Your Ultimate LinkedIn Guide

Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

Intro

Did you know that LinkedIn recently hit a milestone of one billion members worldwide? That’s one billion potential connections waiting to be made.

Hi there, I’m Sam, and I’m here to help you create a LinkedIn profile that stands out to employers and opens doors to new opportunities.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

LinkedIn Functionalities

Let’s explore 4 key functionalities that make LinkedIn such a valuable platform:

1. Professional Networking: LinkedIn helps you build and grow your professional connections by connecting with people, joining groups, and following creators, companies and schools you like. It also enables direct communication for professional conversations and collaboration.
2. Job Opportunities: Recruiters frequently use LinkedIn to find talent, so keeping your profile updated boosts visibility and your chances of being contacted for relevant job opportunities.
3. Personal Branding: LinkedIn allows you to share articles, posts, updates, and interact with other users through likes, comments, and shares.
4. Professional Development: LinkedIn Learning offers many online courses covering diverse topics to support users in their professional growth and development.

LinkedIn Basics

Now that we’ve explored the main functionalities of LinkedIn, let’s dive into the basics of setting up and optimizing your LinkedIn profile to make the most out of this dynamic platform.

1. Sign up for an account: Getting started on LinkedIn is straightforward. Simply visit LinkedIn and follow the prompts to create your profile.
2. Visibility: While it’s important to maintain an active presence on LinkedIn, you may not want all of your connections to be notified every time you make a small update to your profile.
   → To control this, click on your Profile Picture, select Settings & Privacy, click Visibility in the left rail, and under Visibility of your LinkedIn activity, turn off Share profile updates with your network.
3. Public Profile & URL: Keep your username short, simple, and consistent with your other profiles across different platforms. This helps with branding and ensures that you’re easily recognizable to others in your professional network.
4. Basic Info: Complete your profile with essential details: your full name, pronouns, industry, location, and contact information. Including links to other relevant professional profiles can facilitate easy networking.
5. Profile Picture: Your profile picture is the first impression you make on LinkedIn. Use a high-quality image with your face clearly visible, be the only person in the photo, avoid selfies, and wear casual clothes with a friendly smile.
6. Background Image: Customize your background image to reflect your interests or industry. You can easily create one using tools like Canva. Simply visit the website, search for LinkedIn Banner Image, choose your favourite design, and edit the information to fit your profile.
7. Headline: This is a brief, attention-grabbing statement that appears below your name on LinkedIn. Keep it professional and update it regularly to reflect changes in your role or expertise. Consider using AI tools like ChatGPT to create a customized headline.
8. Open to Work: Use this feature to signal to recruiters that you’re actively seeking new opportunities.
   → To do that, click your profile picture, go to Frames, select Open to Work, and provide job details. Choose to be open to everyone or just recruiters. Your profile picture updates with a frame signaling you’re job hunting.

LinkedIn Core Sections

LinkedIn organizes profile sections into 3 levels, and we’ll explore the most crucial elements of each. Let’s begin with the ‘Core sections’, which are essential for getting noticed by recruiters and connections.

1. About: I recommend including a snapshot of who you are, what you bring to the table, and why others should connect with you. Keep it focused, and professional, while adding your own unique personality. Highlighting your skills and achievements isn’t bragging; it’s about demonstrating your value. After all, what’s the point of being the best programmer if nobody knows?
   → To do this, click Add profile section, and from the Core dropdown, select Add about. Type your about information into the applicable field. Click Save
2. Education: This offers context about your qualifications to employers and connections, showcasing academic achievements and expertise for credibility and opportunities.
   → Click Add profile section, and from the Core dropdown, select Add education. Type your education information into each applicable field. Click Save.
3. Position: This section allows you to showcase your previous and current roles, responsibilities, and your achievements in each role.
   → Click Add profile section button, and from the Core dropdown, select Add position. In the Add experience pop-up window, enter your information into the fields provided. Click Save.

Now, let’s talk about how to present your accomplishments on your LinkedIn profile. I recommend using the XYZ format:

Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z].

This means focusing on quantitative results and the impact you had. Let’s see an example. Instead of just saying:

• OK: “Won second place in hackathon.”

you could provide more context and write it like:

• Better: “Won second place out of 50 teams in hackathon.”

or you could give more context and highlight the specific impact you made:

• Best: “Won second place out of 18 teams in the J.P. Morgan’s hackathon by working with a team of 5 to create a mobile app that facilitates socialization in the deafblind community.”

Just remember, the more specific you can be, the better.

4. Skills:
→ Click Add profile section, select Add skills from the Core dropdown, then either type or select a skill from the dropdown list. Check the relevant boxes indicating where you’ve used this skill, and click Save.

After adding your skills, I suggest reordering them to prioritize the most relevant ones by clicking on the Reorder icon in the More dropdown menu, then dragging and dropping them into the desired order.

LinkedIn Recommended Sections

Now, let’s explore the “Recommended sections”, which add depth and detail to your LinkedIn profile, boosting credibility and opening up more opportunities.

1. Featured: This section is used to highlight your most relevant and impressive work, accomplishments, or media, such as articles, presentations, or projects.
   → To add this, click on the Add profile section button and select Featured from the dropdown menu. Then, follow the prompts to upload a new one or link to your current content.
2. Licences & Certifications | Projects | Courses: To add licenses & certifications, projects, or courses to your LinkedIn profile, follow these steps:
   → Click Add profile section, choose the desired section from the dropdown menu, and fill in details for each entry, such as name, description, provider, completion date, and your role. Include your certificates in Licenses & Certifications, projects on GitHub in Projects, or courses in Courses. Click Save to add the section to your profile.

LinkedIn Additional Sections

Now, let’s delve into the third level of profile sections — “Additional sections” to add even more personality to your LinkedIn profile. These sections, while optional, can help expand your network and build relationships.

These sections, including Volunteer Experience, Honors & Awards, Test Scores, Languages, and others, are self-explanatory.

To add any of these sections, simply follow these steps:

• Click Add profile section, select the desired section from the Additional dropdown menu, and fill in the necessary information in the pop-up window. Once you’ve completed all the relevant fields, click Save to incorporate the section into your profile.

Final Tips

Now that we’ve covered the various sections to enhance your LinkedIn profile, here are five final tips to take it to the next level:

1. Professional Engagement: Be mindful of your LinkedIn interactions and focus on career-related activities to maintain a professional image aligned with your goals.
2. Recommendations: Ask former colleagues for testimonials. Recommendations leave a lasting impression, especially on those unfamiliar with you. Avoid generic or overly enthusiastic endorsements.
3. Skill Assessments: Take advantage of LinkedIn Skill Assessments to validate your expertise and enhance your profile credibility.
4. Endorsements: Request endorsements from colleagues, managers, clients, mentors, professors, and friends to add credibility to your profile and enhance your professional reputation.
5. Collaborative Articles: Contributing to these articles can help you grow a following and build a reputation on LinkedIn, while helping others move forward in their careers.

Conclusion

Remember, your LinkedIn profile is more than just an online resume; it’s your personal brand and professional identity in the digital world. So, continue to regularly update your profile and actively engage with your network to truly unlock the full potential of LinkedIn.

If you found this article helpful, don’t forget to share it with your friends who could benefit from these tips.

Thank you for reading :)

ChatGPT Prompts

Use these ChatGPT prompts to optimize your profile:

1. For your profile headline:

Prompt: Create a LinkedIn headline for a <insert role> role in <add industry> specializing in < insert specializations>.

Here is my resume:

<add your resume>

Here is my target job:

<add your target job>

Stick to LinkedIn’s character limit, create multiple variations, and use KPI where relevant.

2. For your profile summary:

Prompt: Write a compelling About section for LinkedIn that effectively showcases my professional brand. Start with a strong introduction, highlight my key skills, achievements, career goals and close with a call to action.

My skills: <insert your skills>

My achievements: <insert your achievements>

My career goals: <insert your goals>

Here are my target jobs <paste job descriptions>

3. For your work experience bullet point using XYZ format:

Provide bullet points for my LinkedIn experience section following the XYZ format: Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z]. Focus on quantitative results and impact. For example:

Accomplished [specific achievement] as measured by [quantifiable metric], by doing [specific action or project].

4. For finding 50 important skills in your role:

Prompt: Suggest 50 key skills to include in the ‘Skills’ section of my LinkedIn profile. I am looking for <insert target job title> roles in <specific industry> industry.

Stick to LinkedIn’s character limit, create multiple variations, and use KPI where relevant.

I look forward to sharing my journey in the next posts, where I will let you guys know where I am going next, so stay tuned! Feel free to explore my Linktree to easily find everything I create across my social media profiles.