LinkedIn is the biggest professional networking platform. It’s a common practice nowadays that hiring managers search you online when you apply somewhere. Even if you’re not actively applying for jobs, having a professional online presence can help you land new opportunities.
LinkedIn is a lot more than just having an online version of your CV. You can make a good professional network that helps you grow yourself professionally as well as personally. In order to get noticed and benefit from LinkedIn, your profile should perform well in the search and draw the attention of potential recruiters. In this post, we’ll discuss some important points that will help you make an outstanding LinkedIn profile.
Profile Picture and Background Photo
Use a recent picture with a decent background as your LinkedIn profile picture. Having a profile picture will help your profile regarding the search algorithm. Depending upon good practice in your field of work, you can put on a formal, semi-formal, or casual dress for the picture.
Concerning the background photo, we recommend using a photo that highlights your soft skills, for example, communication skills or stage confidence. If you don’t want to use your picture in the cover photo, you can use illustrations to convey the same message. In case you want to highlight some skills, you can do so by making a creative infographic.
Professional Headline
A good professional headline helps your profile rank better in the search. Your headline should be concise and catchy. Mention what you do or have got to offer and use keywords that are relevant to the kind of position you’re seeking.
LinkedIn Profile Summary
Your profile summary is your first impression and gives an overview of your profile. Not having a summary at all might give the impression that you just completed the basic sections of your LinkedIn profile. It shows that you didn’t put the effort to summarize your profile and highlight the most important points.
Keywords play a vital role in your LinkedIn profile summary. Think about the domain in which you’d like to work and highlight the most important and relevant points from your academic background, work experience, and skills. In addition to professional skills, recruiters are also looking for certain personality traits. That’s why we recommend writing briefly about the things that matter to you as a person and are important for your potential role in the new job. That’ll give a personal touch to your profile.
Experience, Education and Volunteer Work
Add relevant information under these sections. Instead of simply stating your responsibilities, concentrate on the value you brought to different projects and the learning you got through them. Avoid long paragraphs and summarize the most important points in bullet points.
Licenses and Certifications
In these sections, you can add relevant information that might help your profile regarding the jobs where certain licenses or certifications are required. We recommend mentioning clearly, whether the license/certification is still valid or has expired because potential employers can ask you to send them the licenses/certification.
Skills and Endorsements
It’s good to mention skills related to the career you’d like to build and have some endorsements for those skills but don’t overdo it. Keep in mind that usually, people have short attention spans, especially on the internet. That’s why it’s important to concentrate on the relevant skills.
Accomplishments
Here you can add different accomplishments such as language skills, awards, publications, projects, etc. Make sure that the information adds value to your profile and don’t simply list everything you’ve ever achieved. If you’ve got a lot of things to add, we suggest adding the ones that are most relevant to the career line you’d like to opt for.
Recommendations
LinkedIn recommendations are a great way to show your work ethics and trustworthiness. Try to get recommendations from people who’re working in different domains or management levels. This will add diversity to your profile. Just like skills and endorsements, avoid having too many recommendations. Three to five recommendations are generally recommended.
LinkedIn Custom URL
When you create a LinkedIn profile, you get a URL that generally contains your name and an alphanumeric. It’s a good idea to create a custom URL that contains either your name or your name and something else that might make your profile stand out. It’ll probably also make your profile rank better in search engines.
Be Active
Like social media platforms, you’ll have to be active on LinkedIn to get more attention to your profile. We recommend posting regularly and engaging with posts from other people and pages. The content of the posts depends upon your preferences. Generally, posts with pictures and the right hashtags perform better on LinkedIn.
Develop a professional Network
Once you’re done making an outstanding LinkedIn profile, it’s time to develop a strong professional network. LinkedIn normally recommends connections based on your profile. For example, you’ll be shown students or alumni from the university where you’re studying or have studied. Similarly, you’ll see people from the company where you’re working or have worked.
In addition to adding people from your field of work, our recommendation is to make connections in diverse fields. This will help you explore new fields and you can learn from these new connections. You can also follow pages of companies or organizations that interest you in order to keep yourself informed of the latest updates.
To sum up, having a good LinkedIn profile will help you make a good impression. Just keep in mind that you don’t necessarily have to fill out all the sections in your profile. The information you provide should add value instead of simply checking the box that you’ve got a LinkedIn profile.
Hopefully, this post gave you an overview of how to make an outstanding LinkedIn profile. Do you need help with making a LinkedIn profile that draws attention? Check out our services. If you want tips on how to work abroad and prepare documents required for job applications such as CV and cover letter, check out Steps to Work Abroad.
Author: Adil Ilyas
