Having been a Recruiter and Recruiting Team-Leader before moving into a Marketing and Social Media driven role, I feel a deep connection to LinkedIn.
This professional platform is a breath of fresh air from the standard Facebook and Instagram feed. At least the memes on LinkedIn are business casual.
It may come as a surprise to some, but hopefully not, that more and more employers are forming their first impression of you based on your social media profiles…LinkedIn in particular. Needless to say, you should be aware of your LinkedIn profile. If you didn’t already know, most recruiters and hiring managers spend very little time reviewing a resume. The same goes for your LinkedIn.
These are 4 things to leave off of your LinkedIn profile to remove clutter and create a professional look and positive reaction to recruiters.
Low Quality Images.
Not just your headshot. Make sure any images uploaded to your profile are high quality. This directly relates to your attention to detail. According to Forbes, “Nothing says “lack of attention to detail” like blurry, badly cropped, trite, or unflattering images”. Of course your headshot is the most important image on your profile. Avoid using a selfie, a photo where others have been cropped, typically anything with a drink, and definitely nothing with a filter from Snapchat. Quick tip, iPhones have portrait mode. You don’t necessarily need a professional photographer for your profile pic.
Here’s an example of an iPhone headshot and a professional, high quality camera, headshot. Is there a huge difference? No.
Now that we have our profile pic set, let’s move on.
Don’t Write in Third-Person.
We all know you wrote your own LinkedIn summary. Forbes says, “It’s much more transparent and direct to write in the first person than to pretend that your publicist wrote your content. When you write in the first person, you create a conversation between you and the reader, and that helps you establish a more authentic relationship with them”.
Our summaries are looking fresh, on to the next.
Long Job Descriptions.
As mentioned, recruiters and hiring managers are not spending very much time on your profile. In other words, we’re skimming. Lose the long descriptions. Instead use bullet points! Three or four points about your accomplishments within the role.
Bad Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar.
Leave the misspelled words and poor grammar for your Instagram captions. LinkedIn is no place for these mistakes. Recruiters and hiring managers will deem that your attention to detail is absent. A good rule of thumb is to write your segments in Microsoft Word first to ensure grammar and spelling are correct.
We hope you found these tips helpful! If I’m missing any, let me know: michael.t@crawfordthomas.com
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