Setting Up Your LinkedIn Profile

A great way to boost your visibility to employers in our increasingly digital world is through creating a LinkedIn profile for yourself. This post will help you create a strong profile that gives you a professional image. Think of your LinkedIn profile as being a broader, more publicly visible version of your resume to show the world of work what you have to offer. Here are the main topics for this post:

-            Getting through the setup steps

-            Creating a quality, professional looking profile

-            Using your profile to start networking

Getting through the setup steps

What to consider ahead of time

As you go through the steps to set up your LinkedIn profile, you’ll be asked to provide basic personal information. You’ll probably know this information right off the top of your head and shouldn’t need to do any special information gathering. That said, you’ll probably be excited to get your profile launched as soon as possible once you start setting it up, so think about what specific skills and experience you want to add. For your About section, reflect on what you’d like prospective hiring managers to know about your professional self in the form of one or two medium-length paragraphs; try to describe yourself in a way that mentions what work activities you like to do, what you’re really good at, and how you envision those activities helping other people (or a company). One more thing to consider is adding a professional catchphrase to your profile headline, like an example of “Delighting customers with excellent service!” if that’s what you’ve done well in previous jobs and want to continue doing. It’s common for people to state their current role at their company here, which is fine, but that might not describe what you’re good at, love doing, and how you provide value quite as well as a thoughtful catchphrase can.

Advantages of having a profile

Two major advantages of having a LinkedIn profile are that you can more easily share about your professional self with others and learn more easily about other professionals out there. As simple as those things sound, try to imagine how much more work it was, or how much more limited your reach would have been, before social media made connecting easier! By sharing about your skills and experience in this way, more hiring managers can learn what you have to offer, and others who know you can easily connect you with a hiring manager they know who is looking for someone like you! And since, as you’ll read in the Networking post coming soon, networking is about giving as much as getting, you can use the network of contacts you accrue on LinkedIn to help connect others with opportunities, too!

Steps from LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides step-by-step instructions to set up your profile at the following link: Create a good LinkedIn profile | LinkedIn Help.

Creating a quality, professional looking profile

Just like with your resume, quality and accuracy are paramount on your LinkedIn profile. In addition to gaining the trust of others through both of those attributes, your profile will just look more professional and you’ll be able to feel it when reviewing your fully completed and published profile. Once you think your profile is all set, ask your support person to review it on their device as if a hiring manager was looking it over. That person can help catch any typos you missed and ensure you’re presenting yourself in the best, most compelling light possible. Also, make yourself a quarterly recurring reminder to review your LinkedIn profile for any updates you should make to keep it current.

An important part of a professional looking LinkedIn profile is a professional headshot. You’ll see that most people on LinkedIn have one, and you’ll probably agree that anytime you see a profile with no photo or one that isn’t good quality, it immediately makes you less interested in viewing that profile. The same will apply to others viewing your profile, so make sure it looks as sharp as possible.

If you don’t have the money to hire a photographer for a professional headshot, you may be able to get one for free or at a discount at a job fair. Also, AI tools are becoming available to help you produce a professional looking headshot, but if you use these tools, make sure that the picture looks indistinguishable from what a professional headshot would look like.

Using your profile to start networking

Once your profile is set up, proofread, and finalized, you’re ready to use it to start networking! Networking helps you become aware of more job opportunities and enables you to also help others find them. This topic will be covered in its own post coming up soon, as it’s a large enough topic to deserve at least a dedicated post, if not its own series of posts. When you meet with people in-person, that’s an opportunity to connect with them on LinkedIn sometime within a day or two after that. You can make new connections at job and career fairs, professional association meetings, or other events, but that’s to be covered more in the Networking post.

Conclusion

Setting up a LinkedIn profile is a great way to boost your professional visibility, both to get your next higher paying job and to improve your career prospects longer-term. Think about what information you want to share with the professional world and use LinkedIn’s guide for setting up your profile to get it done in the best and easiest way possible. Treat information added to your profile just like you would treat information on your resume, keeping quality and accuracy of that information as the top priority. Getting another person to review your profile and including a good quality, professional looking photo are important steps for creating a successful profile. Once you’ve done all of this, you’re ready to use LinkedIn to greatly enhance your professional networking abilities!

Start setting up your LinkedIn profile today and mark your calendar with specific dates to complete any part of it that you can’t get done today!

The next step on the roadmap: Coming in a few days – stay tuned!