Keeping yourself relevant and marketable today is as important as landing an actual interview. Luckily, LinkedIn is a great tool to make sure that your strengths, talents, and goals are in line with your career aspirations.
So what can you do to make sure your profile stands out?
1. First impressions count – Your Headline
Most people state their name and title when building a LinkedIn Profile. But also use that space to give yourself a professional identity of who you are and what you do. Choose descriptive and compelling keywords to stand out and make yourself marketable.
2. Customize your profile and summary
This is generally more of a “skills-based” section. However, LinkedIn also lets you add photos, videos, PDFs, slideshow presentations and more. Use this to your advantage and show examples of your work! It is well worth the effort to write a unique and intriguing summary section to stand out.
Customize your URL to your name. This makes it easier and memorable to share on your resume, your email signature, or on your website.
3. Your experience
Display your experience, expertise, and skills. Include where you have worked, for how long, and what roles and functions you have taken on in your most recent 3 jobs.
Enhance credibility by portraying what is unique to you. How do you handle responsibility? What obstacles have you overcome? Do you do volunteer work? These skill sets come in very handy, so showcase it!
Share your biggest two or three accomplishments in your career that had positive results. Highlight items potential employers won’t find on your resume and include valuable core competencies you bring to the table. Update content regularly to add value to your profile!
4. Seek new recommendations and endorsements
Be proactive on asking for recommendations and endorsements from people who you have had a good working relationship with (superiors, colleagues, mentors, happy clients, etc.). Recommendations from people who you have worked with at different points in your career are even better. Avoid using friends, though. They’re easy to spot and tend to lack the work experience with you to truly speak to your skills. As more people endorse you for a skill, the higher it will rank!
5. Make sure your profile is COMPLETE!
Your profile will appear in more search results if it is “complete”. LinkedIn will walk you through the areas of your profile that you need to fill out. Add all relevant contact information. Is everything up-to-date? Include keywords everywhere, especially in the Summary, Skills, and Experience sections. This will help with search engine optimization. What about your profile photo? Ideally, a professional photo is best. Not blurry, not inappropriate… You want to come across as dependable and trustworthy.
Make sure you are making high-quality and diverse connections. This will be an invaluable resource for success. It can add value to your profile, as well as add value to many of your future projects when these connections can help.
Focus on action words (verbs) that show accomplishments instead of adjectives that describe you. Pick common keywords around the industry you are in.
Network! Find groups on LinkedIn that are doing similar work or interests as you and make an effort to contribute. There are over a million groups on LinkedIn and it can be relevant to showing your value. Join enough groups to gain exposure over many different facets.
Most important? PROOFREAD! Make sure your profile is free of grammatical and spelling errors and it is effectively sharing important information.