7 Tips to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out
It is a fact that LinkedIn is the largest professional network across the world. If you want to advance in your career as a professional, you need to create a LinkedIn profile that's optimized and up to date. Your LinkedIn profile provides you with a chance to get your name in front of hundreds of professionals in your industry. If you want to get hired for a job, it is important. However, it's not enough to have a LinkedIn page. You should have a LinkedIn profile that can draw the attention of potential recruiters. It should help you connect with the people that can help you expand your career. In this article, we will provide you 6 simple tips to help make your LinkedIn profile stand out. This will help you to grow as a professional and get you access to better job opportunities.
1. Put a good profile picture
One of the most effective ways through which you can upgrade your LinkedIn profile is to put a face to your name and add a profile picture. You should remember that it is the very first impression people would get from your page. If you don't have a professional profile picture, it's essential that you put one. With the increasing number of job seekers on LinkedIn, those that don’t have a photo can be easily pushed aside.
2. Create an engaging headline
Your headline is directly positioned right below your name on your LinkedIn profile. It will be the very first thing your profile visitors will read. These default settings would fill this in with your current position. This is perfect for starters. However, it could be whatever you want. You have nearly 120 characters to work with. As a result, you can write anything that pops. This could prove to be a small billboard advertisement for you and what you do. Instead of just mentioning your job title, you should also mention your specialty and how you provide benefits to your company or customers. You should not forget to keep your target audience in mind. This could be headhunters, industry peers or your customers. You should write to your target audience as it is essential.
3. Create an interesting career summary
Your LinkedIn summary provides you with an opportunity to tell your story. Your career summary could be a long-form of your headline. In LinkedIn, you have nearly 2,000 characters to work with. As a result, you can provide more details to your profile. You should not just focus on your past experience. However, it depends on what you do well and what you can bring to a prospective employer. You should also keep in mind that keywords are essential here. It is important to use keywords that can help you to be strongly connected to your field.
4. Start making connections
It is an obvious but underrated fact that some professionals tend to forget the value of connections. 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 can help to keep you visible to other individuals. You can certainly connect with people you don't know. However, it's preferable to connect with individuals who you know personally, have worked with, or met in a professional capacity. If you ever decide to directly connect with individuals you haven't met, or don't have a direct connection with it, you should send a note with your request that explains who you are why you'd like to connect.
5. Highlight your experience
From a professional perspective, you can do much better than just cutting and pasting your resume onto your LinkedIn profile. You should not have the same two-page rule here. However, you do have internet readers that have short attention spans. It is important to include jobs that you think are relevant to where you want your career to go. You can utilize few impressive bullet points for every job you include. Moreover, you should also use good action words to illustrate not just what you did but what you achieved in every position. The core emphasis in this regard is to illustrate the influence you have made, the change you've enacted, initiatives you've led and the results you have delivered.
6. Ask for recommendations
One of the most important things that you can do as a professional on LinkedIn is to ask for recommendations. You can think of professionals that you have developed a good working relationship with in the past. When you edit your profile, you get a link to click that says “Ask for Recommendations”. Through that link, you can choose what you'd like to be recommended for. You can select a list of individuals from your connections. Then, send it out and hope you get some great feedback. Recommendations are essential to make your LinkedIn profile stand out. Employers want to have an idea that others have approved of your work.
7. URL customization
As a professional, your LinkedIn URL is the web address for your profile. The default URL will comprise of your name and a few gibberish numbers on it. You should make it more relevant. On the right side of your profile, you will have an option to edit your public URL. You can utilize that option for making your URL concise. It takes a couple of minutes and it could also make your URL memorable.
