The next evolution of job search strategy
LinkedIn’s agentic operating layer and the necessity of providing sufficient career data to affect relevance scoring
Today’s post gets a pretty big title!
Two days ago, Google rolled out what they describe as their biggest Search upgrade in over 25 years: an interactive, AI-powered conversational assistant that (essentially) allows users to utilize Google Search the way they’ve been utilizing ChatGPT over the past year and a half. (My words.)
Last year, LinkedIn released its first AI agent, Hiring Assistant, for recruiters on the LinkedIn Recruiter platform (not Recruiter Lite). Rumor has it that Facebook/Meta is coming out with their own AI conversational agent called Hatch in the very near future.
What’s interesting about these AI agents is that they “wrap” their platforms in the way you might think of human skin wrapping the muscles, nerves, veins, and bones of the body. Users are separated from the raw data that’s being used to generate our “AI insights” by layers and layers of information that each carry a specific function and maintain specific rules.
That agentic operating layer can produce some mind-boggling insights and interpretations - especially when you ask it to analyze a job seeker’s LinkedIn profile and online presence. It amazes me what these AI agents can infer from a very basic LinkedIn profile, with bare-bones information and maybe one or two public posts about landing a new job.
The problem - and the reason why I’m writing this post - is that as smart as these AI agents might seem, they’re only as smart as the raw data they’re given. What’s more, the amount and quality of the data available is mattering more and more with each AI model update.
Providing sufficient career data to affect relevance scoring
Customers of mine have heard me talk about LinkedIn rankings for years, and that if you wanted to rank higher within LinkedIn Recruiter Search, you needed to do a few things:
You needed to have a properly filled-out LinkedIn profile, from the banner down to the Education section.
You needed to have plenty of keyword-rich sentences on your profile that were relevant to your target industry and profession, but without “keyword-stuffing” or making your profile look spammy.
You needed metrics, accomplishments, and awards on your profile. Testimonials could also be very helpful if the testimonial itself talked about your metrics/accomplishments/awards.
You needed to properly fill in the Skills section, plus any area on the profile that asked for relevant Skills, such as the Experience and About sections.
And then, over time, I would try to push my philosophies on writing posts and articles on LinkedIn, especially if you were getting ready to start a job search.
Posts and articles could cover a variety of topics, so long as they were relevant to your target industry and profession. You could:
Talk about your professional history, and share the story of how you got to where you are today.
Give advice to a younger professional looking to succeed in your industry.
Talk about your biggest professional challenges and how you overcame them.
Talk about the future of your industry niche and where you likely see things heading.
And in addition to posting, I also wanted my customers to engage with their feeds - leave comments, make new connections with people in your target industry and profession, and then have real conversations with those connections in LinkedIn Messaging.
I had strict rules on never publishing anything political or controversial - not because I think that we shouldn’t hold opinions or express ourselves freely on the internet. At the time, I was seeing undeniable proof that job seekers were being turned away from jobs, interviews, and even simple phone screenings because they held a particular political view on the internet. The rationale was that if these candidates could be divisive on social media, they could also be divisive in the workplace, and their posts could affect a company’s reputation, damage business opportunities, etc.
I bring up all of this - the filled-out profile, the posts and articles, the engagement, the networking, and the appropriate content to have - because all this raw data is being used by LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant to determine your relevance score.
Your relevance score is being calculated based on how much high-quality, career-oriented data you are providing to LinkedIn - and that relevance score is what’s making you recommendable to hiring decision-makers by AI agents. And if you really want to see how far this goes, LinkedIn recently went on the record to say that “LinkedIn’s recruitment capabilities can integrate with popular HR platforms and applicant tracking systems (ATS) such as Workday and SuccessFactors, blending LinkedIn profile data with an enterprise’s candidate records.“ What used to be a closed system can now pull outside, AI-generated information from LinkedIn to help hiring decision-makers choose candidates.
The next evolution of job search strategy
My job - as a resume writer and salary negotiation coach - is to study the job market playing field and find as many advantages as possible for my customers. I think about what’s available today, and I think about what’s coming down the pipeline, and I use all the material available to develop job search strategies that are specific to a customer’s needs.
The next evolution of job search strategy, at least here at Gabrielle Turmelle LLC, is that every job search must now incorporate LinkedIn as its backbone. All LinkedIn content pieces must be deliberately chosen to put the job seeker in the best possible light and give them the highest possible relevance score. Half-filled-out LinkedIn profiles with wishy-washy skills? These will no longer be tolerated here. ;)
And, finally, all customers who sign up for a Resume Package will do so with the understanding that a job search that doesn’t put LinkedIn first is a job search that will likely fail.
For my part, I’ll be happy to provide just a resume or resume/cover letter combo if that’s all a particular job seeker truly needs. I’m planning to keep the Lite and Standard packages available for purchase for this specific reason. But whether you take LinkedIn guidance from me, or you find guidance from another source, the LinkedIn component cannot be ignored any longer.
For better or worse, this is the future of the North American job search.
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