Tips To Improve Your LinkedIn Profile

Companies spend vast amounts of money on branding and as a professional you too will spend a lot of time working and investing in your company’s brand each day when you go to work. So why don’t you invest in your own personal brand? In a society where social media is becoming increasingly more relevant, making sure you come across as professional and trustworthy online is so important and will help you gain credibility. A LinkedIn account is the perfect place to start.

80% of all companies google the employee before they interview them. This means that the company you apply to work for or work with will almost definitely google you fist. Making it essential to have positive things appear under your name on google. One of the best ways to do this is by making sure your LinkedIn is the best it can be. These top tips to improve your LinkedIn Profile are a perfect place to start.

Have a powerful LinkedIn summary on your profile:

On your LinkedIn profile, your summary is one of the first things that pops up when someone searches you. This makes it very important to set some time aside to make sure it captures your key achievements and gives an insight into you as an individual.

Not sure where to start? You have 2,000 words to promote yourself, so try to describe your professional life and academic achievements. This is useful as employers see exactly what sets you out from the rest. The first 300 words are most important as this is what everyone sees before they click on read more so your focus should be on grabbing their attention.

The summary should be nice and easy to read. Maintain a balance of everyday terms mixed with a few industry specific terms to show off your skills and knowledge without coming across as arrogant. By making a list with bullet points it can help break up the text. Or use emojis unless you feel they would appear unprofessional. Maybe try an anecdote or asking a question to the reader directly to try and grip their attention. Using industry specific vocabulary will help your profile populate when people search something relevant to your profile. This also links to the next tip.

The visual below gives a few ideas of where to start with your summary and 4 key things that you should consider mentioning in detail are:

o   A detailed job description

o   A list of professional achievements

o   Key ideas and skills you have

o   Career / work experience – even something as little as just a week’s internship is useful to mention

Expand your network

By expanding your network and connecting with people on LinkedIn it can open up endless business opportunities. The more connections you have, the more well established you come across as which will therefore improve your searchability. Employers love to see a well developed LinkedIn account as it shows commitment and efficiency. This is even more impressive to have as a graduate as it’ll allow you to present yourself as being mature and divert attention to all your key achievements and skills you’ve picked up following graduation.

Worried that this will be too time consuming? Why not sync your email address book with your LinkedIn account? This allows LinkedIn to connect you to the people you’ve been in contact with, It won’t send out any connection requests without your permission (so you don’t need to panic that anyone from your spam folder will end up as one of your connections).  

Post regularly

Posting regularly will help to keep your account populating on people’s screens. This will also help you to expand your network, while also highlighting your account to people in your network. By doing this it’ll improve your LinkedIn profile as it’ll stop people removing you as a connection based on them thinking you’re inactive.

By posting every few days you can really showcase your ideas and achievements while also building a strong and impressive profile for people to see. The more you post the more skills and achievements you’ll be able to showcase. You should treat LinkedIn like a CV where you’re showcasing your capabilities and why you’re a desirable employee to hire

Choose the right profile photo

Most people know your LinkedIn profile shouldn’t be a direct replica of your Facebook or other social media sites. LinkedIn is more of an opportunity to promote yourself professionally to the business world. Choose a profile photo which is appropriate is extremely important. You don’t want to use a picture with sunglasses on or an alcoholic beverage, this may deter potential employers from your profile. Equally, using a photo that’s taken from a distance isn’t eye catching – neither is that huge group photo or the one of you from years ago! Make sure it’s a recent photo with you wearing a professional outfit to help set the tone of your profile. This is what people will see first when they search up your name so it should be appropriate.

Share relevant content:

Alongside posting a few times a week you should also make sure you’re engaging with other people’s content. Sharing your connections’ posts or re posting things that’re interesting and relevant to your industry will draw more attention to your account. Subsequently this will allow you to reach more profiles and grow your network.  

Try sharing a plethora of different posts to stop your connections getting bored. Things such as photos and videos catch people’s eye and text can be used to create more informative posts. Including polls are a great way to boost engagement by making people stop and have a brief think about what answer to click.  Although this may seem time consuming, it’ll only take a few minutes to create a new post, think about how long you spend on TIkTok or Instagram scrolling through accounts. Why not dedicate some of this to improve your own self branding?

All these tips will help you to improve your LinkedIn profile, but if you need any more help trying to find your dream tech role then one of our Recruiters here at Searchability will be happy to help.

Here at Searchability we’re here to help you with all your recruitment needs. Contact a member of our team today –  +44 1244 567 567 or email us at [email protected] . Take a look at our website www.searchability.com

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