LinkedIn Profile Tips: 11 Things You Must Do Right Now

LinkedIn is an extension of your professional life. Your profile showcases your professional and personal development in your career. It helps you find new opportunities faster because recruiters already use it.

A good LinkedIn profile will immensely increase your chance to be discovered in a pool of profiles of people just like you. Here are some LinkedIn profile tips that covers 11 things you need to check to make your LinkedIn profile give away the best of what you are.

1. A Good Profile Picture

Unless you want your face not to be visible, your profile picture must have your face. Use one of your most recent photos. Wear anything formal or casual depending on what you would be wearing to work regularly. Use your best and high-resolution image, the ideal image size being 400×400 pixels. Make sure your profile picture contains only you. Use decent filters, not something that might stand out for the wrong reasons. This is very important as recruiters would find it easy to recognize you during interviews.

2. Use an image the reflects who you are

If you are representing a company, having the brand logo on the cover photo will be sufficient. You can use a photo of yourself receiving an award or accomplishing something. You can otherwise choose a photo to show your hobbies or a quote you live by a photo that shows something you are passionate about. Make sure the cover photo is serving the aesthetics and does not clutter your profile page.

3. Have more than just your job title as the headline

Your headline must be compelling and concise. It must tell you about you and it does not have to be your job title precisely. After your name and profile picture, it’s the headline that people visiting your profile notice. You can get a little creative and that should speak for you. Keeping job titles in headlines is pretty common and may not get people interested in checking out the rest of your profile. Use active verbs to give a description of yourself like “created”, “managing”, “sold”, etc. as actions are more compelling than words.

4. Customize your LinkedIn URL

The default LinkedIn URL is chosen at random. It looks something like http://www.linkedin.com/in/your-name/-d56659 but you can customize it to http://www.linkedin.com/in/your-name. Custom URLs make your profile look more organised and professional. Your custom URL can be 3-100 characters long, spaces, special characters and symbols are not allowed. Using your name or your brand name here will help you be discovered by others easily.

5. Your professional summary

Make this section an extension of your headline but more interesting. In this space, you write your story. Get out there and find your story. Write about all the skills you have developed, how they matter to you and what they can achieve for you and the people around you. This is probably the only part of your LinkedIn profile where you are allowed to make personal disclosures to prove yourself. Feel free to write some of your talents and how it helped you face some of your challenges at the workplace or in a position of leadership.

6. Avoid generic words

Words like “specialized”, “leadership”, “strategic”, “passionate”, “experienced“, “innovative“, “creative” are all so overused and have lost their value. A lot of profiles borrow these words and it does not make them stand out. Use words that you can also prove convincingly either in your bio or your other public works. Even though you may be courageous and innovative, narrate an instance where you used these skills instead of writing them plainly. Demonstrating the skills you are mentioning will make your profile stronger.

7. Network with other LinkedIn users

To connect with more people on LinkedIn, you can sync it with your email ID. This will enable LinkedIn to recommend to you profiles you can connect with. Apart from this, you can also connect with people otherwise. After a meeting or conversation at a formal place, you can follow up by sending them a connection request on LinkedIn. This way you can constantly update your LinkedIn connection network and have a very diverse network.

8. List your skills on your profile

Make sure your skills align with your Headline and Summary description. Only include your core skills, including a long list of skills you are not exceptional at might not seem efficient. Upgrade your skills to make them relevant to the times and keep updating them as and when you catch up on new ones.

9. Take up a Skills Assessment

A skills assessment is an online test that gives you a space to prove the level of your skills. It will enable a Verified Skills badge to appear on your profile. This will back up what you’ve written in skills and makes your profile look stronger. The recruiters will place more preference on profiles with verified skills. It has also been proven that an application is 30% more likely to be responded to when they have a Verified Skills badge.

10. Share relevant content from your LinkedIn feed to your profile

It is not only important to have many connections on LinkedIn but also to have an active one. Sharing relevant posts with your network will make them appear on their LinkedIn feeds. This is one of the most accessible ways to connect with your LinkedIn network in a regular way. Make sure you are careful about what you post, you should find them interesting and it must align with your worldview too. This will give your connections an idea of your beliefs too.

11. Engage with LinkedIn content

Follow influencers and verified profiles of people you like and look up to, engage with their content, share and add comments. Comments will start new conversations as people reply to them. Re-sharing it on your profile will give your visitors an idea of what you stand for and what you admire about your career. Only share content that you find interesting and that align with your beliefs. Mindlessly resharing contradictory posts might end up making you look inconsistent.

LinkedIn profiles need not be decorated. Keep it simple and honest but make sure you take advantage of all blank spaces in your profile.

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