Creating and maintaining a striking profile on LinkedIn is a great way to reinforce your personal marketing and build a positive professional image, which can be very useful when looking for a job, for example.
Recruitment and selection professionals can use LinkedIn as a search tool for professionals from different areas, and it is worth investing time in building a profile that will stand out at that time.
To help you create or update your personal page on LinkedIn, we separate some important points to keep an eye on and also some tips on what to do or not to do on the network.
Photo and cover image
Choose a profile picture and cover image that reflects who you are and how you want to position yourself. There are those who say that LinkedIn is the new Tinder, but it may be that using a photo at the club, with a group of friends or something like that is not the best idea here.
As a general rule, try to use a photo that makes your face visible, but you don't need to lock yourself in the 3×4 pose – be natural. Smile or keep a more serious face, whichever is more in line with your profile. Choose some outfit you can imagine wearing to work, for example, and opt for clean, neutral backgrounds like a clean wall or some office space.
If you work or want to work in a more creative area, this may be the time to show some of your talents. Editing your photo by making graphic backgrounds, using bright colors and things like that can also be a good idea – the important thing is that these images are consistent with your profile and objective.
Title and abstract
The title is the text that appears just below your name in the profile, and the tip here is to put the position or area you work in or want to work
Tip: Although some people tend to put something like “looking for a new job” and the like in the title when looking for a job, this might not be a good idea. Putting the position or area in which you want to work instead of texts like “looking for opportunities” makes your name appear to recruiters who search for these terms.
The summary should be a brief presentation about who you are as a professional. Avoid very long texts and focus on the most important information about yourself such as your area of expertise, past experiences, interests, and professional goals.
For both the title and the abstract, remember that it is important to insert words that can be used by recruiters looking for professionals. If you want to appear in searches related to User Experience, make sure that terms like UX and even User Experience are present in these texts.
General rule: fill in everything you can
Any search engine depends on the quality of the information available to offer good results, and this also happens on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn CEO Milton Beck reinforced the importance of filling in all available fields on your profile with complete, true, and up-to-date information to improve your profile's visibility. Here are tips for some specific sections:
Professional experience
Add all your professional experiences and always try to link each one with the official pages of the respective companies.
In describing each experience, avoid very long texts and try to organize the most relevant information into topics, making reading easier and more attractive. It's a good idea to add external media like links and photos related to what you did during that experience.
Academic information
We have already mentioned the importance of filling in all the fields, and in the article above LinkedIn's general director reinforces:
Here you can also use the description to highlight some of the most important or interesting points of your academic career and give more value to this information.
Certificates and Skills
This is another chance to highlight relevant information about your professional profile.
It is worth listing your certificates and providing links to the institutions that issued each one of them as a way of reinforcing your knowledge or skill in specific subjects, which can be a differential for some areas of expertise.
Entering skills also helps to showcase your area of expertise and highlight your strengths, which can be maximized when your connections recognize and support the skills listed on your profile.
How to Build a LinkedIn Profile: Be Active!
Despite the fact that the presence of some people on LinkedIn has already become a joke, such as the topic of the group on Face book “Group where we pretend to be emotional LinkedIn entrepreneurs“, maintaining network activity can be a great way to increase your visibility.
Instead of #changing #your #mindset and posting and sharing everything that appears ahead with a motivational bias, let your presence on LinkedIn reflect your interests and goals in a natural and true way.
Being active doesn't mean you necessarily have to start writing or publishing your own content on the net. Although this content production is something to consider, the simple habit of liking, commenting, or sharing publications on the network can help you reach more people and increase your profile's visibility.
