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13 Steps to a Better LinkedIn Profile

For many people, the Internet is an important platform for presenting themselves to others – also from a professional perspective. LinkedIn is one of the most important social business networks. More and more people trust LinkedIn when looking for a job and when networking; on the other hand, recruiters and HR managers use the site to find and contact interesting candidates. Therefore, the better you design your LinkedIn profile, the higher the chance that recruiters or HR professionals will notice you. If you apply proactively to companies via LinkedIn, your profile should also convey a competent impression. Many users create their profile once and do not change it afterwards. Follow these tips to optimize and refresh your LinkedIn profile.

 

Profile Headline

After your name field – which should really only contain your first and last name – the headline of your LinkedIn profile plays an important role. Make sure you have a meaningful, but concise text that highlights your strengths and focus. Formulating this can take some time, but you should take this time as the headline/title is crucial for the first impression of your profile.

 

Image

As in other social networks, the same applies to LinkedIn: A professional, personable and appealing image has a significant impact on your profile. Make sure that your picture suits you, both in terms of color scheme and appearance and that it conveys the effect you want.

 

Contact information

If you want to make contacts and build relationships, you should of course offer appropriate contact options. You do not necessarily have to provide all possible contact information. Rather concentrate on the channels that you are actively using and through which you can really be reached.

 

Profile URL

LinkedIn offers you the option of adapting your profile URL to make it more readable – and easier to remember. Make sure to use this option and be sure to choose a URL that is easily identifiable to you or your primary website. This not only increases the chance of being found by others, the links with your profile URL also look nicer and more elegant.

 

Add Value

In order to attract other members’ attention and to create real added value in the network, you should ideally share interesting content on a daily basis. These can be your own articles as well as articles and contributions from other sites and users. If you repeatedly share the content of certain authors in a targeted manner, you can also attract their attention.

 

Keywords

The online business network works in a similar way to Google. This means that LinkedIn also needs information from your profile and your behavior in order to be able to suggest topics, people, companies, content, etc. The better LinkedIn can assess who your profile might be suitable for, the better for you! This happens through the algorithm at LinkedIn, that has to be “fed” with key terms. Therefore your profile should contain keywords that someone would use to search for new employees or interesting contacts to connect with.

 

Language

The “About Me” section on LinkedIn may require some creativity and well chosen language. This is not a resume, but your chance to present yourself to visitors to your profile in a summary. Therefore, you should write from a first-person perspective and address your target group and readers directly. In this way you create a personal connection to your readers and can specifically point out who you are and what sets you apart.

 

Video / Media

LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to incorporate videos, slideshows or other media into the various stages of your professional career. Make use of this option and include meaningful videos or media here that give visitors to your profile an impression of your work or philosophy.

 

Experience

In addition to the “About me” area, the experience section on your profile gives you the opportunity to include your keywords and address potential employers and network partners. Take advantage of this opportunity and choose the experiences that you want to publish carefully while keeping your target group and objectives in mind.

 

Accomplishments

Some profiles display dozens of accomplishments. This may seem impressive at first, but it might turn into a disadvantage. When choosing your accomplishments for your profile, you should concentrate on only the relevant ones that underline your competence and tie in with the overall picture of the profile and the goals you have. If you list too many random skills and projects, it becomes unnecessarily difficult for HR and recruiters to filter out what your strengths are. Present your professional successes and achievements in a targeted manner. Include projects that you have led or worked on, highlight specific skills, and make it clear what skills and knowledge you have that set you apart.

 

Recommendations

Recommendations not only show that you are really active on LinkedIn, they also give visitors of your profile an impression of your professional network. If you give a lot of recommendations, make sure that the recommendations are visible on your profile by adjusting your settings.

 

Linkedin Contacts

With a well-designed profile, you are already doing a lot right on LinkedIn. An important factor on LinkedIn are also contacts that should be maintained. A profile with only a few contacts does not give recruiters the impression of a strong network. So add contacts to your profile! Network with all people in whom you see a benefit or who are potentially on your customer list. Maintaining contacts on LinkedIn means that you have to sort out names every now and then. Some contacts are out of date and might no longer fit your current situation. A smaller but active and useful network is better than simply collecting a large number of followers.

 

Participate in groups and discussions

One of the most important activities to become more visible on LinkedIn is participation in groups and discussions. Become a member of groups that are related to your industry or job and participate in topics that fit your specialty, your experience and your career aspirations. HR managers from companies are also active here and read along – whoever participates here has a good chance of being noticed. Pay particular attention to the quality of your contributions.

 

It is important to regularly update your LinkedIn profile. As your career evolves, so should your profile. Our recruiters at ESG Consulting, a provider of IT staffing, Engineering and consulting services can support you when it comes to optimizing your social media presence. Our expertise not only includes help in finding the right job for a candidate, but also advice on all stages of the application process and beyond. Let’s connect.