Make the most of LinkedIn with a comprehensive and engaging All Star profile!
LinkedIn, a professional networking site, is an amazing tool for professionals and students regardless of career field or interest. To make the most of your LinkedIn presence, it’s important to create a comprehensive and engaging profile. A great profile will allow you to showcase your qualifications and career aspirations via your online presence/professional brand, attract more quality connections, and rank higher in LinkedIn searches. Follow these steps to build your LinkedIn profile!
Customize your LinkedIn URL. A customized LinkedIn URL will make you easier to find and will reinforce your professional brand. Make sure you include your LinkedIn URL within your resume heading so potential employers can learn more about your skills and qualifications.
Create an engaging headline. Your LinkedIn headline should reflect your professional brand, summarize your key qualifications and ambition, and connect to your target industry/employers.
Draft an effective summary. Within LinkedIn, the summary section gives you a chance to tell your story! It goes beyond the limitations of a resume and sets the stage for your profile. It should be written professionally, but can include your personal voice. Use this section to describe your most relevant skills and experience, explain your career ambitions, highlight past accomplishments, and integrate keywords and phrases relevant to your desired career field or industry.
Connect with others. Connect with peers, faculty, and professionals to build your network. Make sure that you focus on quality over quantity. To obtain All Star status with your LinkedIn profile, you’ll need to connect with at least 50 people.
Complete your Experience section in a thoughtful and strategic way. Your Experience section should feature at least two experiences with comprehensive descriptions that highlight your skills and accomplishments. Make sure avoid typos and other errors, and include keywords and phrases relevant to your career field.
Accurately state your education. In the Education section, clearly state your college or university, degree, date of completion, and any other relevant details such as honors.
Feature and gain endorsements for key skills. The skills you list (and obtain endorsements for) should directly connect to your professional experience and career goals.
List accomplishments and volunteer experience. These sections of LinkedIn allow you to share information about some of your unique skills and experience gained through relevant coursework, honors and awards, projects, publications, languages, certifications, and volunteerism. Not only can you feature experiences that show your distinctive skills and qualifications, you can illustrate effective development and utilization of key transferable skills (also known as soft skills).
Follow key influencers and join groups. Not only will you learn a lot from key influencers and the content contained within LinkedIn groups, you’ll also connect to other people who share similar interests. This is especially relevant for college students and young professionals, as content featured by influencers and groups illustrates the reality of a profession or industry as opposed to the ideal of it. In many cases the reality is very different from the ideal, and knowing real-life issues, challenges, and opportunities will allow you to make better career decisions.
The time you devote to creating your LinkedIn profile and connecting with peers, professionals, influencers, and groups will provide a significant return on your investment. It will provide others with an in-depth understanding of your unique skills, qualifications, and experience as they connect to your target industry or career field. And if you are seeking a new job or promotion, it can bring your candidacy to life in a way that will help you shine!
