How I Hacked LinkedIn's Algorithms to automate my Job Search

How to make your LinkedIn Profile better so you can recruiters reaching out without having to lift a finger

Recently, I got a message from a reader who was using one of the discounted “pay what you can” prices to support the newsletter while they were in the middle of a job search. That means a lot to me, and I wanted to do something to help them out. This post is my attempt to do so.

Back when I was looking for work, I tried every method I could come up with (and being a creative lad, I came up with many interesting ideas). However the most effective, by far, was LinkedIn. By optimizing my LinkedIn on two key dimensions (these are two separate “algorithms”/processes BTS)- I made my profile both searchable (i.e., ensured that my profile ranked very highly any time recruiters search for AI and Software Related profiles):

From this week

and more appealing (my profile prompted recruiters to reach out to me). Here are 4 messages I got within the last 5 days, all from recruiters who I didn’t know, one of who wanted to interview me for a very lucrative position at IBM-

(I used to get more, but now the first words in my LinkedIn headline are “Chocolate Milk Cult Leader”, which I’m told looks unprofessional. Ouch- but as a strong, independent warrior queen, I will continue to live my truth)-

This is an actual Gemini output when I asked it to describe an image of me doing BJJ. More details here

In my opinion, LinkedIn is the most sustainable approach to enhancing your job search (do it once, and then leads will keep coming in steadily). It also avoids the pain of Applicant Tracking Systems (which can often penalize candidates on arbitrary measures), works as well or better than most referrals (companies often ignore them), and doesn’t require a ton of work experience (more is obviously better, but I was successful for me 3 years ago (as discussed here)- when I didn’t have as much work experience, no real networks (the interview linked is before AI Made Simple existed, so I didn’t really have an audience to ask/consult with), and was actively hunting for roles. Don’t worry; it also doesn’t require you to be an influencer or post actively (LinkedIn for content creation is a different beast).

This article will break down how I did it in exhaustive detail, so you can replicate the results. We will cover the two “personas” your profile needs to appeal to, and how to appeal to each one, and the two major tools (1 for everyone, 1 for early career folk) that everyone overlooks for boosting your LinkedIn profile. Since this is a paywalled article, I want to be upfront on who this article will be most useful to. I wrote this with a focus on-

1. People looking for work (like the aforementioned reader) who need their profile to become more visible to recruiters. These will be most relevant to technically oriented folks like engineers, DevRel, and researchers, which are fields I have experimented with personally. While some of this advice will translate to other domains, other aspects might not be as important.

2. People interested in gaming the LinkedIn algorithm for scoring profiles to rank higher for search.

For anyone else, I don’t think this will have much utility and can probably be skipped w/o too much loss (save it and come back later if you end up needing it).

For Job Searching, a lot of people (especially developers/tech folk) underestimate the importance of SEO on LinkedIn and overestimate the benefits of a personal website (I was one of these people).

To keep things grounded, I will be referencing my profile, which can be found here.

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