Many of you will have set yourselves up with a LinkedIn account to create an online professional presence. Chances are though that you’re not entirely sure how to use it and it has since become stagnant in the depths of the internet.
Well, we’re here to give a rundown of how to polish your profile to ensure you’ll make an impact on industry professionals and recruiters.
The overall aim is to be authentic, be visible and build brand associations and valuable connections. If you nail this, recruiters searching for candidates to fill vacancies are likely to find you, and you also might land yourself an amazing job opportunity for professionals you’ve connected with too.
Keywords
You MUST include keywords in your LinkedIn profile. These keywords should be relevant to the industry you associate yourself with regardless of whether you’ve found a job in it yet or not. When a recruiter is searching LinkedIn for candidates, they’re going to put in relevant keywords that match a job spec in order to find what they’re looking for.
For example, if a recruiter was looking for a candidate to fill an entry-level marketing role with SEO knowledge, they may search: ‘marketing’, ‘entry-level’ and ‘SEO’. If you have those keywords in your profile, you’re likely to be pulled to the top of their search and receive profile visits.
The best way to make sure you include the right keywords is to grab a few job specs and job descriptions to use for inspiration and sprinkle key skills mentioned through your summary, experience and skills sections.
Profile picture
We all know from Facebook and Twitter that it’s pretty much common sense to not trust a profile without a profile picture. The same concept applies to LinkedIn; if you don’t have a profile picture, professionals are less likely to view your profile or connect with you. Not only is it vital that you have a profile picture, but it needs to be an appropriate headshot. Here’s your mini checklist:
- It must be a recent photo of you
- You must be the only person in the photo
- It should be of your head and shoulders
- You must have a non-distracting background
- Wear smart clothes and have a general professional, polished appearance
- Smile! You don’t want anyone to think you’re weird and scary
- NO SELFIES
Yep, we’ll say it again: NO SELFIES. No matter what your age, selfies just aren’t appropriate for LinkedIn. Even if you don’t fancy getting professional headshots taken (although they’re worth the investment) just get someone else to take the picture! It literally takes a tenth of a second for someone to decide on their first impression of you, so you need to make sure your profile picture makes a good one.
Headline
Your professional headline appears just below your name. While most people just write their job title and company, this 120 character limit can be used for so much more. Firstly, if you’re looking for a job, you need to tell recruiters that you’re looking for one right from the off; you need to tell them you’re ‘seeking’ a particular role.
So, graduates, you might write ‘First class English Literature graduate seeking an entry-level marketing position’ or ‘Recent English Literature graduate and aspiring marketing associate’. You could push the boat a little further with something like: ‘First class English Literature graduate ready to use unparalleled communication skills to assist marketing needs’. This example isn’t exactly radical, but you’ll certainly turn a few heads.
Not only that, but it’s got plenty of keywords in it that will bring you up the search ranks.
This doesn’t just apply to graduates of course. You could be a ‘Self-motivated Sales Manager with a proven record of developing international relationships to increase sales’ for example. The point is, when it comes to your headline, you need to include keywords and be specific to promote who you are and what you want to do. With a little bit of added creativity, you’re guaranteed to capture the recruiter’s attention.
Summary
The summary is often a part of your LinkedIn profile that’s just forgotten about. But if your profile picture and headline have made a good first impression, you don’t want to stop there. There are many ways to go about crafting your summary depending on where you are in your career.
Regardless of your employment status, you need to have a summary because they’re the ultimate way to show your passion and market yourself. The main aim of the summary, as you’d expect, is to summarise your experience, goals and personality to create a mini introduction to you.
When creating your summary, there are a few styles of writing to choose from. You might choose to write about your career mission and give a broad description of where you see your career path taking you. Alternatively you might choose to focus on your personality; this is an excellent option for those with less work experience.
You could also keep it short and sweet and simply cover what you do now, what you did before, and the key skills you utilise; an excellent choice for those who are job hunting! You might also try the hard-sell approach and summarise all your accomplishments to tell people why they should hire you. Or you could choose a blend of all of these.
If you want some of the specifics on crafting these summaries, see The Muse.
No matter which style of summary suits you, you need to make sure that it’s well written, proof read and peppered with keywords so you can be spotted easily by that recruiter on the search.
Relevant experience
So the next chunk of your LinkedIn profile is the experience section. While you might be tempted just to chuck in every single job you’ve ever had to showcase your plethora of experiences, you need to cool your heels a bit on this one and tailor your experience section instead.
To begin with, if you’ve had a lot of jobs, especially over a short period, recruiters are likely to think you’re a job hopper and are less likely to be impressed; they’re looking for someone committed to a role. As a result, you need to put in the experience relevant to the job you’re looking for.
So, if you want a marketing role, look at marketing job specs to find out what experience they’re after and then try and match it with your work history. If your work experience is concise and specific, recruiters may be kinder because they won’t have to trawl through bucket-loads of history to find what they’re looking for.
In fact, if you have quite a lot of irrelevant experience listed, they’re more likely to click off your profile instantly.
In addition to making your work experience relevant, you can also be quite sneaky in putting your more impressive experiences at the top of the section.
This can be tricky because LinkedIn orders your experience chronologically. However, if a job you had a few years back is more impressive than recent roles – and relevant to your new job search – then don’t be afraid to move the less relevant jobs into a different section or remove them altogether.
Sections
You might also choose to highlight your relevant experience and skills through the other sections available on LinkedIn. Some of these sections include languages, volunteering, honours and awards, courses and publications. If you’ve got some really snazzy skills and experiences under your belt, utilising these sections is a great way to show your skills off.
Remember not to list every single piece of experience you have though; it’s just the relevant ones you’re after.
Build your network
You still with us? If you are, you should be able to start connecting with other professionals now! If you’re just starting out on LinkedIn, try to get at least 50 connections. A great place to start is current co-workers, fellow students and friends and family members too.
The next stage is to connect with other professionals within your chosen industry. Don’t just go round adding all the bigshots willy-nilly, you need to take the time to research before you start reaching out. Go and take a look at their profile, extract all the skills, experiences and interests you have in common or want to discuss, and then approach them.
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