Your CV may be in good shape now. It names your target role, leads with your strongest project, and includes a result in every bullet. Then a recruiter searches for that role and a couple of relevant skills and scrolls straight past your LinkedIn profile. Often that’s because the headline still shows your current or last job title, such as “Chemistry Teacher” when you’re aiming for data analyst roles.
Recruiters read your CV only when you send it. They often read your LinkedIn profile before you’ve sent anything. That gives it two jobs your CV doesn’t have. It has to be found by a recruiter searching for someone like you, and it has to make a stranger want to read on.
Think Like a Recruiter
Before you touch your profile, write the search query a recruiter hiring for your target role would type. Draw on your requirements map and include a job title, two or three of the top skills, and a location or “remote.” For a junior data analyst role, that might be “junior data analyst SQL Python remote.”
Now check whether those exact words appear in your headline, your current or most recent title, your skills, and your experience entries. Search works on words, so a profile that never says “data analyst” won’t come up for that search, however well it reads.
Many people leave the headline as their current job title, which is often the default. If you’re changing careers or returning to work, that means recruiters find you for the role you’re leaving instead of the one you’re aiming for.
Here are three increasingly effective headlines for a chemistry teacher moving into data analysis. Which one would a recruiter click on?
