With more and more people joining LinkedIn, this professional networking website offers endless career opportunities.Many recruiters are increasingly using LinkedIn to find talented individuals to fit specific positions in the industry. Clearly, this shows how indispensable LinkedIn is in the job search process..
While creating a profile on LinkedIn is good it may not be enough to attract employers. You have to ensure your profile is perfected for better ranking on LinkedIn.
A profile containing appropriate keywords will enhance the professionalism of your profile give you the required uniqueness to be easily hired by top recruiters.
Below are 5 essentials tips that will enable you to not only optimise your LinkedIn Profile but also help you in portraying a professional outlook.
1. Use Boolean Search:
The large quantities of information on LinkedIn makes it difficult to search information easily.These search challenges can be overcome by the usage of the Boolean Operators, which enables you to find the exact content you require on Linkedin.
The following search operators are supported on LinkedIn:
Title: Mr/ Mrs/ Dr/Sir
Company: Andax Ltd, MGM
School: Georgia University of Technology
First name: John
Last Name: Gray
You can also use quotes, parentheses and words like NOT, AND, OR etc.
For example, “Sales AND Marketing” will give you search results which contain both the words: Sales and Marketing. In the same way, Sales OR Marketing will display results that contain either Sales or Marketing or both. The NOT keyword helps in filtering out all those search results that do not contain the keyword present after NOT.
Hence, the use of Boolean search helps to structure your search keywords to access information more easily.
2. Personalize Your LinkedIn Profile URL
Ensure you change the default URL that is given by LinkedIn when you first created an account. This is because the default URL looks unprofessional owing to lengthy and meaningless characters. To change the URL, follow these steps:
- Click on “Me”> View Profile.
- Select “Edit your Public Profile”.
- Click on “Edit Public Profile URL” on the right hand side of the page.
- Now, edit the URL so that it contains your official name or your name and job title.
3. Reorder Your First 12 Endorsements
LinkedIn ranks your proficiencies based on the number of endorsements you have received. Rearranging endorsements in order of importance is very important in ensuring a perfect LinkedIn Profile, which will connect to more job opportunities.
For example, if you have received around 10 endorsements for a particular skill, LinkedIn arranges the endorsements according to the most recent ones. That is, if you have gotten an endorsement for a skill from a senior employee first and then from a colleague, the colleague’s endorsement is displayed first. Clearly, the endorsement from the senior employee has more priority and you can reorder them in the order of preference that you want. To do this, follow these steps:
- Go to Edit Skills -> Manage Endorsements
- Choose the skill for which you want to reorder your endorsements.
- Deselect those endorsers whom you want to be placed in the beginning.
- Click on Save.
- Now, repeat the above steps and this time add those deselected endorsers and click on Save.
4. Craft An Attractive Headline
A headline refers to the first 1-4 lines in a LinkedIn Profile that are visible beneath your name.
The importance of your LinkedIn headline cannot be underestimated since it is easily visible on your profile. Using the right keywords in your headline attract more recruiters to your profile.
So what should a good headline consist of?
- Ensure you provide a clear explanation of how relevant you can be to the organization, rather than concentrating only on your job description.
- Never add your contact details in your headline.
- Don’t use the using the word “I” too repeatedly in your headline.
For example, a good catchy headline for individuals in sales and marketing domain looks like this –
‘Increasing your sales by joining integrated media solutions with high precision targeting.’
5. Don’t Overuse These Buzzwords
“Responsible, strategic, creative, effective, patient, expert, organizational, driven, innovative, analytical” are just some of the most commonly used words which don’t add anything substantial to your profile. These buzzwords in fact have a negative effect on your LinkedIn Profile as they depict a vague picture about your profile.
For example, if you state that that you were an “analytical” leader, immediately a question arises – What did you achieve being “analytical”?
Make sure you explain quantifiable questions like: Did you respect deadlines and instructions? Or, did you ensure your team members were performing their jobs efficiently? Or, did you carefully manage time and resources?
Hence, instead of using these buzzwords, simply explain what your role was in the respective projects and mention how you obtained the end result.This will automatically give an outlook of you being “responsible” or “strategic”, without using the words explicitly.
By using these tips, you can be sure to introduce the ‘wow factor’ needed to boost your LinkedIn profile.
Interested in similar tips such as the ones mentioned above? Check out this article ‘Top 33 LinkedIn Profile Tips for jobseekers in 2017’