15 Top LinkedIn Profile Tips for Professionals and Job Seekers

LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool and one of the number one recruitment tools internationally used by both internal and external recruiters, to find and headhunt potential candidates. Some organisations are using LinkedIn so extensively that job applications can be completed through Smart Application on LinkedIn, meaning that your LinkedIn profile is used to apply for the role. For these applications the completeness of your LinkedIn Profile is even more important.

Whether you are actively looking for a new opportunity or are passive in the market, it makes great career and business sense for you to have an up-to-date, professional and factual profile that helps you to connect with other professionals, peers, and influencers and to showcases who you are as well as your talents. Being an active LinkedIn user, I’ve seen some great profiles and others that are missing key information for example, a profile picture, informative Header, About section, responsibilities/achievements in the Experience section and professional qualifications or dates in both the Education and the Licenses & Certifications sections.

Recruitment professionals use Boolean searches to find and headhunt the best candidates for the profile they are recruiting for - this is essentially a keyword search. To help you appear in the right Boolean searches, I recommend identifying 5-6 keywords that are important to you and your career, because appropriate use of those keywords, multiple times throughout your profile, will help to get you in the searches that provide opportunities for you. My advice is to include your keywords in your Headline, About and Experience sections and if possible, your Skills & Endorsements section too. Recruiters look at hundreds of profiles every day so the better your profile is, the more opportunities you’ll be presented with. Missing information, poorly labelled headers and so on can class you as a walk by profile, resulting in a potential missed opportunity for you. So, let’s use this time of working from home to really showcase your profile on LinkedIn.

1. Profile and Background Pictures

Starting from the top of your profile, I recommend including a recent photo of you and you only. Research suggests that profiles, with a profile picture, are 11 times more likely to be viewed. A warm and friendly smiling image is a good choice. A head and shoulders picture with a business shirt (and tie for men) with suit jacket is great for those with a profession like the Auditors, Accountants and Consultants that I work with.

Profile photos can be taken by a mobile phone with a good quality camera and a blurry background is a great choice, or a professional background but not one that’s too busy. If you choose a plain background, be mindful that there is no shadow of yourself in the image. Alternatively if your organisation takes professional photos you could use this where the image is recent or representative of how you look today.

Your background picture can be a great quote or an image that inspires/reflects who you are. LinkedIn only accepts background pictures that are JPG, GIF or PNG,’s no larger than 8MB with pixel dimensions of 1584 (w) x 396 (h). Images you have can easily be appropriately fitted for these dimensions using Apps like Spark Post or graphic design websites like Canva.

2. Headline

Your headline is prime real estate and should therefore showcase your skills/value proposition. As an example, if you're an ICAEW qualified Accountant from Big 4 working in Financial Services Retail Banking Audit as a Senior Manager and wish to continue specialising in this area, then instead of what I often see “Senior Manager”, your headline could be “ACA - Big 4 - Financial Services - Retail Banking - Audit Senior Manager” - this instantly identifies you from the crowd and helps you to be found. You could even make the Big 4 part more specific and mention the Firm you currently work with because this may help you even further i.e. if you work with EY: “ACA - EY - Financial Services - Retail Banking - Audit Senior Manager”. Choosing the optimal keywords in your Headline, About and Experience sections will help you to appear higher up in the Boolean searches, thus showcasing you for the best opportunities.

3. Current Position

This is a straight forward area where I would advise that your current position should match both your current designation and current position on your CV.

4. Country and Location

Your current country of residence and specific location within the country can be a critical search criteria, so definitely update this field as soon as you can and keep this updated if you relocate or go on secondment. The reason why this is so important, is that some organisations require candidates who have local knowledge and contacts, and others are looking for candidates from specific locations.

5. About

This is another critical area and one that I often see completely blank in profiles.

I recommend that you write in first and not third person when you construct this area, because research suggests that this is more appealing to those reading your profile.

My advice is to keep this area succinct and factual with two paragraphs followed by two headings with bullet points. As a Recruiter and avid LinkedIn user, it’s helpful to see an opening introductory paragraph; and for the candidates I work with, it’s helpful to mention your current designation, service line, area of speciality, accountancy qualification, year of qualification, current designation and number of years of experience, as well as number of years of experience in the specific area that you are keen to continue working in. I then recommend a second paragraph succinctly describing your current role.

The two section headings I mentioned above are Key Responsibilities and Key Achievements. Key Responsibilities should be relevant to your current role, and helpful in aligning with future roles you’d like to secure (where relevant). Notice that I used the work Key, because you don’t want to list all of your job description; remember to keep succinct and include bullet points for the main responsibilities, your CV can then delve further into the detail. The second heading is Key Achievements, particularly those achieved in your current role, as these will be more relevant to future roles you are interested in pursuing. Many candidates ask me what key achievements are. These are any significant awards, improvements you’ve put in place, savings you’ve helped to achieve, value of new business development annually (this can be a value range i.e. ￡700k-￡1m annually over the past 5 years), white papers you’ve written etc. Numbers, ￡ value and %’s are all great when talking about achievements. If you’re not in breach of any organisational procedures/confidentiality, Key Clients you have worked with are helpful too. If you're not able to include key clients in your LinkedIn Profile, it's certainly worth including them on your CV.

6. Featured

If you’ve written articles then add these to the featured section, to again showcase your talents, interests and ability to add value. Thought leadership, technical and consultative type articles are great choices.

7. Experience

This is another key section and one that deserves significant attention. Be truthful and ensure your profile is aligned with your CV. There’s no need to put your job description in here, remember to be succinct with an opening overall paragraph for each role followed by key responsibilities and key achievements; your CV can elaborate further. Remember to showcase numbers, ￡ values and %’s, especially in the key achievements area.

I advise linking your past and current organisations with those preset in LinkedIn, where relevant, because this provides the organisation logo, which is more visually appealing, viewers can see at a glance your career pathway and they can click into and access organisations in your career path for further details of the organisation you worked for if they require. Remember to include job location as well because this can be very relevant where an employer is looking for a candidate located in a specific area, a candidate with certain international experience or where relocation is or is not required. If you’ve had the opportunity to go on secondment, remember to include this as a separate role but within the same organisation and highlight the location.

It’s also advisable to show the dates (month and year) that you've worked in each organisation to provide a complete history during your career.

8. Education

Link Universities and Colleges attended with those preset and include start and end years. It’s very helpful to include grades you've achieved, i.e. 2.1, because employers can have educational prerequisites, particularly for certain grades and/or roles.

9. Licenses & Certifications

Link licenses and certifications with relevant bodies and organisations preset, where possible, and include dates (start and end months and years). For professional Accountancy Qualifications, it’s advisable to indicate 1st time passes where applicable, because this can be a prerequisite for certain roles.

10. Skills & Endorsements

Skills & Endorsements can have a positive impact so take time to identify key skills you have achieved and wish to develop. To boost endorsements you can ask colleagues or clients for endorsements. If you have skills that are no longer important for your role, you can simply remove them if you so desire.

11. Recommendations

Recommendations are brilliant to see on candidates profiles, so ask colleagues and clients for recommendations on engagements and projects you’ve been involved in, particularly those relevant to your current and future career.

12. Interests

Interests are a good indication of who you are and they can show an element of your dedication to CPD and your passions professionally. I recommend following organisations you are interested in joining because this shows a level of professional interest. I also recommend identifying key influencers and professional bodies/organisations in your field of interest who are posting great content for you to learn from and share.

13. Personalisation of your Brand

When you created your profile, LinkedIn will have given you an automated URL composed of your name and some random letters, numbers and backslashes or dashes, that add no value to your personal brand. You can therefore chose to personalise and brand your LinkedIn URL. This can be really easily completed by going into your profile. On the top right hand side of the screen click “Edit public profile & URL”. In the next screen click “Edit your custom URL” then remove the numbers and letters and personalise with your name or description you’d like for your customised URL.

14. Are you Open to New Opportunities?

If you're open to new opportunities, let recruiters know by identifying yourself as such. This means that recruiters who subscribe to LinkedIn Recruiter, can easily identify you and connect with you for opportunities. Connections and LinkedIn users without Recruiter will not see that you have selected this preference and neither will recruiters in your current organisation, because LinkedIn have taken steps to facilitate this.

It’s really easy to activate this setting. Start by clicking “Me” on the toolbar on the right hand side, beside your small profile photo, then click “Settings & Privacy”, then “Job seeking preferences” in the options on the left. From the options presented, select “Let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities” then change the no to yes. When you’re not looking for a new opportunity, just access the settings as above and change the yes to no.

15. Final Thoughts

Remember to complete your profile with a spelling and grammar check to ensure the information you have entered is accurate, professional and makes sense to someone who doesn’t know you. You could ask a colleague or friend to read through your profile for you. Every few months, revisit your profile to ensure you keep it up-to-date.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Please follow my LinkedIn profile for further helpful tips and advice and I’d love it if you could like and share this article with your network. Take care and stay safe.