Websites like LinkedIn are becoming more and more popular, especially the idea of using an online profile to try and attract potential employers. The important part about this is making sure your profile is spot on and that people from various companies like what they see from you.
Here is my LinkedIn profile to show you my attempt at creating a professional online profile. However, there are many ways you can impress with your linked in profile:
Make Your Profile Look Professional
First of all, you’re going to want to upload a picture of yourself on your profile, particularly a professionally taken picture. Keep it simple, while only keeping a headshot of yourself so people can see what you look like. Your name should be your name and your name only, while maintaining a snappy headline to capture potential readers’ attention. You’re going to want to add links to all your different websites to help you appear more in searches online. Be sure to keep things on your other links hidden so that viewers don’t see things you don’t want strangers to see. For websites like twitter, which are usually open to almost anyone, make sure your profile looks professional and doesn’t contain photos from nights out.
Keep It Updated
Keeping an up-to-date profile is essential in order to make your profile stand out. Things like status updates and keeping your work/educational history is important for companies to get a clearer picture of who you are. By remaining inactive on LinkedIn, it isn’t possible for other people to see what you have been doing with your career in recent times.
Presenting Your Skills
Be sure to present your skills by using various different keywords, such as marketing or public speaking. Beware, however, generalizing, or showing people that you’re the jack-of-all-trades kind of individual, doesn’t sit well with companies as they want to see what specific and specialized skills you offer so that they can see what field you fit into as a potential employee. Adding to that, using words like outstanding and excellent aren’t very believable, so it is suggested that you show them what you did instead of potentially praising yourself too much.
By maintaining a solid LinkedIn profile, you should be able to impress almost anyone who comes across your profile in the future. Nowadays, we are seeing social media and technology have a much larger impact on our lives, so companies and potential employers will follow suit and use social media to recruit people.
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References
Dartmouth, “6 Steps to Creating a Professional Profile”, Dartmouth, (Electronic Resource) <http://www.dartmouth.edu/~csrc/docs/linkedin_howto.pdf
Dodaro, Melonie, “21 Steps To The Perfect LinkedIn Profile”, TopDog Social Media, (Electronic Resource) <http://topdogsocialmedia.com/linkedin-training-creating-the-perfect-profile/
Dummies, “How to Create Effective and Professional Online Profiles”, For Dummies, (Electronic Resource) <http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-create-effective-and-professional-online-pr.html
Gant, Jesse, “7 Ways to Optimize Your Professional Profile”, Mashable, (Electroinc Resource) <http://mashable.com/2012/07/17/optimize-online-professional-profile/#AhPa.O6k0Sqx
maxcordery 
Hi Max,
Really good advice there for a LinkedIn profile! I especially agree with what you said about being specific when talking about your skills, and detailing your experience. To build on what you said about making your profile look professional, I think it’s extremely important to make sure that you use correct spelling and grammar on your profile. There’s nothing worse for an employer than seeing spelling errors, and it can massively detract from the overall quality.
As well as using LinkedIn, it’s good to explore other methods of building an online professional profile. Creating a blog or a website to showcase your skills are a couple of other ways of making yourself known to potential employers.
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Hi Max,
You mention that having a professional looking photo is key to the LinkedIn profile. Several of the articles I read about building an authentic personal profile talked about the importance of using the same photo across all social media accounts.
In this youtube video Jacob Cass talks about how important it is to have the same photo so that you are easily recognisable across all of your online accounts, to make sure your personal brand is consistent and solid.
Do you think that the photograph that you use is so essential? Do you have multiple social media accounts and have you attempted to bring them together under your personal brand, as Jacob suggests?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Katie
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