It’s time to take a step back, put yourself in a recruiter’s shoe and and look at your online job profiles. Now ask yourself if you will hire this candidate, if it is a no then fret not. In a recent study over 590 million users including employees and employers have registered a profile and off which over 90% of the employers use LinkedIn to hire candidates. we spoke to experts and employees who found jobs on online portals to share their secrets.
Kumar Keshaw, a recruiting manager from a reputed firm says there are two sides to the managing a profile – technical and the professional side. He says, “The technical side is to use specific keywords which helps ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and the algorithms used on these job portals to understand your profile and to project the same to the recruiters. Make sure that you are using all the specific keywords that are appropriate to your profile while defining yourself with relevant information that a recruiter will be using.”
Giving us a clear understanding of how to manage your profile on a professional front Kumar adds, “The professional side is as important as the technical one. ‘Your Keywords’ might help your profile to engross recruiters but if the profile is not attractive, it may take even less than six seconds to jump out of your profile. You will see many blog posts giving you several suggestions on how to make your profiles attractive but from a recruiters point of view, I believe that an attractive headline plays a vital role. It makes a recruiter curious. The other two important aspects are skills and recommendations.
After going through your basic profile and all your experience you have put down there, a recruiter would definitely like to know where do you stand on your skill sets. A recommendation is always useful. It gives a boost to your profiles and gives recruiters a basic understanding of your professionalism.”
Explaining to us the mindset of a recruiter while looking for a candidate is Samantha Gina a recruiter from a leading software firm she says, “When we decide to hire a candidate the first thing we want to know if the candidate is open to learning and if they are a good at multitasking. When I look at a profile my eyes are first on the description, based on the language you can understand if it is original, confident or just point blank rigged off the internet. So I believe the key is to keep it real. The other point is put as much as information about you as possible and of course this has to be relevant information.”
Sudhanshu Chauhan who is now working as a software development engineer at Heady says how he landed a job via a popular job portal. He says, “These job portals are very organised and have a project section where people can add the various projects they have worked on. This gives a sense of availability and the willingness to work at immediate effect. Candidates should have a proper headline and their designations must be clear.
For example, no offense, but terms like growth hacker etc are very general, it's all about being specific. Also, if a conversation starts between a possible employer, always be honest, other wise you may get the job but not the one you actually deserve or the one that suits you.”
