You might already have a LinkedIn profile, or maybe you’ve heard about how essential it is for anyone job searching to be able to network - but do you know how to make your profile as appealing and relevant as possible for the hospitality role you’re looking for?
With over 830 million members and over 58 million registered companies, LinkedIn isn’t short of opportunities.
In fact, 40% of those who regularly engage with the platform access LinkedIn on a daily basis, and LinkedIn is also considered to be 277% more effective than Facebook and Twitter at lead generation.
So, how can you supercharge your LinkedIn profile for hospitality?
Optimise your headline
Alongside your name and display picture, your headline is the first thing that most people will see.
The temptation can be to include your job role alongside every type of work that you do (e.g. Hotel Manager – guest experience, sales management, strategy).
However, you need to keep in mind that if a recruiter is searching for a specific job role, the results will often rely on keywords taken from your headline.
This is why you need to make them as relevant and targeted as possible.
If you’re currently in a job role, then this is the first title that will be used in your headline, and if you’re looking for work, generally the headline will be the last job role that you had.
You can then follow this up with what you specialise in specifically, keeping in mind that you can elaborate on this in your ‘About’ section rather than trying to fit it all in your headline.
For example:
Hotel Manager | Sales and Revenue Management | Brand Marketing
Top tip: recruiters will often use the search function on LinkedIn to find candidates, and your profile is more discoverable if you use strategic keywords – which terms are used the most in job adverts you’ve looked at? Which are highly relevant to your industry? This will help your profile be more visible to those you want it to be visible to.
Maintain consistency
If you’re conveying professionalism and a coveted skillset in your headline and ‘About’ section, you also need to carry this over to your profile picture and experience section.
Though many recruiters may only browse certain sections of your profile, many will read it top-to-bottom – you want to make sure that the tone of your profile is consistent.
A professional profile picture might sound intimidating, yet you likely already have headshots from previous roles that may have been used on company websites or pictures from events.
Keeping it concise, simple and consistent is the best way to avoid having a profile that doesn’t appeal to recruiters.
Optimise your ‘About’ section
In the same way that your headline can be optimised with keywords to make your profile more visible to recruiters, your ‘About’ section can be optimised, too.
Whilst there might be an assumption that recruiters aren’t looking for management talent on a platform like LinkedIn, the truth is that recruiters are frequently sourcing passive management talent online.
This section is the perfect place to concisely cover an overview of your experience and background in hospitality, your skills, and your key accomplishments.
One area that commonly confuses people on LinkedIn is whether they should write their ‘About’ section in the first or third person.
We’d advise that you generally stick to the first person to keep your profile engaging and more personable, but many people in hospitality will prefer the third person due to its similarity to CV formatting – this can come down to preference.
Whatever the case, you’ll want to be using terms and highlighting skills you know recruiters will be searching for in this section.
Top tip: it can be tempting to block all of your information into large paragraph sections, but for readability, we’d recommend trying to stick to shorter sentences split into sections.
Highlight your experience
For many recruiters, this is the section that will receive the most attention.
It can be tempting to put all of your experience in a brief overview in your ‘about’ section, however, most recruiters will be looking for exact titles, duration of employment, and specifics of your previous job roles.
You can add bullet-point lists to your experience section, alongside information on the specific job role you had, the duration of the role, and the location of it.
What areas of expertise did you use in this specific role? What were the monthly/yearly targets and how did you hit them? Which notable accomplishments or awards did you receive?
These are all important questions to be answering for each role in your experience section.
Remember to keep each bullet point concise by including the most relevant information, including relevant data/statistics relating to sales or revenue that you’ve directly influenced.
Build your hospitality network
LinkedIn is both a job and networking platform, which is why it’s essential to build a solid network in order to benefit from everything LinkedIn has to offer.
A great place to start is by going to your LinkedIn profile and clicking on ‘my network’, and then ‘manage my network’.
You can then click on ‘contacts’ and choose to import contacts from the email you signed up with – if a person who you’ve corresponded with over email previously has a LinkedIn account, it will show up here and you can send a connection request.
This is a great way to begin building your network.
Additionally, you can also start sending connection requests with industry leaders as a way to not only stay up to date with their content but also for potential job opportunities.
Top tip: personalise your connection requests with a small message about why you want to connect with someone (e.g., ‘I saw your post about __) to increase your chances of having your request accepted.
In conclusion
LinkedIn can be a great platform for people in the hospitality industry to network and find job opportunities.
Knowing which parts of your profile are most integral to your efforts can put you in front of the right people.
If you’re looking for your perfect role in hospitality, we can help – take a look at our vacancies to find out more.