In this article, we discuss what we look for in a LinkedIn profile when we are head hunting to fill a senior financial services role. Read on to discover the areas of your profile you should focus your energies on and ensure are up to date. This will help you present the best online version of yourself and make a good first impression to a potential employer.
Often your LinkedIn profile is the first thing a recruiter or prospective employer sees. They might be looking at you specifically because you applied for a role, or you may have come up in relevant industry key word searches as part of a passive candidate search.
When a hiring manager is deciding on their final short list for interviews, they will often view a candidate’s LinkedIn profile as part of their candidate research. They will be interested in where you have worked, how well you are connected and how you present.
Having a good digital footprint demonstrates that you know your way around technology, have a strong personal brand and are who you say you are. Employers get nervous if you do not exist on the internet!
Here are our 4 tips for an impressive LinkedIn profile.
1. A Professional Looking Photograph
Clients like to see how you present prior to interviewing you or adding you to a shortlist. Your photo should be high resolution and not too dated. Ideally you should be dressed according to the role that you want. Consider your expression and ensure that it is professional, friendly, and approachable. When you are job hunting it can be worth the investment to have a professional photographer take your profile picture. They will ensure there is an appropriate background and lighting.
2. Concise and Accurate Employment History
Ideally this demonstrates that you have worked at similar organisations or competitors as our client. We like to see a solid tenure at each employer to reflect stability. A prospective employer wants to see that you have not jumped around a multitude of organisations. They are looking to make an investment in training and developing you and want a good return on their investment.
Ensure that your industry experience is clear and use industry specific wording for job titles and responsibilities, as a prospective employer will want to see that it is relevant to them. For example, our fund manager clients want to see funds management experience. Our banking clients want to see banking sector experience.
Ensure that you include some details about the key responsibilities you had in any given role. The experience section of your LinkedIn profile is a good place to highlight any major achievements, projects, or process improvements.
We often check that the dates of employment on your LinkedIn profile match the dates of employment you have listed on your resume. Alarm bells tend to ring if they do not match.
3. Use Key Words Appropriately
You can be found on LinkedIn using job title key words by recruiters and hiring managers searching for candidates, so try to use words that are regularly used in your industry. Ensure that you are using relevant key words in your LinkedIn summary, skills, and experience sections. They should also be spelled correctly! We cannot tell you how many times we have seen the word manager spelt as manger!
Using key words appropriately helps you get found in LinkedIn candidate searches and demonstrates industry expertise.
4. Are endorsements and recommendations important?
At Oxygen Recruitment & HR, we tend to look at these more closely if the candidate has been made redundant. They can be quite helpful, particularly in a senior role to see that you left on good terms. They can help provide some insight into your stakeholder relations and to demonstrate that you were respected in your prior role. We like to look and see the job title of the author – and it can be impressive for these to be from senior leaders of the business you have left.
It is a busy time in the recruitment market, and we have many clients actively looking for talented financial services candidates. We are particularly seeing strong demand for Chartered Accountants to fill the roles of financial controllers, financial accountants and financial reporting roles. Anyone who has sat tight in a role with no wage growth, limited development opportunities or career progression should be dusting off their LinkedIn profiles now and giving us a call.
To talk to us about career opportunities and to discover roles that are either exclusive to Oxygen Recruitment and HR or not yet on the market, then get in touch with our Sydney based team here. We can help you take the next step in your financial services career.