Best LinkedIn Hacks for Relaunchers

You want to ensure your online presence demonstrates an accurate picture of who you are!

By Lisa Fenton,CSCMP

Having a social media strategy in place will help you to successfully return to the workforce, build deeper and more meaningful relationships, make more memorable impressions, develop mutual trust, advance in your career and discover new opportunities. Recruiters are utilizing technology for skills assessments and video interviews. They will review your social media activity or online presence, so you'll want to ensure they'll get an accurate picture of who you are.

Why use LinkedIn?

While you may think having a social presence is not an important part of your return to work strategy, you will be surprised by the power of LinkedIn. In 2020 there are 660+ million users in more than 200 countries around the world. In addition to giving you a digital presence, a LinkedIn profile facilitates tapping into its powerful job board, building your brand, helping you rank your name on Google, managing a rolodex of contacts, researching companies, employees, and interviewers, staying up-to-date on industry news, and networking and engagement opportunities. 

For relaunchers, having a social media strategy will facilitate building and maintaining your network, assist in your job search, and help build your professional reputation.

Tips for Relaunchers to optimize their profiles

Banner - Customize with one of the following: picture of your workspace, benefit your client desires, city landscape, physical architecture, your service, cause or mission, tools of your trade, your product or service, you doing your work, solid color or abstract that reinforces what makes you unique.

Profile picture - Add a professional updated picture with the focus on your face, head and shoulders. Use a high-resolution image where your face takes up at least 60% of the frame and you are the only one in the picture. Choose an appropriate expression, use filters wisely and wear what you would wear to work while avoiding distracting backgrounds in natural light.

Intro section -

• Headline - 120 characters tailored to your audience, including your value proposition in your audience’s language, skip the jargon and avoid bragging.
• Current position - Use a title that matches your goal
• Education - Most recent education 
• Location - Country, postal or zip code
• Industry - Choose from the drop-down closest industry 
• Job preferences - Add target job 
• Job titles - Add target titles 
• Job locations - Add target locations
• Job types - Choose from listing 
• Choose who sees you - All LinkedIn members or only recruiters

About section - This area allows you to brag about your accomplishments. Use a catchy opening statement and share your personality while including search terms. Add a call to action for example - "Let’s schedule a call" and then include your Calendly address. (Note: Calendly has a free calendar app that lets you block out time you are not available so those wanting to make a call can choose only times your available.)

Also include your email address.

There is also an option for Multimedia (documents, photos, sites, videos & presentations) you can choose to upload or link your material.

Articles - Include published papers, research, white papers, books written or contributed to. Topics can include advice for someone entering your field, what your industry might look like in the future, changes and challenges in your profession, how you got your start in your profession.

Activity - This section shows your likes and comments on posts. There are also tabs for your articles, posts, documents and interests.

Experience - Include your relevant work history and description of each entry, along with work experiences written in the first person with a conversational tone in paragraph form. Make sure to include numbers, stats and achievements with keywords from your industry. You can also include media by uploading or linking the material.

If you have a side hustle you can list your company and experience in this section. For example, your company details and sections such as I did - "Blogger, Speaker, Writer, Podcast Guest" - and include media for each section as well.

Education

Include university/community degree relevant coursework as well by listing the name.

Licenses & Certifications - Include professional designations, certifications and licenses. LinkedIn learning courses and MOOCs can be included here as well.

Volunteering - Highlight and showcase your unpaid and charitable work, especially those with transferable skills.

Skills & Endorsements - Anyone can visit your profile and endorse you for the skills you have. Combined with recommendations, they can elevate your profile. Set up this section by itemizing your critical skills and knowledge assets. There are two types: general and specialized skills. You can seek endorsements from others through private email requests and offering to provide reciprocity to them.

Recommendations - Praise from an important client or former boss or colleague can help highlight the great things others recognize about you. A variety of sources is helpful and can even include volunteer positions. You can help by offering to write a draft as well as provide one for them in return.

Accomplishments - In this section you can include projects, languages and other credentials. Highlight if you beat a target or deadline, re-organized something, improved something, worked on a special project, received an award, received a compliment by a supervisor or co-worker.

Contact - This section lets you include three sites. I have my customized URL for LinkedIn, my company website and personal email.

Interests - This section can include news sources, influencers, companies, schools, groups and associations.

Additional tips -

• Join professional groups
• Connect with recruiters, see who’s viewed your profile, look up the recruiter, HR MGR, potential supervisors
• Become an author, add a blog
• Connect through your alumni groups
• Join a LinkedIn group
• Show your skills, optimize your LinkedIn page and promote yourself
• Post relevant industry news to position yourself as an industry professional
• Tag (mention and link to) others in a post or comment without being connected with them. To stand out from the crowd when being tagged, consider adding something to your name. For example, on the mobile version you can enter an extra long headline of up to 200 or so characters versus the 120 on a desktop, Look at hashtags behind the top 10 trending stories in your area (s) of interest.
• Look for your target audience in Facebook groups to generate leads on LinkedIn
• Add minimal font styling - don't distract from your message

Ask yourself a few questions when creating a post -

• How does your comment fit the bigger picture?
• Will this appeal to a mass audience?
• Was this post driven with high engagement on FB?
• Do I sound intriguing, reliable and knowledgeable?
• Would your mother 

Story telling forges connections among people & behavior and people & ideas. In 2020 digital assets will include your content and your social currency. I look forward to seeing you on LinkedIn!