I have a confession to make: I’m obsessed with LinkedIn. It’s one of the most powerful tools in my career toolkit, and if you want to get ahead in business, it’s well worth taking advantage of as well. Here are some tips for how to get started on LinkedIn—and how to build your profile into something that can help you advance in your career.
how to build a great linkedin profile: Write a great summary
The summary is the first thing that people see when they visit your profile. It’s a great opportunity to summarize your skills, experience and achievements in an engaging way.
- Make sure you use keywords relevant to your industry and job title. For example, if you’re an architect with 10 years of experience in residential buildings, it makes sense to include “residential” or “homebuilding” as one of the first few words in your summary.
- Keep it short! You only have 250 characters (about 2 tweets) — so use them wisely!
List your job title and company
Make sure your job title is accurate, and be sure to include the name of your company (not just “a large corporation”). This will help people find you if they’re looking for someone with a certain skill set or expertise related to your position. You can also focus on what makes you unique in that role by including an achievement or two that demonstrates how you stand out from other candidates. For example, “I was promoted three times in six years,” or “Our team was awarded two patents while I was there.”
Share how long you’ve been with this company. If it’s less than five years, don’t worry too much about sharing details since there isn’t much room for growth yet; however, if it’s more than five years, consider expanding on why this particular place is important—and why they should want to hire someone who has worked there so long? Does it offer opportunities for professional development? Do customers see value in buying products made by people who work there? These are great things for potential employers to know about their prospective employees!
how to build a great linkedin profile : Showcase your experience
Now that you have your profile picture and headline, it’s time to show off what you’ve been up to.
You can use the “Experience” section of your profile to highlight the skills, projects and accomplishments that make you awesome. In this section, we recommend using reverse chronological order—meaning that you should list all of your most recent experiences first, with the most recent one at the top of the list.
Some ideas for including in this section include:
- A link to your resume (if it’s relevant)
- Any portfolios or online workspaces where you’ve shown off your work (like GitHub or Medium)
- Links to blog posts where you’ve written about a topic related to what you do professionally
Keep your profile up-to-date and relevant
It’s important to keep your profile up-to-date and relevant. LinkedIn allows you to easily add new jobs or promotions, certifications earned and degrees earned in your work history. It also makes it easy for others who are viewing your profile to see how much experience you have in the field you’re interested in, which is helpful when they’re deciding whether or not you’re a good fit for an opportunity that’s been posted.
Here are some things I suggest updating:
- New job or promotion
- New certification earned
- Degree earned
Use industry keywords in your headline and summary.
Your headline and summary should include industry-related keywords. This helps LinkedIn to categorize your profile, and it also makes it easier for recruiters to find you. You can use LinkedIn’s keyword suggestions tool or simply look at the job descriptions of the roles you want to target. For example, if you’re interested in landing a front-end development role at a marketing agency, one of the first steps would be finding out what skills are most commonly sought after by employers in that field—you could do this by doing some research on job listings or by looking at the profiles of people who hold similar positions as yourself.
Once you’ve identified which skills are most sought-after within your industry, use them as tags on your profile page!
how to build a great linkedin profile: profile URL
Your public profile URL is a unique address that’s used as the default landing page for people who find you on LinkedIn. For example, I have a public profile URL of https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mudgett-cpr-bcsp-1b95b80a, which tells people that I’m an active member of the LinkedIn community and provides contact information when they want to reach out privately or professionally.
It’s important to customize your public profile URL because it will appear in search results if someone searches for your name, even if they aren’t connected to you on LinkedIn themselves! That means that if someone has found one article of yours online—and they’re curious about who wrote it—they can easily find more by clicking through from their initial search result back into your profile page (where your custom URL will also be listed).
When choosing a name for your custom URL:
- Choose something easy for people to remember and spell correctly in case anyone needs help finding out more about you later on down the line
Have a professional profile picture for LinkedIn.
Have a professional profile picture for LinkedIn. Your photo should be of high quality, well lit and clear. Avoid using photos that are too dark or blurry because they can make your profile look unprofessional. If you don’t have a professional headshot from your LinkedIn page, choose an image that highlights what you do best and reflects the type of work that you do (e.g., sales representative).
Add media to showcase your work.
LinkedIn is a great tool for connecting with others, but it’s also an excellent platform for sharing your expertise and achievements. Use this space to highlight some of the best assets you have created: articles, presentations, videos and more. This will allow people to get a better idea of what type of person you are and what you’ve done in the past.
Utilize the “Featured” section of your profile
To highlight a specific skill, accomplishment or recommendation you’ve received:
- Click the “+” icon under the “Featured” section of your profile.
- Select “Add a Feature” from the drop-down menu that appears.
- Choose whether you want to display this feature on your profile or on specific posts that you’ve written.
how to build a great linkedin profile: Ask for recommendations
The best thing you can do, if you’re just starting out, is to get recommendations from colleagues and clients.
If you don’t have any recommendations yet, it’s time to ask! But how? You’ll want to:
- Write a brief message that explains why the person should recommend you and what they could say about your work. You can also include some context about what kind of work you’ve done for them in the past (if applicable), as well as some highlights from projects that showcase your strengths.
- Ask if there are any specific pieces of work they’d like mentioned (if so) and then make sure those pieces are included in their recommendation letter when it’s written up.
That’s all there is to it! It might take some nudging at first; but once someone agrees, be sure that they have all the information needed before sending them away with no follow-up instructions on exactly how long it will take for this request to become official once submitted online through LinkedIn itself (usually takes 24 hours).
how to build a great linkedin profile: job opportunities
LinkedIn is the best place to build your professional brand online, especially if you’re looking for a new job or business opportunity.
On LinkedIn, you can showcase all aspects of your experience and skills in one place. You’ll also have access to millions of other professionals on the platform who can connect with you, learn from you and ultimately hire companies that they know are experts in their fields.
If you’re looking for a new job, LinkedIn has some great features built right into its interface that make finding employment easier than ever before:
- Profile editing tool lets users easily tweak their profiles based on what companies are most interested in reading about them (such as education level or location).
- The recommendations section allows users’ connections to recommend them for positions at different companies – this feature makes getting noticed by HR teams much easier!
Conclusion
You’ve now got the basics for building a LinkedIn profile that will help you make connections and get ahead in your career. Remember, this isn’t just about getting people to click “connect,” it’s about being able to demonstrate your skills, experience and expertise so that other people want to do business with (or hire) you. You should also keep in mind that building connections take time; don’t expect immediate results from every profile update or connection request! But if you put in some effort every day by following these tips and tricks, eventually they will pay off big time by helping land more clients or job offers than ever before.
