For Job Search, your LinkedIn Keyword List should be a list of words that hiring managers or recruiters would use to find someone like you to hire. They would use these words in a LinkedIn People Search. These words could be job titles, areas of expertise, skills, education, or certifications.
The more keywords that match a hiring manager or recruiter’s search and the closer you’re connected with them and the higher you will appear in the list that is returned in their People search.
Your most important keywords are job titles, because these are the keywords that are the most likely words that a hiring managers or recruiter will use to find a candidate to hire. So you should prioritize putting these keywords in the most important places in your LinkedIn Profile (your Headline, Job Titles, and Skills section) and also repeating them most often in other parts of your Profile.
We recommend creating your Keyword list and putting it in priority order so that you will keep your focus on placing your target job titles in your Profile in the appropriate places; roughly in this category order (with Target Job Titles and Secondary Job Titles always first):
- Target Job Titles
- Secondary Job Titles
- Areas of Expertise
- Skills
- Certifications
- Education
Here’s an Example for a client seeking an Engineering position:
Target Job Titles:
- Chemical Engineer
- Application Engineer
- Technical Support Engineer
- Systems Engineer
Secondary Job Titles:
- Field Service Engineer
- Chemical Sales Representative
- Customer Service Representative
Areas of Expertise:
- Process Control
- Regulatory Compliance
- Remote System Monitoring
- Petrochemical
- Gas Processing
- Bottling
- Air Separation
- Safety
- Compliance
Skills:
- Troubleshooting
- Preventive Maintenance
- Product Customization
- Proposal Development
- Sales
Certifications:
- CMfgE Certification
- PMP