You’ll always need a LinkedIn profile that stands out no matter where you are in the job-search process.
LinkedIn is the largest professional network on the planet, with over 600 million users worldwide. If you’re serious about your job and professional growth, you’ll need an optimized and updated LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your opportunity to present your name and face in front of hundreds (or even thousands) of industry experts. That’s critical if you are seeking a job.
Why should you use LinkedIn for professional networking?
More than 80% of the professionals using LinkedIn cite professional networking through LinkedIn as one of the keys to their career successes. There are several factors that necessitate having a stellar LinkedIn profile:
- 46% of the users on LinkedIn are recent graduates or students.
- More than 70% of LinkedIn users are outside of the United States. A great platform for seeking an International opportunity
- 700 million users network across 200 countries and regions
- 45% of the individuals earning more than $75,000 annually use LinkedIn as their professional platform
- LinkedIn is currently growing at a speed of 2 sign-ups per second
- 9 out of 10 recruiters turn to LinkedIn for recruitment.
If you have a LinkedIn profile that needs optimization, stay tuned. Before we jump into learning some advanced strategies for your LinkedIn optimization, let’s cover some basics.
Creating an impressive LinkedIn profile
Creating a LinkedIn profile that is impressive and effective is the first step. There are different perspectives of what a great profile is varying from role-to-role and industry-to-industry.
Let’s get to the basics first
1.Fill out the details for your profile
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one using your email id or phone number. Add the necessary details like demographics and other self-explanatory details into the fields. Be sure to add your phone number so that recruiters get in touch with you conveniently. Sync your contact list with your LinkedIn profile to start creating your professional network early on. While feeling out details, your employment must be shared. Either you can mention “currently looking for an opportunity” or you can choose something catchy like “Dedicated Individual Seeking Challenging Marketing Opportunities”
2.Upload your profile photo, cover photo, and work experience
Add your photo in professional attire, and not some photo that you took when you were enjoying summer days on a beach. Also, the size must be more than 200×200 pixels. The quality lower than that will distort or blur your photo.
Also, your cover photo must be uploaded to personalize your profile. Post something that is dear to you, or resembles your thoughts. You can post a landscape view or create a personalized banner mentioning your services. There are endless options as long as it looks professional.
Start listing your experience by your current profession and also add your edited resume if you are looking for new opportunities. Add all your experience with specified dates that match your resume. Do not mismatch the details in your resume and your profile. Recruiters verify that information.
3.Mention some skills
Target a minimum of five skills, the more, the merrier. Sort and mention your skills based on your expertise and proficiency. I think it is obvious to put the sharpest skill at the top.
4.Add your education
Add your entire schooling history. The reason being if there are other connections who graduated from the same institution, the probability of connecting with them rises. A higher number of connections help you explore more possibilities.
5.The headline and the summary
Addin headline to your LinkedIn profile is critical for an optimized profile. It is what appears beside your name or when someone searches in the feed. Make it succinct, clear, and snappy. Write something that makes the viewers gain interest and click. LinkedIn is an SEO-friendly platform, hence, using keywords will provide you greater benefit.
Now, you get an option to describe yourself. Write a compelling description about yourself including your achievements and your ambitions. If you are seeking a job, craft it in an impressive manner that recruiters identify as their prospect.
Here are some examples of creative LinkedIn headlines:
Event Manager | Creating Memorable and Adventurous experiences | Seeking New Opportunities
Digital Marketing Specialist | Design, Copywriting | Looking for New Project
6.Other information & your personalized URL
There are options available to mention your interests, follow CEOs, or you can also mention interests related to your occupation. That way, your hobbies can be transformed into your professional career, and learn several things while looking for a job.
Having a personalized URL makes your profile easily discoverable. Now, firstly, you need to click on the “ME” at the top right of your screen and click “VIEW PROFILE”. This will open a new window, at the right side, you will see “EDIT YOUR CUSTOM URL”. Enter your desired URL. Remember, LinkedIn only allows you to change your personalized URL 5 times in 180 days.
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile for better search visibility
Creating a LinkedIn profile and waiting for recruiters to seek you out
As I mentioned above, LinkedIn is an SEO-friendly platform. There are several factors affecting your visibility on LinkedIn depending on the goal you want to achieve. Let’s discuss enhancing your profile to search for a job.
SEO
Keywords are specific terms that significantly improve your visibility and help you appear higher in search results. For instance, if someone is a nurse, they might focus on medical terms such as “medical”, “healthcare”, or “treatment”.
Working with these keywords often helps several individuals to elevate their profiles.
Using a few keywords smartly works wonders for your profile. Dividing different keywords throughout your profile and placing them at the start, mid, and end improves your reach. Some giant companies use ATS (Applicant Tracking System) that scans thousands of resumes and shortlist candidates based on the keywords as a renowned company receives more than thousands of applications on every job post from across the globe.
Choosing keywords that suit your profession is a cup of tea. You can find those keywords that are top-searched by searching them in google. Once you find those keywords, incorporate them in your profile and distribute them in your profile. This method optimizes your profile and helps you appear higher in the recruiter’s search results. However, you must repeat a single keyword more than 3-4 times on your profile.
Avoid Buzzwords
Some words like “innovative”, “creative”, or “effective” must be avoided as everybody likes to describe themselves as the above words. Almost every newbie adds these words to present themselves as competitive. I am not saying they are bad, they are just not convincing enough. Let’s take an example: “Hardworking and Committed”, “Hardworking and Committed Sales Manager”, or “Hardworking Sales Manager who generated $15 million sales in the past fiscal year at XYZ”. Which sounds better? The last one, right? Sharing your statistics to convert or convince someone for a task or a job is by far the most successful way.
Complete Your Profile
A complete profile benefits you greatly. LinkedIn rewards users who have a complete LinkedIn profile with stars and badges. Also, each section allows you to add several keywords and share your ideas and thoughts with the recruiters.
Whether you apply for a job or not, recruiters are out there looking for candidates. An updated profile with badges, stars, and endorsements is sure to attract great companies to your profile.
Add Your Portfolio
As mentioned above, showing your work or sharing statistics is an efficient way to convince someone. LinkedIn offers you features that allow you to share your portfolio with your viewers and impress them with your work. Add links to your presentations, articles, reports, projects you completed, etc. to highlight your work and knowledge and to give recruiters an insight into your skills and abilities.
Start Posting and Engage With Other Connections
This is the most significant part of your LinkedIn account – posting and engaging with your connections. After completing your profile, you must start using it actively and not leave it for the next time you are seeking a job. You might be wondering what you can share on LinkedIn and what response you might get. To put it in a nutshell, LinkedIn is a professional community and any professional content that can help others is allowed. You can post almost anything related to career, jobs, space, art, music, technology, AI, VR, etc. However, sharing content related to your interests and your field of profession will help you build connections that can efficiently assist in your future endeavors.
Sharing content on LinkedIn can be tricky. Most users nowadays share similar content that is already available, but original content adds more value to your profile. I know that creating original content can be hard, but going the extra mile will reap you benefits that copying won’t. LinkedIn provides a dynamic environment where all the professionals meet. Having a Linkedin profile and not interacting with anyone won’t get you anywhere.
You could write an article about an event or an activity, share videos of the latest innovations, or present an idea in a series of images or a carousel to help others enlighten.
If you have read something and have several thoughts about it, go ahead and write a short summary or a blog about it on Linkedin, you will always be welcomed. Also, it will help you sharpen your skills and help interact with people with similar interests.
The Most Common LinkedIn Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
It’s critical to understand what to do to make your profile stand out, but it’s also critical to understand what not to do. Here are some frequent blunders to stay away from.
Treating LinkedIn like if it were any other social networking platform
LinkedIn is a professional networking site. Sending out a million connection requests to people you don’t know and joining a group and immediately asking for help, trolling on posts like this on Facebook or Twitter—these are all hallmarks of someone who doesn’t know or wants to know how to use LinkedIn for professional development. On LinkedIn, there is a reduced tolerance for rubbish. There’s no one around to squander time.
Not Personalizing Your Profile, Content, and Messages
If you wish to explore new opportunities and have greater productivity in your work, start personalizing everything. From sending a connection request to sending a message. Specify why you are sending someone a connection request. This would help you to initiate a conversation with a recruiter who might also be a fan of soft skills and would help you get hired.
Spending insufficient time on the website
It takes time to get the most out of LinkedIn. You are probably mistaken if you believe that joining LinkedIn will miraculously transform your life or your possibilities. It’s part of your professional development, and getting something out of it, like anything else, will take some effort. Similarly, the amount of effort you put into developing your profile is directly proportional to the benefits you get.
There was no follow-up
When someone introduces you, helps you get a job interview, answers your advice request, or otherwise shows interest in how things are going for you, follow up and let them know how things went. Thank them for helping you get that fantastic job, tell them how their advice helped you, or simply express your gratitude for the effort they spent to make it happen.
Conclusion
With all these tips and suggestions, go ahead and create an impressive profile that gets you noticed.
The key takeaways for you would be:
- Sprinkle keywords across the whole profile, and also in the content that you publish.
- Post an attractive, professional photo with a resembling cover photo
- And lastly, network! Keep networking until you get the job and don’t stop there. Keep establishing your career to build references, learn more about different people, interact with people and build your personal brand.
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