One of the ways which Nigerian recruiters search for candidates is through Linkedin. Linkedin helps them avoid the traditional approach of posting jobs online, and getting a lot of job interview applicants that aren’t a fit. Nigerian recruiters have devised a proactive way of using Linkedin, by putting in some keywords surrounding the skill sets they’re looking for, and getting the applicants that are a match.
As a job seeker, your aim is to be in the top of a recruiter’s search results, because they tend to only contact the top five or ten people who appear in this for job interviews. I’m going to be talking about how to increase your chance of getting a Nigerian job interview by showing up at the top of the list and having the recruiters approach you personally.
Here are two LinkedIn tips that will help you get more Nigerian job interviews.
The first thing you have to do is to turn on the ” I’m interested” setting in the linkedin website or app, which is located in your privacy settings.
Turning this on indicates to recruiters who use LinkedIn’s paid recruiting search platform that you’re interested in new opportunities.
The beautiful part about this is that if you’re in some kind of stealth job search mode, and you don’t want your current boss to know, it will not be publicly visible anywhere on your profile. In fact, the only way your boss could find out about this is if they happen to also be a recruiter who uses the platform, and specifically went to your profile to check it out—which is highly, highly unlikely.
I strongly encourage you to turn this setting on, because LinkedIn is set up so that individuals who have this indicated show up higher in recruiters’ search results and will get you a Nigerian job interview.
My second advice tip is to keyword-optimize your Linkedin headline, as your headline is a very valuable piece of job search visibility.
These keywords are generally going to be your skill sets—the things that you market about yourself.
When you put these in your headline, LinkedIn recognises this and says, “Wow, this person really says that this is what their specialty is, because they’re willing to put it in their headline space.” This makes your profile standout, attracts more attention from recruiters, to people who have these keywords in their headline—which means they’re going to move higher up in recruiters’ search results.
You really want to make sure that these your job skill sets and ability, the ones that you want to be known for and given a job for, are in your headline so you become more visible.
Also, in your headline, put in the skill set, and then use a vertical line divider to space them out. This makes it really easy for the person who’s skimming the top of your profile to see what your key skill sets are—and make it more likely that they will check out your entire profile. So, those are two quick and easy ways to optimize your LinkedIn profile and get more Nigerian job interview, as recruiters will finally find you on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn (and the misuse of it) is just one of the eight ways that people get shut out of the hiring process every single day. Want to get your LinkedIn profile reviewed by a professional career coach? We can help! Comment on this post and indicate interest and a member of our professional team will get in touch with you.