💼Your Linkedin Profile

With more than 1 billion members in over 200 countries worldwide, LinkedIn is the largest professional network on the planet. If you're serious about your career and professional advancement, you need a LinkedIn profile that's optimised and up to date. Your LinkedIn profile is a digital portfolio that represents you and tells your professional story. Think of it less as a resume, and more as a dynamic digital portfolio that’s engaging, visual, and highlights your experience and skills to help you build your professional presence.

It's not enough to just have a LinkedIn page. You need a great LinkedIn profile that draws attention, says the right things, and helps you really connect with the people who can help you expand your career. Here are 10 reasons why your LinkedIn profile is more important than your CV!!

In this guide, we will give you 10 simple tips to help make your LinkedIn profile stand out!

Before we get started, be sure to finish your CV as you will use much of that information here.

1. Put in the time ⏳

Simply put, the more complete your profile, the better the odds that recruiters will find you in the first place or that recruiters that saw your CV will be impressed by your online brand. It’s also important that he or she can find what your skills are, where you’ve worked, and what people think of you. So, don’t get lazy—fill out every single section of your profile.

2. Get a custom URL 🌐

It’s much easier to publicize your profile with a customized URL (ideally linkedin.com/yourname), rather than the long combination of numbers that LinkedIn automatically assigns when you sign up. Find out how to get one here.

3. Add a professional profile photo 📸

A good profile photo increases the credibility of your profile and helps you stand out from the crowd. Members with a profile photo on LinkedIn can get up to 21 times more profile views that members without a photo. Be sure to Choose a clear, friendly, and appropriately professional image that truly represents you. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to tell your professional community who you are. It can be a professional headshot, but doesn’t have to be. If you snap on your own just make sure you photo is high-res, has good lighting, and just features you. In fact, did you know that LinkedIn has photo filters that you can use to polish your photo? You can use them by clicking into the pencil to edit your photo. Also, members with a photo get up to:

  • 9x more connection requests

  • 21x more Profile views

  • 36x more messages

4. Brand your profile with a background image 👨🏻‍🎤

Give your profile page a bit more personality, or branding, with a visually appealing background image to personalize your profile. Check out some more tips for picking the right LinkedIn profile photo. If you are in doubts which images you can use for your background images, check Unsplash and 500px for some stunning pics!

Also, record your name ! Pronounce your name for others and make a great first impression!

5. Make your headline stand out 🧚‍♀️

Your headline is created when you add your positions to your profile. However, you can re-write it to either promote an area of expertise or to let your personality shine through. Here some simple ideas:

  • Full-stack web developer with a passion for React

  • Architect-turned-developer that loves solving problems and working in teams

Also, do not forget to add your industry! Often it’s how others will find you and add you to their professional network. In addition, adding your industry will give you up to 9X more profile views! Members with industry information are discovered up to 38X more in recruiter searches . Members with industry information receive up to 9x more Profile views. More than 300K people search by industry on LinkedIn every week.

6. Add you Bio (or summary) ✏️

The ‘About’ section is where you will add your summary. You can think of this as your “elevator pitch.” It should include an introduction to you, and also highlight your accomplishments and aspirations. Keep it short and sweet, no need to list all your career accomplishments, you have an experience section for that. Feel free to highlight your unique talents and how you want to contribute. Did you know adding a summary of 40 words or more makes your profile more likely to turn up in a future employer’s search? For more tips on this check your Bio section on the CV page.

7. Add Rich Media

The ‘featured’ section allows you to showcase the work you are most proud of right at the top of your profile. You can share articles, images, documents and links that help bring your story to life. In addition, ‘featured’ lets you pin articles and or posts you’ve authored or re-shared so you can feature content that speaks to you to round out your story. Also, think about other parts of your profile where you can feature rich media such as experience and education to tell your professional story. Remember, Rich Media is defined as a photo, a video a presentation or anything else that visually enhances your profile and makes it more dynamic. This doesn’t have to be content you own. For example, if you company has a brand video or company brand assets, you can use them in your profile (especially in your experience section).

8. Add all your relevant work and education experiences 🏋️‍♂️

You should keep the profile updated with all your professional experiences that align with your current career goals. You can also add media samples to provide quick access to your work portfolio. Be sure that every experience listed on your cv is also part of your LinkedIn profile!

Experience is your opportunity to tell your professional story and talk about your accomplishments within each of the roles you’ve had. A great way to showcase your experience is to write it in short paragraph form rather than bullet points. You can use a couple of bullet points here and there, but the majority should read like a story, your professional story. If you’ve worked at a start up company or a smaller company that isn’t as well known, give a brief introduction to the company before detailing your experience. We also recommend to add volunteering experiences: members who add volunteer experience get up to 6x more profile views than those without!

Lastly, it’s great to talk about what you did in your role, it’s even better to showcase the impact you had, results your delivered and change you created.

9. Request recommendations from your connections 💬

Recommendations are a great way for you to build your professional credibility. If you don’t already have them, request a recommendation from a colleague, manager, partner etc. There’s no limit to the number of recommendations you can request for. Once you accept a recommendation written by a connection, it becomes visible to your network by default. Here’s a couple of things to keep in mind when requesting a recommendation:

  • Always customise your request. Make sure you let the person know what you want to be recommended for specifically (a project, an initiative you lead etc.)

  • When you make the request (especially when asking senior leaders or executives) sometimes you can write a first pass to send to them. This helps to save them time and gives them something to work with that they can edit to make their own. You can even send them an outline to work with.

  • Choose people who you have worked with closely and who can provide specific examples of how your strengths, skills and experience show up.

10. Add your skills and get endorsements ☑️

Add skills to showcase what you’re great at! Adding at least 5 or more skills can get you up to 17X more profile views! Professionals also search key skills across LinkedIn, so it’s another great way to be found by your network. Remember, you are in full control of your skills. You choose what order they get displayed in and who endorses you for what. You also control what skills get featured on your profile, and which ones don’t.

Once you've added a skill to your profile, your skills can be validated by 1st-degree connections to reinforce their weighting. These are called skill endorsements, which are different than recommendations. When a connection endorses your skills, it contributes to the strength of your profile, and increases the likelihood that you'll be discovered for opportunities related to the skills you possess.

11. Show you're open to work! 💼

If you’re looking for a new opportunity LinkedIn allows you to set your job preferences. To add this, go to your profile, click on the ‘open to’ button and select ‘finding a new job’. You’ll have the ability to specify the job title you’re searching for, pinpoint the locations you’re interested in, and even select your job type (e.g. full, time, remote, etc.). You can also get specific about your start date so your community knows how quickly you want to land your next opportunity.

Keep in mind, there are 2 ways to share this with your community.

  • Share with "all LI members" means you will automatically have the the green #opentowork stripe added to your profile photo, so others can instantly see you’re open to new opportunities.

  • "Share with recruiters only" will privately share only to recruiters and won’t add the #opentowork green photo stripe to your profile photo.

It can be tough finding a new job, but know that your LI community is always there to help, especially when they know you need it. 40% more likely to be noticed by recruiters.

12. Connect with people! 👬

Be sure to connect with your mentors, colleagues and staff at ReDI School. You can also add people that you meet at conferences for instance. What’s important here is that every time you add someone, you also add a note on why you are making that connection!

If you want to dig even deeper into how to create a great LinkedIn profile, watch this course on LinkedIn Learning!

Extra Resources 📚

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