Build a Robust Profile
Overview
Your LinkedIn profile represents your definitive professional image on Web and is discoverable through millions of searches on LinkedIn or from search engines like Google.
You are in complete control over what others see on your profile, so leverage this to showcase your skills and talents so the right people and opportunities find you.
This guide will step you through how to build an outstanding LinkedIn profile.
So what goes into a profile?
A LinkedIn profile is more than just a resume. You can paste in content like presentations or link to your website, blog, or Twitter stream. Or, you can use your status updates to let the world quickly know what you’re working on right now. Most importantly, your profile lets visitors know exactly how they’re connected to you, which builds a degree of trust between the visitor and yourself.
Let’s look in detail on how to build your profile.
Headline
This blue section will indicate who you are and the degrees of separation between that visitor and yourself.
Give your visitors to your profile a short, punchy way to quickly understand who are with your profile headline. Think of the headline as the slogan for your personal brand.
Most prefer to highlight their current title and company, but a best practice is to highlight unique skill sets or competencies, like “Technology careers expert with 10 years of experience”.
Summary
A good summary should outline what your professional niche is while highlighting your unique skills and specialties. Always open with a personal positioning statement that lays out who you are, what key skills you provide, and a unique differentiator. Take a look at Mark’s.
Mark opens by outlining his professional niche, in this case a career professional who serves both undergrads and graduate students. Next, Mark highlights a key skill necessary for successful university career professionals, namely linking alumni, students, and recruiters. Last, Mark showcases the breadth of his expertise as well as a few unique abilities in the Specialties section.
Most prefer to highlight their current title and company, but a best practice is to highlight unique skill sets or competencies, like “Technology careers expert with 10 years of experience”.
Experience
Most professionals use the Experience section to outline the role and responsibilities of jobs they’ve had in their career. Mark’s Experience section is good example of this.
You can augment a basic description of your roles and responsibilities by highlighting your key successes by adding quantitative results.
Education
There’s a lot room to bolster your professional image by expanding on activities and achievements during your academic career. Like Mark, most list out schools attended and degrees acquired.
Career switchers and young professionals like to highlight school projects and leadership experiences to highlight skills they can transfer from their academic career to their professional career.
But wait! There’s more!
That’s right! You can also add in links to blog posts, news articles you’re reading, or presentations you’ve given. You can even store a downloadable version of your CV.
You can do all of this through Applications. Take a look at the Applications section of Lindsey Pollak’s profile.
The WordPress application allows Lindsey to dynamically post snippets of blog posts she writes directly on her profile. A visitor to Lindsey’s profile will immediately be able to gauge her expertise as a Gen Y career expert by reading some of her work.
Similarly, Lindsey also has her Amazon reading list published on her profile, allowing visitors to understand what currently interests Lindsey.
Lastly...
Let’s go back to Mark to check out the last part of his profile – Groups and Associations and Contact Settings. Good news! This section is automatically generated for you based on the LinkedIn groups you are a member of.
Contact settings lets you specify the reasons for which you would like to be contacted. Be specific to guide potential connections on how to communicate with you.
Next Steps
Now I know what goes into a great profile, how do I actually build it? It’s easy. Click here. If you want an even deeper treatment on how to edit your profile, head over to the LinkedIn Learning Center.