If you are looking for a new job or making a career switch, perfecting your LinkedIn profile should be on top of your to-do list. Even if you’re not, it’s always good to spend some time enhancing your online presence as it helps you build your personal and professional brand.
To give you a little background, LinkedIn is a professional networking platform that most people commonly use to find jobs, expand their professional networks and attain skills essential to excel in their career.
TLDR: Your profile includes a brief summary, work and volunteer experiences, skills & endorsements, etc. In order to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile, you need to make your account as compelling and comprehensive as possible.
Here are 10 tips to create a perfect LinkedIn profile.
- Choose the right set of pictures.
- Make your headline more than just your job title.
- Get some endorsements.
- Request for recommendations.
- Take a skills assessment.
- Showcase your work.
- Join a group.
- Write a solid summary.
- Be an active contributor.
- Make sure your profile strength meter is at all-star.
1. Choose the right set of pictures
A professional profile photo
It’s important for you to have a professional headshot of yourself in which your face occupies around 60% of the entire picture.
Pages with a professional profile picture gets 14 times more visits and 36 times more chances to receive a message (Meero).
You should also wear a professional attire on your profile, i.e, something that you’d wear to work.
Carefully choose your expression as well. Recruiters are more likely to visit your page if your photo radiates warmth and friendliness.
But don’t display a forced smile!
Make sure it’s natural and candid.
Avoid having any distracting background. Choose one that’s a little subtle so your viewers can still focus on your face. You should also use a high resolution picture. The ideal size should be 400 x 400 pixels.
It’s also crucial to not use a cropped group photo, or a selfie. That’ll reduce both the quality and the professionalism of your photo.
A cover photo
Apart from a profile photo, your page also includes a cover photo. Your cover photo should also be in high resolution, with an ideal size of 1584 x 396 pixels. A pro tip is to choose a picture of something that represents you.
It can be a photo that represents the industry or field that you’re working in, a photo of your workspace, a personal photo that you took on your own, etc. If you wish to share the values that you stand for, you can also put up a favorite quote of yours as your cover photo.
If you still have no idea what to put, you can put up free stock images as your cover photo. You can check them out at Pexels or Unsplash.
2. Make your headline more than just your job title
Your headline is the 1-3 line space underneath your name on your LinkedIn page. You have a limit of 120 characters, including space, to write your headline. Hence, you should make the best out of the available space.
It’s common for LinkedIn users to simply describe who they are and what they do on their headline. But your LinkedIn headline should be more than that. It instead is your value proposition, or your “so what”.
Tell your audience who you are and what you can do for them. Include the benefits they can get by connecting to you.
3. Get some endorsements
LinkedIn endorsements are a feature that allows your connections to endorse you for a certain skill. It adds validity to your online resume by backing up the list of work experiences you have.
The most common ways to get skills endorsements on LinkedIn is by taking the initiative to endorse others you’ve worked with before, whether it’s your client, colleagues, or other freelancers. It’s very likely that they are going to come back and endorse you back.
Endorsing your connections is a very easy task. To get started, you should visit their profile and scroll down to their “Skills & Endorsements” section. Then, click the plus sign beside the skill you’d like to endorse that user for. Fill out the pop-up form that pops up accordingly, and click “Submit”.
Take some time to manage your endorsements. Your skills and strengths will grow and your career progresses, and these endorsements should reflect that growth.
4. Request for recommendations.
While endorsements take seconds, recommendations might take longer to compose. A recommendation is a short note from a fellow LinkedIn user to recognize your work based on their prior work experiences with you.
LinkedIn allows you to request for a recommendation from your profile.
When asking for one, however, it’s always better to be more specific about what you want your fellow user to write about. Tell them what you want the recommendation to focus on and what you want to be known for. Ask them the same questions as well so you can return the favor to them.
5. Take a skills assessment.
LinkedIn skills assessment allows you to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge on the areas which you have described on your profile. A typical assessment consists of 15 multiple choice questions and each question tests at least one concept or subskill.
There are now 14 skill assessments available, and they are all technical skills. Some examples include JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, etc.
Some companies are now adding “Desired Skills” on their job postings. This requires applicants to pass a certain type of test before being able to submit an application.
Once you’ve passed the assessment, these results will then show up on your LinkedIn profile.
6. Showcase your work.
LinkedIn allows its users to add links and media to their profile. This is the perfect way to stand out as most recruiters prefer seeing your past work instead of simply looking at your list of skills.
LinkedIn also gives users options to link out, which gives you the opportunity to showcase the articles you’ve written, your personal blog, a YouTube video you’ve featured in, etc.
LinkedIn allows you to showcase five pieces of media in your summary, so make sure you choose the most relevant ones! Adding more will create additional thumbnails. But remember, recruiters are most likely not going to check them all out. So here’s where quality over quantity comes in!
7. Join a group.
LinkedIn groups are popular places for professionals of similar industries or interests to share content, post jobs, make business contacts, or even post themselves as industry professionals.
Becoming active participants of a group allows you to network with those outside of your immediate circle. It’s often recommended for professionals to join 100 groups. When you have a strong, large network, you get more profile views and collide with more professional opportunities.
You can find LinkedIn groups to join by simply searching at the top of your homepage or viewing the groups you’ve already joined.
8. Write a solid summary.
Your LinkedIn summary is another section of your profile that gives you the opportunity to once again pitch yourself. This space has a 2,000 character limit, so make sure you’re only writing relevant content!
Provide some background, context that summarizes your experience. Remember to incorporate relevant keywords that recruiters are going to use when searching for candidates.
You should also highlight your biggest accomplishments and projects throughout your career. It’s crucial to incorporate as many quantitative results as you can. Recruiters love to see measurable outcomes.
Don’t forget that on top of being a professional, you’re also a human. It’s also recommended for you to choose stories and words that reveal a little more about your personality. This includes gratitude, humility, or even humor. To top it off, you can even include your interests and hobbies outside of work.
You can then end your summary with opportunities you would be open to and ways to get in touch with you. Or simply conclude by saying how you’d love to connect with others.
From the above description, you can see that your summary isn’t only used to summarize your career, but to sell yourself to relevant audiences.
9. Be an active contributor.
Incorporating relevant keywords and building your LinkedIn profile is a must, but the easiest ways to gain visibility is by engaging with posts.
Everyone is trying to build a good profile, and using the best possible keywords. The competition is fierce! But not many are actually engaging with the community. In fact, only 1.2% users create content weekly. It’s more likely that a recruiter is going to come across your page through their feed than from a search result.
But this doesn’t mean that you can comment anything on anyone’s posts. Take a few minutes to draft a thoughtful comment that seeks advice, asks questions or sparks debate. This is likely going to generate more likes and replies.
10. Make sure your profile strength meter is at all-star.
When visiting your own profile, you’ll notice a metric that tells you how strong your profile is. It’s always best to try and optimise your profile till it reaches the “all-star” strength.
Why? It’s because an all-star profile is 40x more likely to be contacted about job opportunities than any other profile level. On top of that, they are also 18x more likely to show up in search results.
Sounds like a good advantage right? What’s even better is that only 51% of all LinkedIn users have all-star profiles. A golden opportunity for you to stand out!
Here’s how you can get an all-star profile (Cultivated Culture):
- Add a high quality LinkedIn profile picture.
- Use a custom LinkedIn URL (with some variation of first & last name).
- Create an informative and up-to-date headline that includes your industry and location.
- Fill out your LinkedIn Summary.
- Add at least three positions (current + two previous) to your Work Experience section.
- Add your Education to your profile.
- Add at least 5 skills to your profile.
- Connect with 50+ people.
Now that your LinkedIn profile is optimized, it’s now time to broaden your professional network. Get started by heading over to 9cv9 Job and Career Platform. Find which companies are hiring, and start reaching out to recruiters today.
