What Recruiters Really Want to Find out about You Online

We’ve already established that the online presence is a powerful weapon for winning great jobs. A captivating personal website and active involvement in professional discussions on websites such as Quora, LinkedIn and even Google+ Groups are becoming a key to impressing HR professionals.

This way, job seekers can present their skills and talents to a larger number of global head hunters, who increasingly look beyond a person’s CV to decide on whether he or she qualifies for a specific position. Yet, in order to ensure their personality and professional competencies are presented in the best light, job seekers need to understand exactly what HR professionals expect to find out about a potential hire online.

Your social profiles in the eyes of recruiters

The current trends in the HR industry heavily rely on social recruiting. Social networks have become a major resource for head hunters to screen potential hires and even get in touch with them with a job offer. Back in 2013, a comprehensive survey carried out by SHRM showed that 77% of organizations started using social networking sites to find new employees. Out of these, the following six proved to be most popular among surveyed recruiters:

• LinkedIn: 92%
• Facebook: 54%
• Twitter: 39%
• Google+: 8%
• YouTube: 8%
• Pinterest: 4%

When it comes to the types of content presented on these networks, recruiters are interested in a set of things that help them decide whether a candidate is not only qualified for the position, but also a good fit for the company culture. According to a study by Online Colleges, most recruiters focus their attention on discovering the following little details about you:

1.     Have you presented yourself professionally?

The study reveals that 65% of recruiters who use LinkedIn don’t just look at your qualifications. They look at several other aspects that define you both personally and professionally. These include a professional profile photo, post updates and accuracy of data about your past experience, courses, interests, etc. Additional resources such as LinkedIn articles, for example, can further make your profile stand out and bring you some interesting job offers.

2.     Are you a good fit for the company’s culture?

After assessing your overall professional appearance, the recruiters will try to identify you as the right fit for the company culture. The survey suggests that 51% of recruiters will take a look at your interests, communication and networking skills to better understand whether you’d fit the team.

3.     Are you qualified for a specific job?

Most candidates assume that their qualifications are the only thing that matters to employers. However, with 45% of responses, this is only the third most important factor employers look at in your LinkedIn profile. Evidently, this implies that even the best qualifications won’t matter if you haven’t presented yourself the right way.

4.     Are you well-rounded?

In addition to the professional expertise that qualifies you for the job, recruiters also wish to see additional skills that are not tightly related to the job position in question. Namely, 36% of respondents say they look at your hobbies or courses you attended in search for something that distinguishes you from the competition. As Christian Buckley explains in this post:

From a leadership standpoint, the risk (or fear) of this strategy is that you will hire two-dimensional employees who are then unable to scale and grow and retool for the next project.

Although Buckley argues that this shouldn’t be a critical factor for recruiters to make a hiring decision, most HR professionals still believe that well-rounded employees are a real treasure. Indeed, any additional knowledge you can offer to the team is highly valued as it may expand your usefulness to the company.

5.     Why should you be hired?

The reasons to hire the candidate were identified by 12% of recruiters as one of the important things they aim to find out on a candidate’s LinkedIn page. This is where any information other than your professional background and education can differentiate you from all the other candidates. Perhaps a simple share of an interesting, industry-relate article or the fact you’ve made a clever comment about it can totally change their perception.

Can you be found on Google?

In addition to your social media presence, any other form of professional engagement online can make you visible to a greater number of companies looking to expand their teams. In fact, many recruiters restrain from using social media extensively for fear of finding out some private information about the candidate. Yet, a large percentage of recruiters (70%) admit to screening potential candidates before the interview with an aim of better assessing their competencies.

This means that candidates who cannot be found in Google search have significantly less chances of making the right impression on recruiters. On the other hand, if your LinkedIn profile is searchable enough or, better yet, if you have a well-optimized personal website or blog, you provide the employers with just enough information to make a long-lasting impression.

Getting noticed for the right skills is the first step towards landing a job interview and this is why you shouldn’t rely on LinkedIn endorsements, for example, to testify about your expertise. Instead, a nice and well-structured online portfolio can better demonstrate your professional skills. Besides, this enables recruiters to get in touch with you more easily, which again may help them decide that you are the perfect candidate. Some great examples of how you can do this with .ME are given here and they could serve as a great inspiration to anyone wishing to improve their chances of getting an awesome job.

Remember, everything you do online can add up to your professional reputation, so make sure you include the right resources to make a great impression. Today’s job seekers need to pay more attention to how their online self is built and this refers to much more than simply having social media profiles; it means leading an active online life that includes not only casual and entertaining information, but also promotes some professional skills.

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