In today’s job market, having a strong presence on LinkedIn is more important than ever. With over 722 million users worldwide, LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for networking, job searching, recruiting, and staying up-to-date on industry news. As an employee, LinkedIn can be a valuable tool to manage your professional brand, expand your network, explore new career opportunities, and boost your visibility within your industry.
But what exactly should you be doing on LinkedIn as an employee? Here are some top recommendations from LinkedIn themselves on best practices for employees on the platform:
Complete your profile
Having a complete LinkedIn profile is foundational. You’ll want to include details on all your previous and current roles, education, skills, accomplishments, certifications, volunteer work, publications, honors and awards, and more. Profiles that are at least 80% complete get up to 17x more profile views. The more robust your profile, the more opportunities that can come your way.
Craft an eye-catching headline
Your LinkedIn headline appears right below your name and photo and is one of the first things people notice on your profile. It’s prime real estate to concisely communicate who you are professionally. Some tips for an effective headline:
- Keep it under 120 characters
- Start with your current job title and company
- Emphasize relevant keywords, skills, specialties
- Add some personality to stand out
Showcase your skills
LinkedIn’s skills section allows you to list out all the key skills, abilities, and areas of expertise you want to highlight. This gives viewers an immediate understanding of your capabilities. Include a mix of hard and soft skills. You can also take LinkedIn Skills Assessments to verify your skills and add badges to your profile.
Grow your network
Expanding your connections on LinkedIn exposes you to more opportunities and gives you a broader reach. Aim to connect with:
- Colleagues and coworkers
- College alumni
- People you meet at industry events, conferences, etc.
- Leaders in your field
- Recruiters and HR professionals
But focus on quality over quantity and only connect with those you have a real professional relationship with.
Join relevant groups
LinkedIn Groups provide a space to connect with professionals in your industry, engage in discussions, ask for advice, find job openings, and more. Look for active groups focused on your field, niche interests, alumni groups, career-oriented groups, and influential industry leaders’ groups. Contribute thoughtful, value-adding content.
Follow companies
Follow companies you’re interested in working for, admire, or want to keep tabs on. This ensures their updates appear in your LinkedIn feed. You can gain insider perspective, learn about new initiatives, and be the first to know about potential job opportunities. Follow their Showcase pages for particularly rich, engaging content.
Share and react to content
Posting and engaging with content keeps you active on LinkedIn and surfaces your profile to new audiences. Share articles, insights, projects, news, and more that would interest your connections. Comment on others’ posts and congratulate colleagues on work milestones to nurture relationships. Like and react to content you find valuable.
Conduct informational interviews
Informational interviews are an underutilized but highly effective way to learn about different companies, roles, career paths, and leaders’ journeys. Reach out to connections and those you admire for a 20-30 minute conversation to ask thoughtful questions about their experiences. Come prepared, be gracious, and keep in touch afterward.
Offer recommendations and endorsements
Help colleagues and connections by sharing recommendations and endorsements highlighting the skills and accomplishments you’ve observed first-hand. Giving recommendations boosts your credibility and goodwill. Receiving them can enhance your personal brand, reputation, and visibility to recruiters.
Update experience
As you take on new projects, roles, and responsibilities, keep your LinkedIn profile updated. Adding new experiences indicates you are actively progressing in your career. Use keywords related to your industry to describe the details of each position and what you accomplished.
Showcase achievements
Highlight major milestones and achievements through the Featured and Accomplishments sections. This allows you to call attention to big wins like closing a pivotal sale, completing a key certification, earning a promotion, etc. Gives viewers more insight into your core competencies.
Search and apply to jobs
LinkedIn’s massive job board aggregates openings from around the web. You can search by title, company, location, job function, seniority level, and more. Save roles you’re interested in and get notified of recommended openings. Apply right on LinkedIn and leverage your strong profile.
Expand soft skills
While hard skills are crucial, soft skills like leadership, communication, and emotional intelligence are highly valued by employers today. Sprinkling proof of these throughout your profile, like in the background summary, endorsements, and recommendations, can give recruiters full picture of both your technical and interpersonal abilities.
Advertise yourself
LinkedIn’s robust Company and Job Pages allow you to create customized pages to promote your personal brand as if you were a business. Share demos, thought leadership content, speaking engagements, testimonials, portfolio items, and more. Position yourself as an expert.
Solicit testimonials
Testimonials provide outside validation of your talents, work, and character. Reach out to managers, clients, colleagues, mentees, and others you’ve worked with requesting they write a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile. This social proof can greatly enhance your personal brand.
Find mentors
The power of mentoring cannot be overstated when it comes to career growth and development. Leverage your LinkedIn network to connect with potential mentors who are established leaders in your field. Be clear on your purpose and what you’re looking for in a mentor relationship.
Give back
Answering questions and providing advice to those reaching out gives you an opportunity to pay it forward and build your reputation as a subject matter expert. Be generous with your know-how when colleagues, aspiring professionals, or alumni seek your guidance.
Stay up to date on your industry
Following thought leaders, influential professionals, publications, and brands on LinkedIn ensures industry news and innovations show up in your feed. Stay in the know by keeping a pulse on trends, challenges, opportunities, and developments impacting your field.
Show you’re open to opportunities
Even if you’re not actively job seeking, toggling your profile to “open to opportunities” along with your career interests signals to recruiters that you’re open to being contacted about new roles. You can control the types of opportunities based on function, seniority, location, etc.
Research companies
With LinkedIn Company Pages and Showcase Pages, you can gain intel on companies you’re interested in or interviewing with. Follow them to learn about their culture, leadership team, tech stack, initiatives, perks, office locations, clients, and more. Gives you insights to ask informed questions.
Improve discoverability
To maximize visibility and come up in recruiter searches, use relevant keywords throughout your profile and in your description headlines. Include details on areas you have expertise in, industries you’ve worked in, specific job functions and tools you’ve used.
Thank connections
Always take the time to thank those in your network who have gone out of their way to offer help or support, whether by giving you advice, reviewing your resume, connecting you to opportunities, or providing a recommendation. These gestures go a long way in strengthening bonds.
Make smart connections
It’s tempting to connect with everyone sending requests, but be selective and strategic when expanding your network. Look at what value the person may bring, likelihood of furthering your goals, and overlap in background. Quality connections matter far more than quantity.
Curate your presence
Just as you would on other social media, be mindful of everything you post, share, like, or comment on LinkedIn. Keep your personal views and opinions off the platform. Maintain a courteous, professional presence aligned with your brand as an employee.
Monitor your mentions
Set up alerts to be notified any time you are mentioned by others in their posts or content on LinkedIn. This allows you to stay abreast of what’s being said about you and your work. You can share positive feedback or address inaccurate information.
Join LinkedIn Groups
Joining groups that relate to your profession or industry is an easy way to meet like-minded professionals, share advice, find job opportunities, and more. Seek out active groups that provide true value to their members and regularly participate.
Follow influencers
Follow thought leaders, innovators, educators, authors, coaches, executives, and other influencers in your space. This delivers their expert insights directly into your LinkedIn feed and helps you stay on the cutting edge in your field.
Collect diverse insights
To get the most well-rounded education, don’t just follow people at your career level. Also connect with those below and above you on the career ladder, as well as professionals in adjacent industries. Broad exposure fuels creativity.
Show authenticity
While maintaining professionalism, don’t be afraid to show some personality and authenticity. Share posts about conferences you’re attending, causes you support, hobbies outside work, or fun office happenings. Let your passion shine through.
Give back
Find opportunities to give back by becoming a mentor, volunteering as a speaker, teaching a LinkedIn Learning course, writing recommendations, or providing career advice. This builds your reputation as an expert and well-rounded professional.
Learn constantly
LinkedIn Learning offers over 16,000 online courses covering business, technology, design, and more. Get free access through your company or follow leaders posting educational content. Make lifelong learning part of your LinkedIn habits.
Expand your skill set
The Skills section allows you to list proficiencies you want to showcase. Include a mix of hard and soft skills that potential employers or partners may find valuable. Supplement them with courses and endorsements.
Set goals
Treat your LinkedIn presence like a long-term professional investment. Set goals for how you want to expand your reach, bolster your personal brand, strengthen your network, and generate new opportunities this quarter or year.
Share your vision
Your LinkedIn Summary section gives you space to share your vision, values, passions, and what motivates you. People want to work with those who have purpose and vision. Let yours shine through.
Give testimonials
When you’ve had a truly great employee, coworker, supervisor, vendor, client, or other connection, share their value by writing them a recommendation. This instills goodwill and provides valuable social proof for their abilities.
Announce new jobs
Career updates are perfect content to share on LinkedIn. When you start a new job or take on an exciting new role at your company, announce it in a post. This spreads the word among your network.
Find influencers
Identify key voices, thought leaders and influencers in your niche or industry. Follow their activity to stay on top of emerging trends, opportunities and best practices in your field.
Leave constructive feedback
If you have a poor experience with a service provider or vendor, reach out privately first. If the issue remains unresolved, share constructive feedback tactfully through a LinkedIn recommendation explaining factually what could be improved.
Thank your connections
When a colleague goes above and beyond to help you out, send them a personalized in-mail thanking them for their time, advice, review, referral or other assistance. Gratitude goes a long way in strengthening professional bonds.
Stay up-to-date on your industry
Follow leading companies, publications, influencers and thought leaders in your industry to stay plugged into current trends, innovations, opportunities and news affecting your field and role.
| Recommendation | Why It’s Valuable |
|---|---|
| Complete your profile | Profiles that are 80%+ complete get up to 17x more profile views |
| Craft an eye-catching headline | Your headline is prime real estate to communicate who you are professionally |
| Showcase your skills | Skills give viewers an immediate understanding of your capabilities |
| Grow your network strategically | Quality connections expose you to more opportunities |
| Join relevant LinkedIn groups | Groups allow you to connect with those in your field or niche |
| Follow companies you’re interested in | Stay up-to-date on their initiatives, culture, and job openings |
| Share and react to content | Keeps you active on LinkedIn and surfaces your profile to new audiences |
| Conduct informational interviews | Invaluable way to gain career insights from professionals |
| Offer recommendations | Recommendations boost credibility and goodwill |
| Keep your profile updated | Shows you are actively progressing in your career |
LinkedIn provides invaluable exposure, connections, resources, and opportunities for employees in all kinds of roles and industries. Following LinkedIn’s top recommendations allows you to maximize the platform for professional brand building, networking, career growth, recruitment visibility, and staying plugged into your field. With over three-quarters of a billion members, LinkedIn dominates the professional social media sphere. Making it a regular habit will pay dividends throughout your career.
