Annika empowers clients to build outstanding brands, understand the latest workforce and attract the right talent to grow their business. Here are her top 10 tips on how to rock your Linkedin Profile:
1. Connect wisely.
Make sure your connections are curated to your profile as connections can see all your posts and interactions.
2. Be Authentic.
If you like to interact and create content, do so, but if you prefer to just observe, that’s ok too. What’s important is that it’s relevant to you and relates to your personal brand and the image you want to present to the world. It’s not necessary to include weaknesses, but really focus on what you’re good at.
3. Record your name.
Using the Linkedin Mobile app you can record your name, particularly if it is a local name that might be harder to pronounce.
4. Share Featured Content
Featured Content helps to show what you are interested in and helps to build your personal brand. You can also create your own content to show off your skill sets.
5. Use First Person
Speak about yourself in the first person, avoid ‘we’, use ‘me and I’.
6. Showcase Your Company
Make sure your company logo is available if it has a page on Linkedin and describe the company if it is a less well known one.
7. Focus on your last 10-15 years.
If you are just starting out it’s important to include all relevant experience, but as you gain more experience, the internship you did 15 years ago may be less relevant to include. Likewise, if you’ve been at a company for a long time and have had multiple different roles, it may not be relevant to list each of those roles, but focus more on what’s relevant and recent. It’s also interesting for young people to look at roles they would like to have in the future and what career path was necessary to get there.
8. Understand Personal vs Professional brand.
Both have blended so much especially over the year. It’s helpful to share some personal aspects of your life, without oversharing and keeping in mind how you want to be seen.
9. Ace Publishing.
If you choose to publish, you should create a headline that captures attention, include a photo to stand out, be authentic, think about your audience, and article length should be no more than a 5 min read. If you have more to say, you can make it into a series. You can also track your progress on the articles you publish.
10. Increase your chances to be found:
- Make sure you have a profile photo. Profiles with photos get more connection requests, profile views and messages. As more and more of us are working from home without access to professional work photographers, it’s becoming more and more common to take a photo yourself for your profile and depending on your industry can be more or less relaxed. A background image can also help to create a more personal connection around areas of interest.
- Add your industry. This can increase relevant profile views by 9x for people looking to connect within a certain industry and for job seekers allows you to be visible to recruiters for the industry in which you’d like to work.
- Draft a compelling summary (in the about section) which include passions, keywords and opportunities where you’d like to be found.
- When describing your experiences, make sure you use keywords for jobs you’d like to be connected with.
- Skills & endorsement: 5 or more skills get 17x more profile views. Try to get the top skills you want to get found for selected by a maximum number of people.
- Adding volunteer experience increases 6x profile views.
- Show you’re open to work or hiring. It’s possible to show that you are open to work to recruiters with a green visual on your profile and it’s not visible to your own company recruiters.
- Education. Make sure you select the school in the list to enhance your chances of being found, but don’t worry too much about your grades. Do include extracurricular activities and articles you’ve published, especially if you are at the beginning of your career.
To learn more:
-Watch the full video from the CEMS Webinar Series Rock Your Profile
-Browse the slides from the CEMS Webinar Series Rock your Profile