10 tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile
Creating a LinkedIn profile is not enough to automatically have the certainty of being contacted by the best recruiters and thus to reach the job of your dreams. An incomplete, anonymous and carelessly created LinkedIn profile has the same value as a curriculum vitae closed in a drawer of your office. It exists, but no one will ever notice it.
Optimizing a LinkedIn profile means making it efficient, as well as correct in information and complete in all sections (photo and cover image, summary, work experience, skills, interests).
LinkedIn rewards and considers well positioned a profile that, among other things, reaches the highest level of completeness.
So, here are my tips to improve your LinkedIn profile starting today.
How to create a professional LinkedIn profile in 10 simple steps
Pay attention to the title
The title of your LinkedIn profile is the text that appears immediately below your name and surname, next to your photo. This is perhaps the most important element of the entire profile.
Optimizing the title means making it very descriptive and making it stand out from other users: this platform has over 300 million subscribers, and to be noticed you need a little creativity. Therefore, a simple “Account” title has no chance of standing out.
It is useful to adopt the headhunter’s perspective and insert keywords capable of enhancing the message and, at the same time, optimizing this string of text from the SEO point of view (and therefore in the direction of search engines such as Google). You have 120 characters at your disposal: make the most of them!
A profile photo to represent you
A LinkedIn profile without a photo definitely starts at a disadvantage. Having said that, it should be mentioned that LinkedIn is not Facebook, let alone Instagram. Therefore, the photo must not be artistic, nor excessively modified.
It must instead represent you for who you are and, therefore, preferably in a form suitable for the role you play or what you are looking for. The photo used must be professional, but not cold, and it must clearly show your face like that of a curriculum vitae.
Create an effective summary
Your LinkedIn profile gives people a convenient summary of who you are. In this section, therefore, all your skills and professional experiences must be entered, or everything that can be useful to a recruiter. But be careful, this does not mean that the summary of your LinkedIn profile must be transformed into a curriculum vitae: instead, it must be something more discursive and attractive, therefore able to say and gracefully summarize your strengths, as well as your future goals. By reading it, a headhunter or a human resources manager must understand not only your skills, but also get an idea of your personality.
Updated contact information
Don’t make life difficult for those recruiters who decide to include you in their list of eligible candidates to be contacted: your LinkedIn profile must contain updated contact information, so as to allow recruiters to communicate with you in a few seconds. Without updated contacts, a LinkedIn profile is practically useless!
Constantly update your skills
LinkedIn has a section dedicated to your skills. When creating your profile, it is essential to complete this part with the utmost sincerity, without exaggerating your skills , which must be updated continuously. What have you learned or improved in the last year?
Update your work and training experiences
Make sure that you have entered all the work experience in the appropriate area and that you have specified the start and end dates of the employment relationships, the name of the company, the role covered, the main tasks and everything that could be useful for a recruiter to find you evaluate the person.
Remember that this part is not a curriculum vitae, it is much more: you can actually use this section: images, videos, articles, links, projects, in short, everything that can shed light on your experience and goals achieved during your career.
Increase your network of connections
The advantages of having many contacts on LinkedIn are many and different. Surely a recruiter will appreciate more a commercial profile with a thousand contacts, than a profile equal to 40 close contacts.
But don’t surround yourself with random contacts: the most skilled headhunters will take a look at the composition of your network and will be fully convinced only when they discover that most of your connections are made up of professionals in the same sector as you.
Join groups relevant to your goals and become an active member of them
A LinkedIn profile created and left alone cannot be very successful. To fully exploit this platform, to have a good reason to access it every day and to have something useful to share with your network of connections, it is advisable to become part of something and become an active part of it: in this way you will update, you will expand your network and you will be noticed.
It does not reject – without reason – new connection requests
LinkedIn is not a platform that invites users to post private content : your LinedIn profile, in this sense, should remain something visible to everyone. For this reason, with the exception of special cases, there is no concrete reason to refuse connection requests.
Maybe you don’t care that the person in question becomes part of your network, but you also have to think that that new contact will serve to connect you (potentially) with many other users, among whom – who knows – there could be a person importance. for your career.
Be clear and concise
A recruiter looking for talent on the net finds himself viewing not one, but 10, 100 and more LinkedIn profiles. For this reason, you must be exhaustive but concise to avoid wasting time for people who, frustrated by your prolixity, may decide to look elsewhere.
