Why is having a strong LinkedIn profile important?
Having a strong and complete LinkedIn profile is extremely important for several reasons:
- It allows you to be found by recruiters – Over 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn to search for candidates. A robust profile will enable recruiters to find you more easily.
- It demonstrates your professional brand – Your LinkedIn profile provides a snapshot of your professional accomplishments, skills, and brand. A thoughtful, well-crafted profile conveys professionalism.
- It expands your network – LinkedIn is built around connections. A complete profile allows you to connect with colleagues, classmates, clients, and new contacts.
- It supplements your resume – You can include details and examples that may not fit on your one or two page resume. The additional content showcases your experiences.
- It shows off your communication skills – The way you write your profile provides clues about your communication abilities. Strong writing and messaging is key.
In summary, a complete LinkedIn profile is like an interactive resume that enables you to be found, connect, and stand out as a candidate. Given how heavily recruiters rely on LinkedIn, an impressive profile is absolutely essential during a job search.
How to optimize the key sections of your LinkedIn profile
Let’s walk through tips to optimize the most important elements of your LinkedIn profile:
Profile Photo
Your profile photo is one of the first things people will notice about your profile. Follow these best practices:
- Use a professional headshot – It should be high quality with good lighting. Smiling is recommended.
- Wear professional attire – Business casual or business professional dress is best.
- Ensure it’s recent – Use a photo from the past year. You want to look current.
- Avoid group shots, landscapes, or other distracting backgrounds. The focus should be on you.
- Check that it’s consistent – Make sure your photo is similar across LinkedIn, resume, and other profiles.
Your photo helps form one of the most critical first impressions of you as a professional.
Headline
Your headline appears right below your name. It should quickly summarize who you are as a professional. Some tips:
- Include your current title and organization name. This helps establish credibility.
- Mention 1-2 additional key skills, areas of expertise, or certifications. For example, “Product Manager @ XYZ Corporation | Agile Expert | Certified ScrumMaster”
- Describe your professional brand and values in a few concise words. For example, “Passionate food safety advocate” or “Renewable energy specialist.”
- Avoid overused terms like “experienced” or “expert.” Opt for more unique descriptors.
- Use keywords recruiters may search for that accurately reflect your background.
- Update it regularly as you take on new roles and gain skills. It should evolve over time.
Your headline is prime real estate. Use it wisely to communicate who you are.
About Section
The about section offers a high-level summary of your background and capabilities. Follow these tips:
- Provide an overview of your current position and how your skills and experience deliver value.
- Use concise, crisp language without overly verbose or formal wording.
- Mention key strengths, skills, achievements, and credentials you want to be known for.
- Align it with your professional brand by emphasizing your values and what motivates you.
- List 2-4 ideal roles you are seeking if actively job searching. This helps guide recruiters.
- Avoid listing duties from past jobs. Focus on concrete examples of skills applied.
- Include keywords and skills that applicants may search for and that apply to roles in your industry.
Your about section should serve almost like a thesis statement for the rest of your profile.
Experience Section
Your experience section allows you to highlight the key moments and achievements from your career history. Follow these tips:
- For each role, briefly summarize your position, key responsibilities, and organizational context.
- Emphasize measurable achievements and impact. Quantify reach, scale, efficiency gains, etc. with real numbers.
- Specify your contribution to major projects, campaigns, or initiatives. Use strong action verbs.
- List any special initiatives, awards, or major accomplishments that showcase capabilities.
- Even early roles like internships can demonstrate important capabilities – strategic thinking, communication, teamwork.
- If gaps exist in your experience, you can briefly explain them constructively, e.g. “Sabbatical to pursue passion in writing.”
Your experience section should make it easy for readers to quickly scan for key moments that convey your capabilities.
Skills Section
The skills section provides an overview of your key competencies. Follow these best practices:
- Include a balanced mix of both hard and soft skills. Technical and interpersonal abilities are important.
- Back up stated skills with clear examples in your experience and education sections.
- Leverage LinkedIn’s skill endorsements feature to showcase endorsements from colleagues.
- Include keywords recruiters may be searching for your target roles and industry.
- Aim for 7-15 well-chosen skills. Avoid listing every minor competency.
- Organize skills from most to least proficient so the most relevant appear first.
Your skills section should paint a 360-degree picture of the well-rounded capabilities you offer.
Education Section
Your education section provides details on your academic background. Use these tips:
- Include degrees earned, institution names, graduation dates, majors/minors, and GPAs if satisfactory.
- Highlight relevant coursework, thesis topics, or academic projects tied to your professional capabilities.
- List any special honors, scholarships, or awards from your time in school.
- Include executive education programs, specialized certifications, training programs, and seminars.
- You can include high school once you have 1+ years of professional experience. Otherwise focus on higher ed.
Your education section offers additional context around the knowledge base you developed academically.
Additional Sections
Lastly, you may choose to add some of these optional sections:
- Projects – Describe key projects from your experience and the impact delivered.
- Awards & Certifications – Highlight honors and major credentials. Add year earned.
- Volunteer Experience – Share causes and organizations you actively support.
- Courses – List online and offline courses relevant to your career goals.
- Test Scores – For recent grads, strong test scores like SAT/ACT demonstrate skills.
- Languages – List languages you’re proficient in reading, writing, and speaking.
- Personal Links – Links to your professional website, portfolio, or related profiles.
These optional sections allow you to provide a more well-rounded picture of who you are. But focus on the key sections first before venturing into these extras.
Optimizing your profile for applicant tracking systems
Most large companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to handle incoming job applications. Here are some tips for optimizing your profile to align with what ATS seeks:
- Include keywords from the job postings you are targeting in your profile sections. Many ATS scan for degrees, certifications, skills, etc.
- Use standard section headers like “Work Experience” and “Education”. Avoid creative titles that ATS may not recognize.
- Use clean formatting without complex tables, images, or charts. Simple text is best.
- Check that your profile looks “scannable” with concise bullet points, quantitative details, and keywords that stand out.
- Include links to any online portfolios showcasing examples of work. Provide quantitative results.
- List your profile URL or link on your resume. Many ATS match resumes to LinkedIn profiles.
While each ATS is a little different, optimizing your profile with keywords, clean formatting, quantifiable details, and relevant links will maximize your chances of being flagged as a strong match.
Tips for completeing your profile to 100%
Completing your LinkedIn profile is associated with up to 40% more opportunities. Follow these tips to hit 100% completion:
- Upload an appropriate photo – This alone gets you 10% closer to completion!
- Add at least one previous position in your experience section – Include responsibilities and achievements.
- Fill out your About section based on the recommendations above.Aim for at least 120 words.
- Add 5+ key Skills – Pull these from job descriptions of roles you are targeting.
- Include your Education – At minimum, list schools you attended, majors, and graduation years.
- Customize your Headline to be creative yet professional.
- Expand your network by connecting with colleagues, classmates, friends and other professionals.
- Follow companies and business leaders you admire to join the conversation.
- Join relevant LinkedIn groups based on your interests, skills, university, etc.
- Research and give recommendations for former managers and colleagues you respect.
Reaching 100% sends a strong signal to recruiters that you take your LinkedIn presence seriously. Follow the checklist above to complete your profile fully.
Tips for standing out and engaging your network
Having a robust, polished LinkedIn profile is just the first step. You also need to actively engage your network to stand out. Here are some tips:
- Like and leave thoughtful comments on posts from your connections. Participate in the conversation.
- Congratulate old colleagues on work anniversaries, birthdays, promotions, new jobs, etc.
- Share relevant articles, resources, and insights beneficial to your connections and followers.
- Join LinkedIn Groups related to your interests and contribute to the discussions.
- Send notes to set up 1 on 1 informational interviews to continue building your network.
- Share your own long-form thoughts, articles, presentations, and other media through posts.
- Use rich media options like images, videos, presentations to create engaging content.
- Send personal messages to contacts you haven’t connected with in a while to maintain the relationship.
By regularly engaging your connections, following companies, joining groups, and sharing valuable content – you’ll stand out and expand your network.
Do’s and Don’ts
Here are some key do’s and don’ts for creating a stellar LinkedIn profile:
Do:
- Showcase achievements, impact, scope, scale vs. basic responsibilities
- Use data, metrics, and numbers to quantify results
- Align skills with roles and provide examples demonstrating them
- Have a professional headshot and background
- Craft an interesting, memorable headline
- Use keywords recruiters search for and ATS scan profiles for
- Update as you gain new skills, accomplishments, and roles
Don’t:
- Use cliches or fluffy buzzwords that sound impressive but lack evidence
- Exaggerate titles or roles beyond what you actually did
- Leave roles or education with gaps of more than a few months unexplained
- Use unprofessional photos with distracting backgrounds
- Use dense blocks of text – use bullet points, numbers, formatting
- Leave bad recommendations up that may reflect poorly on you
- Let your profile stagnate – continue improving it over time
By avoiding these mistakes and showcasing your value professionally, you can create a stellar LinkedIn profile that captures attention.
Mistakes to avoid
Here are some major mistakes to avoid on your LinkedIn profile:
- Including unprofessional information – Keep details relevant to your career only.
- Not customizing the LinkedIn URL – Use your name not generic strings of numbers and letters.
- Using a poor profile photo – Professional headshot on neutral background is best.
- Blocky dense paragraphs – Use bullet points, numbers, formatting for scannability.
- Leaving sections incomplete – Follow tips to build out 100% of your profile.
- Spamming connections with generic invites – Personalize your invitation notes.
- Bad mouthing previous employers – Remain positive. If you must explain, do so objectively.
- Allowing errors or typos – Proofread. Ask others to review. Use Spell Check.
- Using industry jargon – Explain acronyms. Write for your connections not just insiders.
- Stating obvious skills – Back up claims with metrics, data, examples demonstrating them.
Actively scan your profile to avoid these red flags. A polished profile conveys great communication skills.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about building your LinkedIn profile:
What should I include if I have limited work experience?
Highlight course projects, academic achievements, internships, volunteer work, extracurriculars, certifications and skills. Use measurable details.
Is a LinkedIn summary necessary?
Yes, the summary provides high-level overview of your background. It’s one of the first sections recruiters look at.
How far back should I go listing experience?
10-15 years is sufficient. If just starting out list all professional experience including internships.
Should I include interests and hobbies?
Only if relevant to your profession to connect personally with recruiting managers and build rapport.
How can I determine the right skills to include?
Analyze job postings for your target roles. Identify common skills required and incorporate those you possess.
Key Takeaways
Here are some key tips for creating a stellar LinkedIn profile:
- Craft a professional headline and summary that conveys your key skills and professional brand.
- Showcase measurable achievements vs. responsibilities for each role in your experience.
- Use data, metrics, and real numbers to quantify your impact and results.
- Incorporate relevant keywords recruiters search for and ATS scan for.
- Include a professional headshot and background photo.
- List key skills and get colleagues to endorse you on them.
- Leverage all sections fully including projects, certifications, courses, and volunteering.
- Update it regularly as you gain new skills, roles, and accomplishments.
Creating a robust, 100% complete LinkedIn profile will significantly enhance your professional brand and opportunities. Dedicate the time to building an impressive presence.
Conclusion
A thoughtfully crafted, detailed LinkedIn profile is absolutely essential for your professional brand and opportunities. By following the tips outlined in this guide, you can create a compelling profile that makes you stand out and gets noticed by key decision makers and recruiters.
Be sure to invest time customizing each section, quantifying achievements, choosing the right keywords and media, and keeping it updated over time. With a stellar LinkedIn profile conveying your skills, experience, and capabilities – you’ll be ready to propel your career trajectory upwards.