networking with people who know people you know, then people in a similar domain, then people outside of this domain - these are in decreasing order of priority. Let's not forget the other type of networking. Talking to fellow job seekers is a great way to share your pain, take a load off your shoulders, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find the right people if you haven't kept in touch directly. Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a conduit to conversation. It isn’t the conversation itself. Speaking in real life is where networking shines because while you might build a facsimile of a relationship in text, it's no replacement for a fluid conversation. Whether by phone and video calls, real life meetups, business events, seminars, conferences, expos, or in my case - on dog walks and waiting outside of the school gates. Both these last two have led to friends and business for me though the latter hasn’t been available since 2021. Networking isn’t 'What can I get out of it?' Instead, ‘What’s in it for them?’ The difference is the same as those ransom list job adverts compared to the rare one that speaks to you personally. How can you build on this relationship by keeping in touch? Networking is systematic, periodic and iterative: Map out your real life career network. Revisit anyone you’ve ever worked with and where Find them on LinkedIn Get in touch ‘I was thinking about our time at xxx. Perhaps we could reconnect - would be great to catch up’ If they don’t reply, because life can be busy, diarise a follow up What could be of interest to them? A LinkedIn post might be a reason to catch up When you look up your contact’s profile look at the companies they’ve worked at. They worked there for a reason, which may be because of a common capability to you Research these companies. Are there people in relevant roles worth introducing yourself to? Maybe the company looks a fit with your aspirations - worth getting in touch with someone who may be a hiring manager or relevant recruiter? Maybe they aren’t recruiting now. Someone to keep in touch with because of mutual interests. Click on Job on their company page, then "I'm interested" - this helps for many reasons, including flagging your interest as a potential employee Keep iterating your network and find new companies as you look at new contacts. This is one way we map the market in recruitment to headhunt candidates - you can mirror this with your networking The more proactive networking you build into your job search, the luckier you might get. While you might need to nurture a sizeable network and there are no guarantees, think about the other virtues of networking - how does that compare to endless unreplied applications? I often hear from job seekers who found their next role through networking. This includes those who got the job because of their network even though hundreds of applicants were vying for it. While this may be unfair on the applicants sometimes you can make unfair work for you. It can be effective at any level.