LinkedIn is a powerful platform for showcasing your skills and achievements, finding new opportunities and building your professional network,. Over the years LinkedIn has grown from just a job portal to social networking site, a sales and marketing platform and a home to learning content library. LinkedIn has over 1 billion users and 49 million professionals are on LinkedIn, looking for jobs every week.
🤔 77 job applications get submitted every second on LinkedIn and 7 professionals get hired every minute.
Does that make you seriously reconsider your presence on LinkedIn? Well, take a second look at your profile and make sure it is optimised so that when a recruiter is looking to fill a position, your profile comes in their search. This is the purpose of whole LinkedIn profile optimization.
But how do you create a LinkedIn profile that stands out and attracts the recruiter’s attention? Follow this guide step by step and you will be able to do that too.
By end of this you”ll know
LinkedIn is more than a job search platform. There are over 67 million companies and 140 thousand schools and 11 million content creators. People are using LinkedIn not only to search for jobs, but they are also to upskill, they are finding leads and clients, they are presenting content, building brands and networking.
So what is your use of LinkedIn, your profile should be aligned with that. Here is what you should consider
If you are one of 49 million professionals every week who are seeking a job then your target audience is recruiters and hiring managers. Your profile should act as your personalized resume.
1MillionResume is an AI resume builder where you can create a strong resume in just 30 minutes. We also offer resume writing services so my LinkedIn profile is aligned to attract clients who are looking for resume writing services. If you look for resume writing services, chances are that you see my profile as #1 result.
Find your target audience and take note before we start looking into the steps.
In this exercise, you will see what a well-written LinkedIn profile looks like. Look at 3-4 profiles for your role and take note of details they have mentioned.
In below example, I have searched for “Data Science” and these are the top profiles in results. Note in results, these people has mentioned data science either in headline, summary or current position.
| 1 | Creating a Compelling Headline |
| 2 | Writing a Professional Summary |
| 3 | Profile Picture and Background Image |
| 4 | Experience Section |
| 5 | Skills and Endorsements |
| 6 | Education and Certifications |
| 7 | Recommendations |
| 8 | Contact Information and Customizing Your LinkedIn URL |
| 9 | Featured Section: Showcasing Work Samples and Media |
| 10 | Add Your Projects |
Your headline can be more than just your job title. Headline is part of LinkedIn SEO so make it catchy and informative. A LinkedIn headline can be 220 characters long. It should say – who are you, your key expertise, top achievement or sales pitch and hobby or interest.
Here is a template to write a good headline
3 examples of good LinkedIn headline
LinkedIn summary (About section) is the first section that is read by recruiters. Your summary is your elevator pitch. It should be concise yet detailed enough to give people an idea of who you are, what you do, and what you’re looking for. Use this space to highlight your skills, experience, and career goals. You can place keywords in your summary that will put you as a possible match in recruiter search for candidates.
To write a compelling summary, start with the top 3 adjectives that can describe you. Write it as an informal line making your reader curious to read further. After that write a personalized summary about your work, very similar to a resume summary. Feel free to add a few achievements. Here is an example –
LinkedIn introduced a recent change in the About section where you can add up to 5 key skills. LinkedIn wants to highlight key skills on user profiles and promote skill-based hiring.
Your photo is the first thing that people see when they visit your profile, so make sure it reflects your personal brand and looks professional. Avoid selfies, filters, or casual shots. Instead, use a clear, high-quality headshot with a neutral background and a friendly smile. Smile always makes a difference 🙂
Follow the below steps for cover photo –
Use this example –
Unlike a resume, you can afford to be more detailed here. Your experience section is where you can showcase your career history and accomplishments. List your work experience in reverse chronological order. For each position, include:
You can add up to 100 skills to your profile. LinkedIn has a database of 41,000 skills.
Tip – Always search and add a skill. Also, add all variations of skills as you never know which one recruiter is going to use in the job listing.
For example – Leadership have variations – Team Leadership, Cross Functional Leadership, Educational Leadership, Organisational Leadership etc.
And don’t forget to ask for endorsements from your connections, especially those who have worked with you or know you well. It makes your skills more credible.
This is simple, you need to add your education in Education section.
You should be adding your certifications including online certificates from Coursera, Udemy or LinkedIn Learning. List them in descending order or importance. LinkedIn allows you to link to the issuing organization, adding authenticity to your profile.
Ask your colleagues from work or friends or professors from college to write you recommendations. Remember effective recommendations can come from someone who knows you well or worked with you. Recommendations are similar to references in your resume or CV.
Best Practices
Include your email, phone number, and other relevant contact information.
By default, LinkedIn url contains a string of numbers and letters that looks unprofessional and hard to remember. You can customize it by going to your profile settings and editing your public profile URL. Choose a URL that is simple and easy to remember, such as your name or your brand name or a combination like – yourname-MM-YYYY.
Unlike a resume you can add rich media like post, newsletter, article, link or media (picture, presenation or document) to your linkedin profile. This is something that you want your viewers to notice.
Example – during your job search you can add your resume or CV here for recruiter to download.
Note your work experience related media has a separate space and goes under that company in Experience section. Then how featured section is different? Well, here you can add your published work outside of your company life. This could be a paper you published, any creative work a newsletter, an article in a famous media house or project work.
These are samples of your work and these are crucial for freshers who don’t have real work experience yet. You need to provide details like – project name, description, duration, skills used and media. If your project is hosted online, do mention its link.
Usually, 3-5 projects are a good number and if you are wondering how to write a good project description, use our magic formula under Project section mentioned in this freshers guide to resume writing.
There are other sections like publication, patents, volunteer experience, languages, courses and awards etc, use them to make your LinkedIn profile comprehensive.
Tell your story through LinkedIn and attract recruiters – Use 1MillionResume’s LinkedIn optimization Service
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Engaging with LinkedIn community not only increases your visibility but also keeps your profile fresh for recruiters.
Just like traditional search engine optimization (SEO), LinkedIn SEO involves using specific strategies to ensure your profile appears in search results when someone looks for professionals in your field. Here’s how to optimize your LinkedIn profile effectively:
LinkedIn SEO operates on a similar principle to Google SEO. It uses an algorithm that scans profiles for relevant keywords, endorsements, and activities to determine search rankings. When someone searches for a specific skill, job title, or industry, LinkedIn’s algorithm decides which profiles to display based on the relevance and strength of those profiles.
To harness the power of LinkedIn SEO, you need to:
Your profile needs to have relevant keywords for which you want recruiters to find you. Here’s how you can add them effectively –
Here is an example:
Yes. Some real benefits only come with linkedin premium. If you are on a job hunt and premium cost is within your budget, we recommend you take it.
LinkedIn Premium offers several features that can be beneficial, such as InMail, seeing who viewed your profile, and access to LinkedIn Learning. Let’s see them one by one
Find more detailed comparison between linkedin free and premium.
So you are following this guide and improving your linkedin profile, now how will you know that it is working?
Well you can see an Analytics card on your linkedin profile that looks like below
Well, if after a week or two, your profile views and search appearances are increasing, that is an indication that your linkedin profile optimization efforts are fruitful.
Analytics tells us more information but that is out of scope for this article.
As per a study in Forbes – Resume with linkedin profile link have 71% more chances of receiving an interview call. Here is how you can mention linkedin in your resume
🤔 Here are 5 email/message templates that you can use to reach out to recruiter on linkedin
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile can really help you get your next job. Let’s recap few important things –
By dedicating time and effort to your LinkedIn profile, you’re investing in your professional future. So go ahead, start optimizing your LinkedIn profile today.
From profile page -> on editing your contact info -> you will see an option to add a personal or company website or blog. Once you add website link, it will show right under your address like below
We have observed professionals making the below mistakes and limiting the impact of a LinkedIn profile
Yes. You can download your LinkedIn profile as a PDF. This looks very similar to a resume. Then you can upload that profile pdf into a resume builder tool like 1MillionResume which has an Import feature. Our article shows step-by-step visuals on How to create Resume or CV from LinkedIn
LinkedIn is not just a job search platform; it’s a professional networking site that allows you to connect with industry leaders, join professional groups, and even publish your own content. Here’s why LinkedIn is indispensable:
You can add resume in the featured section of your profile as media. This is a good and recommended way.
You can also create a public link to your resume (from where a recruiter can download it) and add that link as a website in the contact information section of your profile.
No. It would be great to see this feature. There is a huge demand for this feature because you don’t want your current company to know that you are open to work or just testing the waters. Sometimes professionals are passively job hunting which means they will consider if a better opportunity presents itself.
Note – you can block your manager and people in your team.
Follow these steps
Yes. You will receive a notification from linkedin once someone views your profile. Level of information you will see depends on
At a very basic level linkedin will tell you person from X company viewed your profile and let you guess.
Follow below steps to view other’s profile in private mode. This controls what others see when you view their profile.
You will be able to control what others see when you’ve viewed their profile. Refer linkedin guide for more details.
Radhe Radhe. All the best 🤝
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