Happy New Year to you all!
It’s time to put 2017 in the rear-view and begin the journey of 2018! Let’s start with something that you all have, but probably don’t pay attention to, your LinkedIn Profiles. We’re going to review the top 7 profile tips for updating your LinkedIn for the New Year.
The best part about this article is that it will help everyone. Entry level candidates, Senior Executives, CEO’s, Hiring Managers, Job Seekers, and everyone in between.
1. Choose your Best Photo
Shuffle through your photos on your phone, your desktop, and anywhere else a great-looking professional pic might reside. Avoid selfies. Avoid bathroom pictures. Avoid club/bar photos. Take a look around your network on LinkedIn and follow along with that trend. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words. A LinkedIn Blogger wrote “A photo can go a long way to convey passion, energy, charisma, empathy, and other soft skills that are hard to write about.”
2. Take Time to Complete your Profile
It’s simple. The more complete your profile is, the better it will look to others. Whether it’s a recruiter searching for someone with your skill-set, or a client running a quick check on your professional background. Maybe it’s your own supervisor examining the look of your LinkedIn Page to ensure it’s up to standards with others from your team. You want to set an example. Clean it up, make your summary stand out (more on that later). The best part is that LinkedIn will help you track your “completeness” of your page.
3. Customize your LinkedIn URL
According to The Muse “It’s much easier to publicize your profile with a customized URL (ideally linkedin.com/yourname), rather than the clunky combination of numbers that LinkedIn automatically assigns when you sign up. How to get one? On the Edit Profile screen, at the bottom of the gray window that shows your basic information, you’ll see a Public Profile URL. Click “Edit” next to the URL, and specify what you’d like your address to be. When you’re finished, click Set Custom URL”
4. Summary – Short, yet, Detailed
The Summary is the second thing people will look at aside from your profile pic. Research from Career Horizons shows that ““Ideally, your summary should be around 3–5 short paragraphs long, preferably with a bulleted section in the middle. It should walk the reader through your work passions, key skills, unique qualifications, and a list of the various industries you’ve had exposure to over the years.”
5. This is your Social Resume
Your resume isn’t just a list of job duties (or, at least, it shouldn’t be)—it’s a place to highlight your best accomplishments. Same goes for your LinkedIn profile: Make sure your experience section is highlighted with bullet points that describe what you did, how well you did it, and who it impacted.
The Muse does an excellent job of explaining in detail here: How to Turn Your Duties Into Accomplishments
6. Hide and Seek
Make sure people can find you! Add professional contact information. Email Address, Twitter handle, Instagram/Facebook. You’ll need to adjust privacy settings on those accounts so that you can accept invites on those platforms as well. I do not recommend adding your home address or phone number. If you’re a professional photographer, add your website, if you are a project manager, add your projects. This is your opportunity to really make your profile stand out from the rest.
7. What’s your Status?
Just like on Facebook, you can update your LinkedIn status as often as you wish. Do it! Update it professionally by sharing an article you wrote, a blog you find interesting, not what you ate for lunch today. I recommend updating twice a week and do so in the early morning. Your entire network will see your updates, both in their news feeds and in the weekly LinkedIn network updates emails they receive.
Remember, update, update, update. We live in a world where everyone is seeking up to the second information. Keep your profile fresh and awesome with the tips above.
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