Using LinkedIn To Identify Your Career Keywords

By Brenda L. Peterson, The Layoff Lady

The Challenge: Describing What You Do

Whether you're searching for a new role or thinking about your professional development, not having the right words to describe your skillset can hinder your progress. Identifying your career keywords will help you create effective messaging for your LinkedIn profile, resume, conversations with colleagues, and other written communications like email and social media posts.

Where To Start: LinkedIn and Keywords

Here is my recommendation for how to begin gathering keywords that align with your chosen profession:

• Identify a job title that interests you.
• On LinkedIn, search for job openings for that job title. Make a note of the specific variations on job titles you see in your search results.
• On LinkedIn, save 5 or more jobs that resonate with you. 
• Make a list of the 10 top skills for 3 or more of those roles you saved. 
• Identify which keywords you saw more than once and look for trends.
• Make special note of keywords that resonate with you. Keep a running list of terms and update it as you encounter new terminology. 

Let me take you through an example.

Search for Your Target Job Title

I searched LinkedIn's Jobs section for Business Partner Organizational Development in the United States. From the results, I selected ten currently open positions to review further (because I'm an overachiever like that). Here are those job titles:
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1. ​Director, People Experience
2. Lead People Business Partner
3. Learning and Development Business Partner
4. Organizational Development Partner
5. Organizational Development Program Manager
6. People Business Partner
7. People Business Partner Director
8. People Partner
9. Principle People Business Partner
10. Senior People Success Partner

Lesson Learned: When you search for a job title, your results will include a variety of titles different companies use. Be sure to review the job description to learn more about what that company expects from that role. The duties for the same job title might vary widely from company to company, as might the terminology they use to describe it.

Identifying Skills and Keywords

Total Number of Different Skills Returned for All Ten Jobs
For the 10 jobs I reviewed, 69 different skills were included in the results. For context, if all roles had the exact same skills, this number would be 10. If all of the roles had different skills, this number would be 100. 

Lesson Learned: ​Not only will job titles vary across organizations, but what skills they value can also differ.  Be sure to review the job description to learn more about what skills the company thinks will help make someone in that role successful. 

Specific Skills Returned For More Than One Job
Several skills came up more than once across those ten jobs. Here is the number of times a specific skill appeared for more than one role:
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• Communication: 6
• Human Resources: 6
• Employee Relations: 6
• Employee Engagement: 4
• Problem Solving: 4
• Talent Management: 3
• Confidentiality: 2
• Group Facilitation: 2
• Organizational Development: 2
• Succession Planning: 2
• Teamwork: 2
• Workforce Planning: 2
• Written Communication: 2

Lesson Learned: ​Even if there is not widespread agreement on the terminology used across organizations, some keywords will show up more often. Consider including popular keywords in your skills section on your LinkedIn profile and in your resume.

Different Keywords for Similar Skills 
While specific keywords like "communication" and "problem solving" appeared more than once within the 10 job descriptions, several related terms might be included instead. Here are a few groups of terms that take different approaches to describing similar concepts:
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• Succession Planning, Workforce Planning, Talent Strategy
• Communication, Written Communication, Interpersonal Communication
• Build Strong Relationships, Relationship Building, Relationship Development
• Consultation, Consultative Approach, Influencing Others
• Facilitation, Group Facilitation, Presentations,
• Flexible Approach, Free Thinking, Problem Solving
• Performance Planning, Performance Consulting, Performance Review
• Confidentiality, Sensitive Information, HR Policies

Lesson Learned: When you look at the groupings of keywords, you can see the broader areas where roles like this would operate. Each company may use slightly different terminology regarding the skills that they value. When you talk about the work you do, consider weaving some of these words into your stories. 

What Do You Think?

How do you identify the right keywords to use to describe what you do? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Learn More

• The Layoff Lady: Career Planning - Figuring Out What You Want To Be Next
• The Layoff Lady: What To Include on Your LinkedIn Profile
• The Layoff Lady's Ultimate Guide To Answering The Question, "I Just Got Laid Off--Now What Do I Do?"​
• The Layoff Lady Book: Seven Lessons From Seven Layoffs: A Guide​