LinkedIn Tips & Tricks

There are more than 600 million users, so you need to put in a little effort to stand out. If you are serious about your career and professional advancement, you need a LinkedIn profile that is optimized and up to date. Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to get your name and face in front of hundreds/thousands of professionals in your industry. If you’re looking for a job, that’s essential.

Here are a few simple tips to help make your LinkedIn profile stands out.

Add your headshot: The simplest thing you can do to upgrade your LinkedIn profile is to put a face to your name and add a profile picture — and a good one. Remember that this is the first impression people will get from your page. If you don’t have a professional headshot to use, it’s worth the investment. With the large amount of people on LinkedIn, the ones without a photo are easily ignored.

Add your info to the top of your profile: LinkedIn added an area at the bottom of the introduction card – the area that includes your name, title, location and profile photo – to add high level business information. You can select your business focus (marketing, finance, law, consulting, to name a few) and services offered.

Add an interesting summary: Your LinkedIn summary gives you the opportunity to tell your story. Your summary can be a longer form of your headline; here you have a good limit of 2,000 characters so you can be a bit more expressive. Don’t just focus on your past experience but on what you do well and what you can bring to a prospective employer. Keep in mind that keywords are crucial here — use words that you want to be strongly connected to in your field.

Here’s a LinkedIn summary example:

“As an IT Security Analyst at ABC Hospital Group in Gurugram, I manage the daily flow of information in and out of the 3 Hospitals and 2 Emergency Trauma Centres. With the main focus on database management, my task is to ensure critical computer systems, medical files and patient history remain active 24X7. My team and I stay updated on the latest trends in Information Security to not only keep ABC Hospital Group safe but also updated in new technology advancements.”

Highlight your experience: You can do better than simply cutting and pasting your resume onto your LinkedIn profile. You don’t have the same two-page rule here, but you do have internet readers with short attention spans. Be sure to include any jobs that you think is relevant to where you want your career to go, and use two to four interesting and impressive bullet points for each job you include.

Also, use good action words to show not just what you did, but what you accomplished in each position. The key is to demonstrate the impact you’ve made, the change you’ve enacted, initiatives you’ve led, and the results you’ve delivered.

Customize your URL: Your LinkedIn URL is the web address for your profile. The default URL will have your name and some random numbers on it. Make it something more relevant. Along the right side of your profile, you will see the option to edit your public URL.

Use that option to make your URL more brief and neat — it only takes a couple of minutes and it can make your URL much easier to remember.

Start making connections: It seems obvious, but it can be easy to forget sometimes. You need to keep growing your connections as you meet people because of LinkedIn’s system of first, second, and third-degree connections; having a lot of connections helps keep you visible to others.

Ask for recommendations: This is an important point. Think of people that you’ve developed a good working relationship with in the past. When you edit your profile, there is a link to click that says Ask for Recommendations, Click on it. You choose what you’d like to be recommended for and can choose a list of people from your connections. Then, send it out and hope you get some great feedback.

Recommendations are key to making your LinkedIn profile stand out. Employers want to know that others have approved of your work.

Check your LinkedIn profile strength: If you look at your current profile, there is a gauge on the right-hand side that gives you a “Profile Strength” measurement. Essentially, this is telling you how completely you’ve filled out your profile. Keep adding more and using the site’s tips until that gauge rates you “All-Star.” It’s simple, but it can help you see if you’ve overlooked something.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool and one that’s really easy to use and take advantage of. Make the most of it by optimizing your profile to stand out in a sea of candidates, sell your skills, and validate your accomplishments.