Recruiters notoriously spend little time on your resume — as little as three-to-five seconds, according to former Disney recruiter Simon Taylor. “Five is generous,” he previously told Make it. They’re simply too inundated with candidates to dedicate much more.
But it turns out that when it comes to your LinkedIn profile, they may be more lenient. “I spend 25 times longer on your LinkedIn profile” than your resume, says Lindsay Mustain, former Amazon recruiter and current CEO of career coaching company Talent Paradigm. That’s because the platform offers “a more comprehensive snapshot of a candidate’s professional journey,” she says. Unlike a resume, they’re not limited to one or two pages. She looks at LinkedIn profiles both when she’s actively seeking out candidates and when she’s not.
And there’s one component of your profile that makes you stand out among the rest: your activities.
‘I’m looking for how you perceive a problem’
Below your banner, picture and title is a section dedicated to your activity. This is where your posts and public interactions with other people on the site show up. It’s positioned even above your various workplace experiences. And it’s this section that can really get a hiring manager’s attention.
DON’T MISS: The ultimate guide to acing your interview and landing your dream job
Mustain recommends using this space to illustrate how engaged you are in your field. That could be through a post about what you always do or what you never do given a certain situation on the job. It could be a post about something that’s frustrating you about your industry, what Mustain calls “mini soapbox rants.” It could be your response to somebody else’s post about a new direction their company is taking.
“I’m looking for how you perceive a problem or a solution that’s happening in your industry,” says Mustain. The idea is to prove that you’re thinking deeply about where your industry is now and how to move it forward.
It also makes you “a three-dimensional person,” she says, whereas a resume alone could not. “I get to understand the things that matter to you.”
‘It is so easy to become the top candidate’
Don’t neglect all of the other components of your profile.
Make sure you’re reflecting your experiences accurately, gearing them toward the job you want and that your profile is updated. Include a professional photo. Write a summary that reflects who you are as a professional and what you want to achieve.
But start beefing up the activity section of your profile as well to set yourself apart from the crowd. “It is so easy to become the top candidate in essence,” she says, “because you have this other aspect.”
Want to land your dream job in 2024? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Ace Your Job Interview to learn what hiring managers are really looking for, body language techniques, what to say and not to say, and the best way to talk about pay. CNBC Make It readers can save 25% with discount code 25OFF.
