What Recruiters Actually Type Into LinkedIn — And How to Be in the Results

There is a whole category of opportunity that never involves applying: a recruiter searches, you appear, they message you. Most people never enter that category, and the reason is mechanical rather than mysterious.

How the search actually works

A recruiter types something like customer support Zendesk remote and gets a ranked list. The ranking depends heavily on where those words appear in a profile, how complete the profile is, and how recently the person was active.

If the words are not there, you are not in the list. Nothing else about you is considered, because you were never surfaced to be considered.

The words they use

• The job title. The standard market one, not your company's internal version. "Customer Support Specialist", not "Client Happiness Executive".
• Named tools. Zendesk, HubSpot, Figma, QuickBooks, Jira, Notion, Xero, Salesforce.
• Hard skills. Bookkeeping, copywriting, QA testing, data analysis, payroll.
• The word remote. Genuinely — it is one of the most common filters applied.

Where those words need to appear

Not once. In four places, because the ranking weights them differently:

1. Headline. Heaviest weighting. Your title plus two tools plus "remote".
2. About section. Naturally, in sentences — not a keyword list, which reads badly to the human who eventually opens it.
3. Experience entries. Inside the bullets of each role, describing what you actually did with them.
4. Skills section. This is the one people neglect most, and it is directly searchable.

The Skills section, done properly

Add up to the maximum. Then reorder so your three most important sit at the top, because those are what display by default. Get colleagues to endorse the top three — endorsements affect ranking, and asking two former colleagues takes five minutes.

Do not list soft skills. "Team player" is not something anyone searches for.

Three settings that decide whether any of it works

• Public profile on. A private profile is invisible to search. This single setting silently costs more than anything else on this list.
• Open to Work, with Remote selected as a location type. This is what puts you inside the remote filter specifically.
• Location set to your real city. Faking a foreign location gets you into searches you cannot convert and wastes everyone's time, including yours.

Activity matters, but not the way people fear

You do not need to become a content creator. Recent activity affects ranking, and a thoughtful comment on someone else's post counts as activity. Two or three comments a week in your field is enough, and it is far less effort than posting.

What to do in the next twenty minutes

Rewrite the headline with your title, two tools and the word remote. Fill the Skills section and reorder the top three. Turn the profile public and switch on Open to Work with Remote selected. Then leave one useful comment on a post in your field.

Profile, CV, portfolio and interview video rebuilt as one matching set is Stage 4. See Stage 4.