7 Essential Steps to Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn has become an essential tool for professionals to connect with one another, showcase their skills and experiences, and even find job opportunities. In today's digital age, having a strong and professional online presence is more important than ever, and your LinkedIn profile is no exception. However, with over 700 million members on the platform, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd.
In this blog, we'll explore some tips and strategies for improving your LinkedIn profile to make it more attractive to potential employers, recruiters, and connections.
There are basically 7 major steps to enhance your LinkedIn profile.
1. The right profile picture for LinkedIn.
Your profile picture is going to be the first thing everybody will notice, in a way that it's going to be your calling card on LinkedIn – it’s how people are introduced to you as it governs their impressions from the start. Here are some quick tips to start with: make sure the picture is recent and looks like you, make up your face and take up around 60% of it (long-distance shots don’t stand out), wear what you would like to wear to work, and smile with your eyes, the picture should look more like you.
2. List your relevant skills.
Listing all your skills on LinkedIn is one of the most important parts where you're going to present how creative or for that matter how academically strong you are.
It's one of the quickest of quick wins on LinkedIn – Doing so helps to substantiate the description in your Headline and Summary and provides a platform for others to come and talk to you, know a little about you, or endorse you.
Staying relevant is the key. Take time for a spring clean of your skills to list every now and then.
3. Add a background photo.
Your background photo is the second visual element at the top of your profile page. Attention seeker is what one can call it; it sets the context and shows a little more about what is your genre. More than anything, it helps your profile to stand out.
Keeping the size of the picture you can put in mind, you can create something like this, which not only would go superb but also very relevant. Or maybe something more creative if you want.
4. Grow your network.
Make sure that you sync your profile with your email address book. This is how you can enable LinkedIn, to suggest people connect with. That's the best way one can be as relevant as he can on a platform like this – and no connection requests are sent without your permission, so you can vet all of the potential connections. Beyond this, get into the habit of following up on meetings and conversations with LinkedIn connection requests – it’s a great way of keeping your network vibrant and up to date.
5. Get and give recommendations
Recommendations are one of the easiest ways to get on LinkedIn: Reach out to your colleagues, someone with a good profile maybe your friend, or even a mutual friend, previous supervisors, or current managers, and ask them to share their insights on your work and your best qualities, most importantly make sure to return the favor, the more anybody would come forward and tell about you the more enhanced your profile is going to be.
6. Use your headline well
Your headline is prime real estate. People need to understand who you are and what you do. “Partner at ABC Inc.” shares very little. You could be a lawyer, architect, or data scientist. Compound headlines can work well, such as “Product Manager | Technology | VP @ ABC.” Buzzwords like “Experienced” waste space without adding value. The best headline is unique to you, so play around until you get it right.
7. About Section
Do not skip this. This section is used to highlight not only your current and past career achievements but shed light on who you are as a person beyond your LinkedIn profile. You have the opportunity here to talk about your career progression and passions in a more social tone that will engage the reader to know more about you and your interests. It can be as short or as long as you’d like, as long as it’s engaging and speaks to who you are. Do not limit yourself to your experience section.
LIST OF PEOPLE YOU CAN FOLLOW ON LINKEDIN TO HAVE A WIDER IDEA OF THE ENTREPRENEURIAL WORLD.
Liz Ryan Is the CEO and founder of Human Workplace. Her articles on job searching are filled with creative and colorful cartoons.
Dr. Marla Gottschall will help you make an impact in a new job.
Hannah Morgan runs CareerSherpa.net, where she gives expert advice on job searching and how to be more visible online.
Alison Dyole is the CEO and Founder of CareerToolBelt.com.