Stand out with your Linkedin profile!
There’s so much emphasis on creating an appealing LinkedIn profile. This is valid, as it is the first go-to platform for recruiters to post a job or headhunt. However, despite its importance, many people fail to create a complete profile.
This article will guide you through the steps and different sections of LinkedIn to create an appealing profile. Before we go on about the sections and tips, it’s important to realize the vitality of a LinkedIn profile:?
Now that you’ve realized the importance of maintaining your LinkedIn profile, let’s go through the sections of your profile:
Profile Photo – Adding a profile photo makes it 14 times more likely to get profile views. But there are certain rules to follow for the photo to meet the professional criteria of the platform.?
Background Photo – This is the second visual element that people notice in your profile. It could be a form of marketing for your current company, or it could showcase what matters to you. Either way, it grabs people’s attention, so make sure you pick the right one.?
Headline – A headline can be more than just your job title. It’s one of the first things people see before scrolling through your profile, so you can say more about your role, career aspirations, and why you do what you do.
Summary – Many people would rather not give this section enough thought or would just skip it, when in fact it’s where you can market yourself. You can tell your story whichever way you want. Whether you’ll be writing about your career path or the skills that helped you take that path, make sure you highlight how you bring benefits to the people working with you.
Tip #1: Avoid using buzzwords like “motivated”, "experienced," and "passionate." Instead, demonstrate the skills you have with evident tangible results that you have achieved or awards that you received.?
Tip #2: Support your summary with media like videos or blog posts, if any.?
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Experience – After writing the company name and your job title, don’t hesitate to mention in detail your responsibilities. It’ll help headhunters and your network build a clearer picture of what you do.?
Tip: if you worked on any postable projects or a full portfolio, share them to demonstrate any skills that you have. It will give you more credibility since employers are most keen to hire based on experience.?
Education – Include this section to let employers know what background you come with, to connect with alumni from your school, and to make it easier to know which people from your school worked at the companies you look up to. However, it’s usually more important for entry-level job seekers.
Skills and endorsements – Add skills that contribute to your achievements, highlight your strength points and define your professional role. Ask your colleagues, managers, and people from your network to give you endorsements for those skills. Another way to get an endorsement is to pass it first. Go through your connections and see whom you can give an endorsement to. Chances are they will feel tempted to pay it back.?
Recommendations – Recommendations are preferable over endorsements as they give more credibility. Ask your selected connections for recommendations and specify what you want the recommendations to be for. They should be relevant and give proper insight instead of being just generic. For example, instead of “it’s a pleasure to work with Mohammed”, you should opt for something more specific like “Mohammed has made our work much more efficient by creating a new tracking system”.?
General Tips
Grow your network – A rich network is your gateway to many opportunities. While it’s recommended to opt for at least 300 connections, quality is more important than quantity. Instead, you should focus on building a network of people in the same industry as yours and business leaders that you’d learn from.
Join a Linkedin Group – Not everyone is familiar with those, but LinkedIn groups let you join a common platform with others who share similar interests as you do. Besides, it makes it easier to reach out and connect to these people to exchange knowledge.?
Follow relevant business leaders and influencers – A relevant following list means interesting content on your feed and better opportunities to share useful material with your network that might end up being a conversation starter.
Complete your profile – Only 51% of people have a complete LinkedIn profile. The remaining percentage of people doesn’t realize that incomplete profiles don’t appear in most searches, so setting the time of your day to work on your profile and think the sections through, filling in missing information, can go a long way. It doesn’t have to be long hours; a few minutes on a couple of days will do the job.?