Why LinkedIn is More Important than Your CV!

Executives should spend more time preparing their LinkedIn profiles than their CVs.

LinkedIn is the very start of the funnel from which candidates are found and considered for VP & C-level roles. If you aren't on the right side of this filter, it doesn't matter how good your CV is or how strong you are at interview - you simply won't be part of the conversation.

Your LinkedIn profile serves two purposes when it comes to landing your next job:

1 - making sure your profile is seen by the right people at the right times.

2 - helping those people qualify you in as a candidate and progress to a conversation.

That's it.

Make no mistake - LinkedIn is where headhunters spend 90%+ of their time. Outside of their immediate network and CRM, LinkedIn is the holy grail for sourcing candidates. Many pretend they have some secret sauce or more nuanced process for finding candidates, but they don't. Trust me! Same with hiring managers and internal talent acquisition.

Your LinkedIn profile needs to scream out at the people responsible for hiring the roles you're interested in. If it isn't doing this for you, you're leaving opportunities on the table.

Execs come to me all the time and say they hadn't realised company 'X' was hiring that role, or wondering why they were never approached for it, or just straight-up don't know how to get on the radar for leadership roles which aren't advertised (which is the vast majority).

LinkedIn is the single biggest solution (though not the only one) to this problem.

And it's not enough to simply have a LinkedIn profile. You need your profile to flag under the right search criteria. You need to rank high in LinkedIn's algorithm. You need to provide the right data points decision makers look for when determining whether they should reach out to you. You need to anticipate and address their upfront objections which may qualify you out.

Chances are, your LinkedIn profile could be far more effective in attracting the right attention and opportunities.