“Your LinkedIn profile is the first impression of your professionalism”
LinkedIn is the largest professional network platform with 600 million active users. You must have an optimized and up to date LinkedIn profile, if you are really serious about your career and professional advancement. Your LinkedIn profile connects you with a network and recruiters often pick up candidates through their professional profile.
Even if you are at any stage of job searching, you need the best LinkedIn profile to showcase your sense of sincerity and professionalism. A LinkedIn profile is a chance to get your name with your achievements in front of a number of professionals. So, you must have a LinkedIn profile that is concise, crisp and yet effective.
Here are some simple tips that will help you to create your best LinkedIn profile to date:
Choose a professional profile picture
Go to your LinkedIn profile and see what profile picture do you have? If it’s a selfie, just remove it now. Your profile picture is the first thing your network and the recruiter see, so make sure it gives the message of your professionalism. These days with a massive increase in LinkedIn as a parameter for evaluation of your candidature, you need to make sure it is perfect. Your profile picture should be recent, with your face clearly visible, if possible, the picture must be in professional wear and don’t forget to wear the best thing, Your Smile!
Profile description is not just about the job title
Don’t get stuck to the conventional way, where profile description was all about your current and previous job roles. Use this foremost headline field to say why you love working in the industry you are working in, what makes you tick, how you see your role.
Convert summary into your sales pitch
Don’t leave the summary field blank while creating your LinkedIn profile. This is by far the most important place to grab attention. Don’t just simply write your skills or job titles in the summary. Use this summary box to write your own sales pitch and flaunt your USP.
Highlight your skills through a story that is intriguing and compelling. This summary has to be your masterpiece of content marketing. This is your chance to show what difference you make to the people you work with.
Say no to buzzwords
Buzzwords or the sugar-coated adjectives you use for yourself in the summary are completely meaningless. Because using words like “strategic”, “specialized”,” passionate”, “expert”, “leadership”, “certified” is just irrelevant because on LinkedIn your skills matter not these buzzwords.
Relevant skills only
Adding your relevant skills from the skills list is the quickest of quick wins on LinkedIn. But keep in mind that you have to add only those skills that are relevant, adding heaps of irrelevant skills is not a good decision.
Do LinkedIn Learning courses
Add the certificate of the course you just completed through LinkedIn Learning. Go to the LinkedIn Learning History section and link your certificate to your LinkedIn profile. In the history section, you can also view the progress of your courses and you can also send updates about your learning to your network. In this way, you will showcase your passion for learning to your network.
Highlight the services you offer
If you are a freelancer, consultant or working for a small business, you must use Services Feature by LinkedIn. In this, give a detailed description of what services you offer. This will boost your visibility in search results.
Give and take endorsements
Do you know what it means to get endorsed on LinkedIn? Endorsements mean that you will give a recommendation to your new connection about a professional already in your network. Be very proactive in managing your endorsements. These are just tricks to grow your network.
Take a skills assessment
Skill Assessment is a new feature by LinkedIn that displays a Verified Badge on your profile for a particular skill. It is an online test that determines your level of skills and it is entirely voluntary to show its results on your profile and if you are not satisfied with your performance you can retake the test also.
Data shows that professionals with verified badges are around 30% more likely to be hired as the verified badge showcases proficiency in the skill and strengthens your personal brand.
Use the Publications section of LinkedIn
Are you aware of the Publications section of LinkedIn? A majority of users don’t know this. This section is one of the under-used elements in LinkedIn profiles. The publications section is the best way for you to stand out from the crowd and gain attention to existing thought-leadership content.
Let’s see what you can add in your publications section of your LinkedIn profile. Whether you have written or been a co-author of eBook or white paper or written a blog post on your company’s blog, it is the time to link these assets to your profile.
Share relevant content on the feed
Have you just made your LinkedIn profile and haven’t posted anything? Then that profile is of no use. Apart from having a network of connections, you must have an active role in appearing in your connection’s LinkedIn feed. Apart from posting from your feed, you must add comments on others posts as well, this will help you to expand your network as then you will be visible to connections of your connections.
You can start posting interesting content that aligns with your knowledge or your subject. For example: If you are a person whose subject is biotechnology, you must start posting about various Covid-19 drugs that are anticipated to be a cure for it.
In this way, you not only grab your connection’s attention but you leave traces of your intellect on your LinkedIn profile.
Follow the members relevant to your industry only
Make sure your LinkedIn profile gives a glance to your niche. Niche here means that from your educational background, internships, work experience and your connections must be aligned. Only follow and have connections with those professionals whose interests and work matches with your passion for what you do.
The information you share on LinkedIn profile should form a sequence; nothing should look awkward. For example: If you are a freelancer, your LinkedIn connections must be freelancers, or companies offering work to freelancers, having computer science engineers in your profile will add no good to your LinkedIn profile.
