This is part of our series on Coronavirus unemployment. If you missed part one start here and check out part two here.

If you’re suddenly finding yourself looking for a job, don’t start by updating your resume, start by optimizing your LinkedIn. Nine times out of 10 I find candidate LinkedIn profiles sort of lacking. They’re created out of necessity, but mostly ignored between job hunts, so they tend to be out of date or just not very thoughtfully done. That means if you do this right LinkedIn is an ideal place to stand out. It’s the first place most recruiters look, and the easiest way to get their attention. I focused on making the most of your profile aesthetically, as well as making sure your settings are optimized for maximum visibility, but LinkedIn adds new features all the time and you want to be constantly editing and enhancing your profile.

Make sure you have an up to date profile picture. Obviously this isn’t the time to get a new professional headshot taken, but if your picture is out of date you can still get a solid replacement right now. Natural light is best, go outside if you can in front of a neutral background. If you can’t get outside, use the best window you can. Parks are good, some city blocks work well too if you can get out without coming into close contact with other people (Benjamin’s LinkedIn is a good example of this). If you can’t get someone else to take a photo for you, Amazon has great options for cheap, portable phone tripods. This one can hook to almost anything, perfect if you’re trying to take your own headshot. Crop to focus on your head and shoulders and use an app like LightRoom or Snapseed to optimize the lighting or get rid of anything distracting in the background.
Customize a banner for your profile. Canva has some great professional looking options here: https://www.canva.com/templates/search/linkedin-banners/ Have the banner include a short summary of you “Experienced Data Scientist seeking new opportunities in the Washington, DC area. Skills include: Machine Learning, Algorithm Development, and Natural Language Processing”. Include your email and phone number in the banner too. Recruiters have a limited number of LinkedIn messages they can send per month, so including your direct contact info makes our lives much easier.
Focus on the “About” section. I would also include your phone number and email in this section (again we’re all about making it easier for recruiters to get in touch). Only a few lines show as a default, so it’s super important to include a “Click here to Continue” or “Click to Read More”. Bullet points are awesome and a great way to summarize your experience in a way that’s easy to skim and makes it easier to grab attention.
Job postings are an easy way to get a sense of the particular words and phrases that will grab attention in your field. Pick a few companies you’d ideally like to work for and go to their job sites. Read through those job descriptions and borrow the parts you like. The closer your profile matches the jobs recruiters are working on, the easier it will be for them to find you. It’s not that recruiters don’t dig deep on LinkedIn to find the perfect candidate, it’s that they start with the ones who were easiest to locate.
The best part of your “About” section should become your tagline. That’s the quick, two line summary under your name. “Creative and Experienced Data Science Leader” is better than “Data Scientist at Capital One”. The second one answers most of the questions I have about a candidate right away, without opening your profile. The first one however would be more likely to make me open your profile and read in more depth.
Update the information under each of your past positions. This is the time to really build out the details. Use some of the phrases you liked for your about section, but also include all of the numbers and quantitative measures you can. Things like “Reduced application processing time by 50%”, “Finished Fiscal Year 2019 at 150% of quota”. Specifics help give your past work context and define your capabilities for people who aren’t familiar with your work.
Take a Skill Quiz. You’ll find them on your profile under “Skills & Endorsements”. These are really geared toward technical skills (Git, Bash, Python, etc) but there are few creative skill sets in there too like Photoshop. If any of those apply to you it’s a quick way to get skills added to your profile without waiting on others to endorse you. If you don’t pass it won’t show on your profile, so nothing to lose here.
Once you’ve updated all of the text and skills sections https://www.jobscan.co/ is a good (free) resource to see how your profile maps to the jobs you’re looking for. Using some of the job descriptions you already found, it will score your profile on how well it matches to your ideal job title and industry. It’ll also suggest updates and places where your profile could be further improved.
Under “Settings and Privacy” go to “Job Seeking Preferences”. Make sure “Let Recruiters Know You’re Open to Opportunities” is changed to YES as well as “Signal Your Interest to Companies You Have Created Job Alerts For”. Wait what’s a job alert? On the top bar of LinkedIn click on the little briefcase with “Jobs” underneath. It will suggest jobs based on your profile, but also give you a bar to type in your desired title and location. You can set different alerts based on your parameters and LinkedIn will let you know when those jobs show up. Really the more the merrier here. LinkedIn crawls other job search sites, so it may be pulling from Monster, Career Builder, or Indeed, so yes you’ll see repeats, but some companies exclusively post to LinkedIn and you don’t want to miss those opportunities.
Make sure people can “see” your views. From a hiring perspective - I’ve never had an issue with a candidate checking my profile before an interview. If anything it just shows me they were doing their homework, being intentional about the conversation, and preparing for it. If you’re set to private you’re also missing a key data point - who has viewed YOUR profile. If you’re not sure what your current setting is this is under “Privacy” and “How others see your profile”.