A Linkedin profile is a best way to create your personal brand and let professionals know about yourself: who you are, what interests you, and what you offer. Your LinkedIn profile is your personal and professional storyboard that helps people learn about you and connect with you.
It is important to make sure that your profile is up-to-date and complete. If you have a complete LinkedIn profile, it will increase your chances of appearing in the search results and getting discovered by more employers.
Creating an amazing profile isn’t rocket science. It simply requires you to be a little creative with every step you take in building an awesome profile.
After logging in, click on the Me icon at the top right corner of the homepage and select View Profile. Now, let’s get started.
- Professional photo – Add a professional photo of yourself to your profile. Make sure that the picture displays your face clearly in a way that you’re recognizable. LinkedIn profiles with a profile picture can receive up to 21 times more profile views than those without a picture. You can also add a background image to customize your profile.
- Unique Headline – Write a unique headline to promote a specific area of expertise or simply showcase your passion to the LinkedIn community. Although your headline is automatically created when you add your work experience, you can always go back and rewrite it according to your brand. You can see the headline of Joshua Aguirre in the image above.
- Write a Summary – Use the About section of your LinkedIn profile to talk about your passion, motivation, and skillsets in two to four paragraphs ideally. You can also use bullet points if not comfortable with writing paragraphs. This section of your profile provides a deeper insight into your personality to the profile viewers. Feel free to write a line or two about your fun side so your summary doesn’t read dry. Learn how to write a winning professional summary for your LinkedIn profile.
Look at some of the best LinkedIn summaries here.
- Education & Work Experiences – Add all your previous and current education details and work experiences to your profile. Make sure that your profile is updated with all the work experiences that align with your current career goals and that you don’t skip to write any of those experiences. Don’t forget to include your volunteer experience.
- Relevant Skills – You can also add a list of skills relevant to your work experience or career goals. This helps increase credibility and your chances of being considered for a position or project. Once you’ve added the skills to your profile, your connections can endorse them. Getting your skills endorsed increases the chances of discoverability for the opportunities relevant to the endorsed skills. LinkedIn also offers a great way of proving your skills by taking various assessment tests and posting results on your profile.
- Request Recommendations – Once you have added all the necessary personal and professional information to your profile, you can ask your connections (employers, colleagues, business partners, customers, students, teachers) to write a recommendation for you. You can choose to accept, reject, or request a rewrite of your recommendations. The best thing is that there’s no limit to the number of recommendations you can request for and receive.
- Profile Sections – In addition to the above-mentioned sections, the LinkedIn profile offers various other sections that can be added to your profile. Click on the Add Profile Section at the top right corner of your profile and choose a section you want to add from the dropdown menu.
For example, you can choose to add the Projects section to showcase the projects you’ve worked on OR you may add the Media section under Featured to provide quick access to your work portfolio.
- Profile Strength Meter – Use this meter to measure the strength of your profile.
After you’ve completed the necessary and chosen sections of your profile, you can begin sharing it with a wider audience. To even promote your profile, you can create a personal URL of your profile. To link your LinkedIn profile with your online resume, blog, website, or a portfolio, you can create a badge for your public profile from the Public profile settings page
Note: Public LinkedIn profiles are visible to everyone and appear in search engines.
To learn how to a great professional summary for your LinkedIn profile, check out this blog post here.