Today, first impressions don’t start during your interview. They begin as soon as an employer or hiring manager types your name into a search bar.
A strong LinkedIn presence can work hard for you even when you’re not online, attracting recruiters, hiring managers, and new opportunities. It also helps instill greater confidence in future employers by showing them the full breadth of your work, and it can help you build the valuable future connections that open up incredible possibilities. (Case in point: your dream job might not even be posted on LinkedIn. Your next position could come from knowing the right people — so make sure you’re the person that the right person knows.)
Crafting your LinkedIn presence is an investment that can reap ongoing benefits. Remember that your profile is a marketing tool — not a duplication of your resume (although you can add your resume as an attachment to make it easier for people to find.)
These four tips will refresh your profile and strengthen your digital presence.
Are your other social channels more personal than professional? Consider making them private while you’re on the job hunt.
1. Define Your Personal Brand
No matter your experience, industry, goals, or feelings about personal brands, you have one. It’s every digital and in-person interaction someone has with you, culminating in the narrative of your journey and who you are. We can’t always choose how people perceive us, but our personal brand can help control it.
Important aspects of your personal brand:
Your profile photo
Your banner photo
How you share and position your skills
The tone of voice you use in your posts
Concretely defining your brand is crucial because it ensures that everything — from the style of your profile photo to how you describe your work — ladders up to a compelling picture of who you are and what you uniquely offer. Knowing your personal brand will also help you bring in your personal touch and voice.
Part of navigating this balance will depend on your industry: if you’re in a creative field, your brand might have more flourishes in how you write or the images you use. If you’re in an industry like finance, you’ll want to play it more conservatively, finding ways to express yourself and your unique skills without losing that professional polish.
2. Start with a Hook
Good books capture people by the first sentence. Your LinkedIn profile needs to, also. Your headline should immediately grab people’s attention, briefly capturing your expertise and value to a company.
Use up the full 220 characters you have for your headline — don’t waste an opportunity to sell yourself!
Use keywords to show up in searches (but don’t use too many; you want to sound like a human, not a keyword generator)
Avoid industry jargon and abbreviations
Currently looking for a job? LinkedIn is a great tool for that, but don’t mention that you’re hunting for a new position in your headline. Instead, check the open to new opportunities box or save it for your summary — you have room there to elaborate more on your current situation. When you check the “open to new opportunities” box, you will come up in recruiters’ searches.
If your headline says “unemployed,” you’re missing a valuable opportunity to get spotted by a recruiter searching for a specific type of skillset and experience. The same goes for being a “student” — highlight your achievements and capabilities instead of the fact that you’re currently studying.
3. Don’t Leave People Guessing
Before actively networking on LinkedIn, you want your profile to fully represent what you’re bringing to potential employers.
LinkedIn gives you plenty of space to share your accomplishments: take advantage of it!
Complete every section to show what you’ve done and how this builds into your unique professional perspective. It tells future employers what problems you’re able to solve and how you can solve those problems for them.
Include where you’ve worked and what you did there. What were your job functions? What were your significant wins?
Include your education. This gives people something additional to relate to — they might be an alum, or their best friend or sister might have gone to your school. It helps people to form a genuine relationship from the start.
Mention continuing education. Have you taken any courses recently? Earned any certificates? Continually advancing your skillset keeps you competitive, and it shows that you have soft skills, like curiosity, adaptability, and a commitment to personal growth. Those can sometimes be more valuable to employers than hard technical skills, which you can pick up on the job.
Remember to sprinkle in strategic keywords to increase your chances of being spotted organically by recruiters and hiring managers.
What not to include?
Your political party or political views, unless you work in politics and it is warranted
Don’t use former surnames, such as Mr. and Mrs.
Awards and accomplishments from the dinosaur age
Outdated and expired certifications
Your graduation year if it is not within the last five years
Negative content about former employer or employees
Spelling and grammatical errors
4. Stay Active — The More You Give, the More You Get
Once your profile is updated, you’re ready to start building connections. (Download our easy-to-use checklist to ensure that your profile is ready to go.)
LinkedIn can be a great way to keep your accomplishments online and easily accessible to employers and hiring managers. But your best results come when you don’t treat it like a digital resume. Instead, treat it like what it is: a social network.
Post regularly
Reshare articles that you find interesting
Create your own thought leadership posts, and be authentic and relatable — share your story and interesting takeaways. But make sure to balance your voice with what your audience will find most valuable and the personal brand that you want to create.
Comment on and share other people’s posts. This is a lower-stakes, less time-intensive way to build your network, boost visibility, and become more familiar with creating content for LinkedIn.
Following these four tips will set you on a trajectory of a solid strategy. But taking your LinkedIn game to the next step will help you encounter more opportunities — and maybe even the dream job you didn’t know you wanted.
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