LinkedIn headlines that get recruiter messages

Your headline is the only line a recruiter reads before deciding to open your profile. Seeking new opportunities is not a headline.

Recruiters in Dubai, Riyadh, London and Berlin find candidates by typing job titles and tools into LinkedIn Recruiter. If your headline does not contain the words they type, you do not appear, however good your experience is.

The formula I use with clients

Job title as the market writes it, then two or three tools or specialisms, then one proof point. Data Analyst | SQL, Power BI, Python | Built reporting for 120 retail branches. Or: HR Business Partner | Talent acquisition for tech teams | Hired 85 engineers in 18 months. Short, searchable, specific.

Leave out passionate, results-driven, hardworking and any emoji. Leave out Open to work in the headline; use the setting instead and choose recruiters only if your current employer does not know you are looking.

Then fix the three things under it

Set your location to the city you want to work in if you are actively relocating and can say so honestly in your About section, or keep Lahore and add Open to relocation to the UAE in the first line of About. Put a real photo up: face filling most of the frame, plain background, a shirt you would wear to an interview. Profiles with a photo get noticeably more views.

Rewrite your About section as four short paragraphs: what you do, who you have done it for, one result with a number, and what you are looking for next. Then add the same keywords to the Skills section, in the order of the jobs you want, because recruiters filter on those too.

In our LinkedIn clinics, participants who changed only the headline and the About section reported an average of three recruiter messages in the following month, up from almost none. It is the cheapest hour you will spend on your job search.