Invisible on LinkedIn
READ TIME: 5 MINUTES
In every Job Search Strategy Session I ask "how many recruiters have inbounded to you in the last month?"
Most candidates answer zero.
I've had this conversation more times than I can count. And I usually know the answer before I ask it.
Here's why. When I pull up their LinkedIn profile, it has the basics.
Name. Title in the Headline. Roles. Sometimes a little context on the company.
Your LinkedIn profile is your marketing material. And a blank profile isn't underselling you. It's hiding you.
The number one way to land a role is through a referral. Number two is a recruiter sourcing you. Job boards are a distant third.
Your profile isn't a formality. It's what determines whether you get recruited or if you're left to cold apply.
I wanted to show my clients exactly how recruiters find you, so I asked two recruiters to walk me through how they search on LinkedIn.
I sat down with Justin Englander, a GTM executive and Fractional VP of Sales who has spent more than 20 years building and scaling revenue organizations. Justin has led sales teams at Zocdoc, Newsela and Panorama Education and today advises founders through BlueBird Advisors while also leading the firm's GTM recruiting practice.
Where the candidates come from
I started by asking, where do your candidates come from?
"Most of our placements ultimately begin through LinkedIn and our existing network. Roughly a third come from referrals, while the remainder come from proactive outreach to passive candidates."
Read that last part again. Passive candidates. People who aren't applying to anything.
He doesn't use job boards.
What shocked me most: he opened LinkedIn and started typing in the same search bar you have. Not LinkedIn Recruiter.
He types a string of terms. Industry. Function. A specific technology. Sometimes company names, when a client says they want someone from a particular org.
Then he filters to first-degree connections and starts reading.
That's it. No job board, no applicant pile.
When he finds the right candidate, he reaches out personally. Not a sequence blasted to a list through LinkedIn Recruiter.
What the search is actually reading
This is the part almost nobody understands.
The search scrapes the text on your profile. All of it.
Your headline first. Then your About section. Then the description under each job.
If a word isn't written somewhere on your profile, you are not in that result set.
Justin put it plainly: "When you put anything on your profile, that's what the search will scrape for."
Blank sections mean you're disqualified.
What makes a recruiter stop
Scrolling through results, Justin kept landing on what he called vanilla profiles. Name. Job title. Nothing else.
Then he described what makes him stop.
"If I see someone that has a percentage to goal, or hit X quota, or ranked one or two out of a team of 25, things like that."
He said something else worth sitting with. A profile with blank sections doesn't just disqualify you, it signals something else to the recruiter.
"It's less likely they are interested in hearing from someone like me."
An empty profile reads as: not looking, not interested, don't bother.
Then he framed it in language every sales professional in this newsletter already knows.
Recruiters evaluate your profile the same way your buyers evaluate your company. If the value proposition isn't clear in the first few seconds, they move on.
You've watched a prospect do that to a competitor's website.
Same behavior. You're just the product now.
The keyword layer
I asked Gregg Salkovitch, founder of Right Choice Resources, the same question a few weeks earlier. His answer sharpened the picture.
Gregg builds saved searches in LinkedIn Recruiter. One of them has roughly 25 keywords in it.
"Imagine that you're trying to find a top salesperson. What words would you use to find them?"
His actual list: President's Club. Chairman's Club. Platinum Club. Diamond Club. Elite Sales Club. Circle of Excellence. Salesperson of the Year. Million Dollar Club. Rookie of the Year. Top 1%. Top 5%. Top 10%. Quota. Ranked.
That's the top-performer layer. Then he adds the role layer on top of it.
For an enterprise search: enterprise. Fortune 500. Fortune 1000. Fortune 100. Million (because their quota is typically $1M+).
Why so many versions of the same idea? Because LinkedIn isn't smart.
Gregg put it this way: if he searches "Fortune 500" and you wrote "F500," you don't come up. If you wrote "enterprise" instead, you don't come up.
Same rep. Same experience. Different word.
So write the variations. All of them, where they fit.
Here's where this gets useful if you're a mid-market rep targeting enterprise.
Gregg's advice: write your scope so both terms are on the page.
"I'm calling on mid-market and enterprise accounts, including prospects up to the Fortune 500."
One sentence. Two search terms. Two ways for a recruiter to find you.
The test he gives candidates: "Pretend you were looking for someone like you. What keywords would you use to find yourself?"
Write those words down. Then check whether they're actually on your profile.
Words matter more than you think
The best example came from my own former company.
Justin pulled up a profile for a sales manager from PowerSchool. He read the line about leading a team of enterprise account managers.
Then he said: "That's not reading to me net-new logo. That's reading to me like I managed enterprise account managers, which typically means renewals."
Except at PowerSchool, account managers sold net new. Every product line, new logos, expansion. A separate team owned renewals entirely.
Titles mean nothing. It's about the work you do.
Your profile has to translate. Nobody outside your company knows what your title means.
Justin added one more piece of advice that almost nobody includes: whether you sell in the field or virtually. Conferences and on-site meetings versus scheduled Zoom calls. For most of the roles he fills, that's a hard requirement. It's rarely on the profile.
The one red flag
A run of stints under one year.
It doesn't take you out. It changes the conversation. "It doesn't mean I won't reach out, but I'll definitely ask questions as to why."
He was quick to add context. In recent years, the SaaS industry has been through layoffs and turnover that have nothing to do with the quality of a candidate, which is why he's more willing to give an individual a chance to explain.
One last question I had for both of them, because the advice out there contradicts itself.
Open to Work: the two recruiters disagreed
I asked both.
Gregg wants to see it. "If they're flagged open to work, it's just raising your hand saying I want to be contacted." He runs a saved search and checks it daily to see who newly flagged. Those people get contacted immediately.
Justin has no strong opinion. He used it himself during his own search last year and didn't notice a difference. His read: everyone has been on the market these last few years, so the stigma has faded.
He did note the tension for agency recruiters. "You'd rather try to get someone that has a job."
One tactical point they agreed on. Use the recruiter-only setting, not the green photo frame. The green frame is public and your current employer can see it.
Gregg confirmed the recruiter-only version is hidden from recruiters at your own company. A recruiter at a different company could technically pass it along, but that violates their LinkedIn agreement and he's never seen it happen.
What to do this week
1. Write the words they search for. Awards, club names, ranking, quota, deal size, Fortune 500. If it isn't on the page, you aren't in the results.
2. Translate your titles. Nobody outside your company knows what "account manager" meant there. Describe the work, not the label.
3. Fill every section. Headline, About, and the description under every role. Blank doesn't read as private. It reads as not looking.
None of this takes a weekend. It takes an hour, and it changes who finds you.
Hit reply and send me the changes you made to your LinkedIn profile. I read every response.
To clarity and confidence in your career path,
Amanda
See you next Sunday.
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