Why do recruiters struggle to write their own profiles?

5 minutes of ideas to help recruiters to write their own profiles better, transcribed by otter.ai

Hello, it’s Katrina Collier again. I am loving these five-minute videos so I hope you are as well. Today I want to talk about something that absolutely baffles me. Why can’t recruiters, whether they’re in-house talent acquisition or they’re recruitment agency, why can’t recruiters write their own profiles? I’m kind of baffled by this.

0:23
Obviously, there are lots of recruiters on the market at the moment, so I’m looking at lots of profiles, as you know, people come across my radar, and I’m consistently seeing the same things and it kind of baffles me. We have the upper hand day-in-day-out, we are staring at other people’s LinkedIn profiles or their CVS, so we know what makes a good one. Think how hard it is for everybody else who doesn’t have that ability to look at other people’s CVs and do a comparison. But they’re really hard to write. You know, so we’re struggling writing our own. I’m not surprised others are struggling.

0:58
So and Hello, Brian, and Jayashree hopefully my audio is better today; yesterday was a nightmare. Anyway, I have some top tips for you, which I hope will help. So, and actually I can see my internet is being a bit crazy so let’s hope that I’m still broadcasting, someone let me know if I’m still broadcasting. I think my WiFi I just went off erm so…

1:27
Okay, so why? Why do we do these things? First and foremost there are lots of recruiter profiles out there with people with profile pictures where they’re not looking at the camera, or they’ve got those really strange angled selfies that I will never understand. I’m just of the wrong generation; we couldn’t take selfies back in the day. Please, straight on, approachable, profile picture. Think about (Oh thanks, Brian. I’m sure I had a moment of dodgy WiFi there) Think about somebody wants to be able to trust you. They want to be able to see you look looking directly at the camera, approachable. It’s not an attractiveness competition. It’s just a, this is me, talk to me. It goes both ways, whether you are trying to recruit people, or you’re looking for a job yourself. So look at the camera, no strange angles. Just think approachable, approachable, approachable.

2:20
Um, what else did I write down here? Ah, what is it with everybody writing things in the About section and not under their Experience? Now, I could be wrong, but the way I read profiles is I kind of ignore the About section and I go straight to the last job. What were you just doing? That’s the thing that really interests me. Now so many times with recruiters and talent acquisition professionals, all I find there is a summary of the company. But what I’m looking for is what you did. What did you do in that role? What are you doing in that role? What are you achieving?

2:52
Now, as far as achieving goes I’m going to give you my top tip which I stole, no, I didn’t, I was gifted by Ray Murphy 15 years or so ago, I might be being generous on the time frame there, the two words. So what? So if you write down, I’m recruiting all of the technical people for the company, and you think, ‘so what?’, you’ll get the achievement. ….which means that we can achieve the projects that we need to do, which means our clients are happy, which means we deliver, which means the hiring manager is not on my case, whatever it might be. But every single bullet point that you write, I want you to think, “so what?” so that you give the reader something to go, ‘Oh, I want to hire you or I want to work with you, I trust you, because I can see what you’re achieving.’ And so often, this is missing on profiles. And I see it over and over again, where it’s just, it’s vanilla.

3:42
Ask Lisa Haggar, she’ll tell you. I told her stop being vanilla! You’re not vanilla, she’s not a vanilla person, at all. Let your personality shine through. Let your achievements shine through. Write down what you’re doing. I’m running out of time. Um, what else did I want to say?

3:58
Recommendations. Okay, whether we read them or don’t read them, who knows? Right? Better to have them than not have them though. Please go and get some recent recommendations. If you are currently on the market for a job. I believe people will actually look at them. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Look, it’s better to have them than not have them, and go and ask your boss, perhaps someone you managed, a peer, someone you recruited, if you are a recruiter or talent acquisition professional. So when you brought through the process.

4:27
Because what people are looking for is trust. Why it’s always in (oh I always point the wrong way) in the Mastermind. Why it’s the first module we cover, that’s what people are looking for. It’s a trust process. Do I trust you enough to hire you? Do I trust you enough to go and take a job at your company?

4:45
So, recruiters, it’s a few just little tips there. So profile picture straight on. Okay, nothing weird. No weird angles, not not looking at the camera. Don’t [just] put your stuff under the About section or put it there and put it under Experience. But make sure you put those achievements by using ‘So what? ‘ and grab some Recommendations and I’m already out of my five minutes time. I shall be back tomorrow. See you then.