- Attract employers with details: an efficient headline, a professional picture, and a convincing summary
- Be proficient: chose wisely your experiences and describe them
- Get approval: list your skills and get recommendations!
- Use your connections: extend your network, like, share, react!
LinkedIn has over 380 million members worldwide and 19 million in the UK with 40 per cent of members logging in daily, a LinkedIn profile has become essential for business networking and job seeking.
Being active on LinkedIn by maintaining an up-to-date profile and engaging your network, even in a small way, is key to getting noticed on LinkedIn.
Here are seven tips that can help you.
1. Use your headline as bait
It can be difficult to summarise what you do but your headline should highlight the most important aspects of your work.
Aim to be descriptive (but not too unique or specialist) and use relevant keywords that describe what you do and your skills. You should find your profile starts to become more frequently found in searches and viewed by people you are not connected with.
2. Look the part
A profile photo is a must. Your profile is more likely to be viewed if it has a photo - and the right image is important as it’s the first thing potential employers, colleagues and business acquaintances will see. If it’s pixelated, a holiday snap or 10 years out of date it’s not good enough. Make sure it’s professional and reflects how you want to be regarded in your industry. You want to look the part as much as you would in an interview.
3. Treat your summary as your 15 seconds…
LinkedIn’s summary, which appears just below your headshot and headline, is your chance to shine. Worded carefully, it can offer a peek into not only who you are but the extent of your experience, expertise and the key reasons to get in touch with you.
Write your summary as if it is all that a busy employer or recruiter reads before contacting you. And use the summary functionality to include links to appropriate content you’ve created or helped with – such as websites, SlideShare presentations or industry articles.
4. Use your experience ‘real estate’ wisely
Tempting as it is to just cut and paste standard company blurbs in your ‘experience’ section, use the opportunity instead to share the responsibilities you had in the role, your accomplishments and any other interesting nuggets of information about yourself and your history with an organisation.
You’re more likely to be contacted if you have more than one job listed under your Experience section – so it’s worth the effort to flesh it out as much as possible.
5. Recommendations are golden
A good recommendation is always beneficial. Like most things in life, if you are prepared in advance it will pay off. So rather than waiting till the point when you need that next job – try asking your colleagues and business associates for a recommendation at the time you are working closely with them, or have just successfully completed a project with them. It will be fresh in their mind, and is likely to be a more relevant and glowing account.
6. List your skills
Ensuring that all of your key kills are included on your profile confers a number of benefits: it outlines your capabilities; it makes your profile more searchable to those who seek out professionals with your skillset; it provides your network with an easy way of endorsing your abilities (which is valuable); and as a result it will increase your profile views.
7. Interact
LinkedIn reached 1 billion endorsements in just six months in 2013, as professionals realised this was a friendly way to network and receive endorsements of their own too.
Other beneficial ways of interacting include liking, commenting on or sharing content you find interesting or pertinent to your field, and joining industry groups you’re interested in. Following influencers and joining the conversations on their posts also helps extend your reach and boost your profile as a key person to connect with in your industry.
These tips are all easy to do, take just minutes (some even seconds), and can make it easy to get noticed by the right people and stay front of mind in LinkedIn.