Get yourself New Year Ready

Time to give your profile an overhaul in readiness for a new year, a new search or just to blow the cobwebs off but hang on....LinkedIn is more than that .... it's also time to reflect on your engagement patterns and how you engage your chosen audience. Your audience may be organisations that you have targeted as potential employers for example.

You want to find work?

Turn the recruitment process on its head and stand out!

First of all you need to give your profile an overhaul, if you are going to step up your engagement and find work you need to give potential employers ...or clients for that matter...something interesting to look at. This article breaks a profile makeover down into a 5 day workout toning those essential bits that draw the audience in.

In a nutshell this article combines a series of series of posts that were published over the Christmas break with some nuggets to help you give your profile a makeover and set you up for finding work through LinkedIn.

Day 1: Banner, Headline, Photo.

Banner: Use CANVA to create...it's free and you can select picture dimensions that match LinkedIn banners.

Be creative, this is personal to you but should be appealing to the eye, stand out and draw people in. You can get creative. Try a few out and if you don't like them after a few days then have another go ...you can change it as often as you want.

Photo: Not your dog, pet, kids, cartoon or any other 'thing'! We want to see you. CANVA also has a background removal tool so you can remove a background of the pub and replace it with a beach in the Bahamas if you so desire.

Snappr analyses your LinkedIn photo and gives you a % rating plus tips on how to improve.

Headline: If you put your job title in here or "actively seeking work" you have wasted an opportunity. Get creative, feed us some nuggets that make us want to know more about you.

Remember the aim of this is to draw people in to the rest of your profile; when people land on your profile you have about 3 seconds before they decide whether to move one or dig deeper!

Day 2: About Section

Don't: Regurgitate and condense your 'experience' section; that's for ....your experience section.

Do: Take the opportunity to showcase yourself; the person behind the CV, your character, likes dislikes, why and how you got to where you are now. This part of the profile should be used for appealing to people and not search engines. Put stuff in that people can identify with. Give people talking points.

If you were in a crowded room would you find it easier to walk up to the person with a sign above their head saying; I really like xxxxxx, not many people know this but yyyy, I held a really bizarre job once as a zzzz, or the one with nothing.

Think about it, give someone a talking point so they find it easy to introduce themselves!

Day 3: Recommendations

These are really important....saves the recruiter or hiring manager a bit of time as they get an independent view of you as a person.

The more you have the more accurate their picture.

Ask for some but also give some and you may get some in return.

There's a step by step guide in the video to doing both.

Days 4 & 5 - 30th & 31st December - Your experience section

This session covers 2 days as you will need to spend that and possibly a little more...a little work now will pay dividends.

??Include every job from leaving school.

??Include why you took the role, what you were responsible for and your successes.

??BUT also put in the challenges you faced and how you overcame them

Don't just put down I did this I was brilliant and I achieved that....try and evidence what you've done.

Everyone puts down their successes BUT the difference between two candidates might just come down to how they perform in a crisis!

Think about it...who would you rather employ; someone who performs well when things are good ...or someone that digs deep and comes up trumps when the chips are down ....That's what Military types are very good at!

So that's a good start on your profile BUT its just the tip of the iceberg. Get these bits sorted and you'll manage to hold the interest of potential employers, there's plenty more to a complete profile.

And then there's the network growth and engagement.

No point in covering these until you have something compelling and unique for people to look at.

So get to work on that profile and then we can cover the other bits!