Gone are the days when you used to get an hour long phone call to showcase our skills and get judged over vocal power and phonetic discussions.
In the age of the fourth industrial revolution, social media is the leading game changer and we can’t help but network.
Read on to know how to create the LinkedIn summary which may be your first and often the last chance of a first impression.
The profile basics
Your profile is your LinkedIn page that describes your career history, education, and other related content you may want to publish.
A complete LinkedIn profile can help you connect with opportunity.Check out more information to get started or learn ways to strengthen your existing profile:
- Learn how to add sections to your profile
- Check out who’s viewing your profile with Profile Stats
- Learn how to hide or customize your public profile
- Learn what’s visible to others on your profile
- Forward someone else’s profile to a connection
- Find out LinkedIn’s suggestions based on your profile information
The Beginning Section
If you’re new to LinkedIn or just haven’t visited for a while, you’re probably wondering how to get the most out of your profile. The landing page is the sweet spot to attack and that’s the single window entry into the hearts of your viewers.
The profile picture
- Choose a photo that looks like you : Remember this is not Instagram
- Make sure your face takes up most of the frame
- Smile with your eyes
- Wear what you’d wear to work
- Choose a background that isn’t distracting
Enhance your personal brand by creating a custom URL for your LinkedIn public profile by going to your profile settings and going to Edit public profile URL
It’s great to include your accomplishments in any field, people tend to see and check your works and get a front row view into your intelligence, diversity, creativity and of course, your work structure, you can do this by clicking on “add profile section” button
Mentioning 5-6 skills will make it easier for you to be active on the radar. If you want to work on a cruise ship, your karaoke skills are well worth a mention but not if you want to work at Dell.
- Customize your invitations — Those 300 characters can have a big impact, though: If you’re connecting with someone you know well, it’s a great opportunity to say something nice and reinforce the relationship.
- If you’re connecting with someone you don’t know well, it’s a great opportunity to remind him or her how you met. If you’re connecting with someone you don’t know at all, it’s your only opportunity to convince him or her to accept.
The Summary Section
It’s often said not to judge a book by its cover, but things are a little different in the world of social networking. Getting a rock-solid summary is the foundation of your profile.
LinkedIn describes the profile summary as the place to give information about your Missions, Accomplishments and Goals. In summation, it’s the only way to brief your unique story to your prospective employers.
What should you put in the summary
- New Jobs? New Customers? New Suppliers? Think about the people who would visit your profile, try being in their shoes and judge yourself. Why would they want to contact you?
- The spark that makes you remarkable, note down your strengths and aspirations, the things you are good at and most importantly; the problems you are able to fix! Try to be as much creative as you can because, you are!
- Once you are done with your objectives, it’s now time to tell them to your audience with a tale this always helps people remember information Tell something that reflects yourself in better than the best way possible!
- You can write in the third person, if you are comfortable with that style, but we recommend that you write in first person.
How to write a summary?
Target different kinds of user on LinkedIn and sum up your educational past, qualifications, and charisma! It’ll act as an extra pointer for people to connect with you, hire or simply network with you!
There are numerous types of summaries like
- Mission or Assignment based where we need to make sure to be as much specific as we can and hence focus on the details to fetch proper connections. It basically narrows down the highway of broad categories as it’ll help you to connect to people you want to connect with and vice-versa!
- The next type is a more self-focused one, the Personality or Character based helps targeting a huge audience and it can assist you with building up followers and connections from all over the world, across different backgrounds of work ethics and culture! This is more helpful for people without a strict focus on their aftermath of LinkedIn.
- The Blended or Mingled based summary gives you the best of both worlds! It can aid anyone to focus on their particular work side of their profile while not completely ignoring the personal side of it. This can really help to make a top rated profile summary and is the most used in LinkedIn. It becomes a non-zero-sum game and a win-win situation for everyone!
With many more summaries coming along with new updates of the LinkedIn app and our brains, it doesn’t matter much which summary type you choose—having a well-written, thoughtful and creative one will do wonders for your LinkedIn goals.
Lastly but perhaps most importantly – Review!!!
The last thing that you would want your readers to notice about your summary are your typos or bad grammar. It’s better to have no summary at all than to have an ugly one.
Make your summary your mirror, reflecting your current situation and keep updating it periodically. Visit and learn from the summaries of people who you know are good at connecting on LinkedIn in your domain of expertise.
How to Build Connections on LinkedIn?
- The best way to get recommendations on LinkedIn is to give them. When you recommend a LinkedIn member, you are attesting to their qualifications – and people love being recommended.
- They will probably reciprocate if you take the time to recommend them.
- Or, you can ask for a recommendation. It’s easy to request a recommendation via LinkedIn’s messaging system. When you request a recommendation, ask the person to recommend you if they can and if they have the time.
- This way they have an out if they aren’t interested in giving you a reference, are precluded by company policy from giving references, or don’t feel they know you well enough to recommend your work.
- It can be helpful to include with any request a reminder of the shared experience which might serve as a basis for their recommendation. For example: “I thought you might be kind enough to write a LinkedIn recommendation for me given our successful collaboration on the Johnson proposal.”
- Once you cross a connection strength of 200, people tend to connect with you and as you add your skills, gradually people start endorsing you.
- For simple endorsements, software or IT professionals tend to work as freelancers and ask their clients to endorse and review them which in turn helps them get spotted on the radar and helps them advance their career in a positive direction.
Common Errors On LinkedIn Profile
Here is a list of few things that you shouldn’t do on LinkedIn
- Forget the Purpose of LinkedIn – There are three reasons why LinkedIn is useful to you: it provides information, it’s a billboard to highlight your unique value proposition, and recruiters will be looking for you there. That’s important to keep in mind.
- Confuse LinkedIn With Facebook – In a similar vein, be careful what you share. LinkedIn isn’t Facebook. Share content, advice and opinions that boost your professional credentials. It’s all about relevancy. Save the other non-work related stuff for Facebook.
- Use the Wrong Photo – Don’t include your kid, your cat, your dog, your significant other, your latest vacation or the kitchen sink in your LinkedIn profile picture. LinkedIn is about the professional you, not the personal you and it’s not hard to keep it that way.
- Ignore LinkedIn Messages – Everyone gets tons of email and messages and it’s easy to ignore them, especially when you don’t know who is writing to you.
- Have a Mismatch in Your Profile – Don’t raise any red flags by having a LinkedIn profile that doesn’t match your resume. Double check job titles (yes, they matter and they need to be accurate), employer names and dates of employment.
- Be sure everything lines up, so when a prospective employer reviews your resume it will match what you have on LinkedIn.
- Forget to Get a Personalized URL – A custom LinkedIn URL makes a terrific addition to your resume and business card, it will help you build your brand, and get your profile noticed.
- Ask People You Don’t Know for Recommendations or Referrals – If I don’t know you well enough to be able to attest personally to your value, I’m not going to jeopardize my relationships with my connections by referring or recommending you.
- Forget to Turn Off Your Activity Broadcasts – When you’re updating and tweaking your profile, especially when you’re employed and you don’t want the boss to know you’re job searching, it’s a good idea to turn off your activity broadcasts so your updates don’t show in your feed.
Lastly, visit here to see a collection of 10 highly impactful profiles.
So what are you waiting for? Get building!!!
Photo by Rebecca Matthews