LinkedIn is the biggest professional networking platform at the moment. Thousands and thousands of professionals use it to share their knowledge, experience and wisdom with everyone out there. It is only advisable to optimize your LinkedIn profile at all times. Your LinkedIn profile doesn’t act as another networking platform but also as your resume.

No, LinkedIn is not just for jobs. It is to get leads for your business, communicating with like-minded individuals, becoming an authority in your niche, brand visibility, reach and awareness and more. It is not just a platform for marketers. It also consists of businesspeople, CEOs, Directors, IT Experts, etc.

It pains me when I see a bad or incomplete profile on LinkedIn. Because if you are investing time in making your resume, then why not LinkedIn? Many of those details are the same. LinkedIn gives you much more options to talk about yourself in a detailed manner, whereas that is not the case in a resume which has to be kept to a minimum of 1-3 pages depending on your experience.

In this article, we are going to talk about how to optimise your LinkedIn profile professionally and keep it up-to-date.

7 Tips On How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Personal Details

Name:

Mention your name with the right spelling. For, e.g. Aditi Jain.
The first letter of the name should be capitalised. It might look basic, but still, many people end up making this mistake.

Pronunciation:

This feature is only available on the mobile app of LinkedIn. You can record your name the way you pronounce it. That way if someone doesn’t know the pronunciation of your name, might have some help from it.
Headline: Your headline shouldn’t just be about your designation. It should contain information about what you do or how you help companies achieve what you do. Don’t include more than three things. Like Social Media Marketer | Content Writer | Blogger or Recruiting candidates for Big4 Companies.

Display Picture:

LinkedIn is for professionals, and therefore everything you include must be of the same standard. Include a professional photograph or just a headshot with no filters.

Cover Photo:

Use Canva for this section. Select a template of your choice and edit it with your details.

Country:

Mention the Country you belong to here.

Location:

Specify which region, State, City, Town you belong to in the country.

Industry:

Select the industry you work in like Accounting, Banking, Marketing & Advertising, Information Technology, Transport, Warehousing etc.)

Contact Details:

Do not forget to mention your Email id and phone no. (depends on you) here. You want people to reach out to you directly and on the spot and not wait around for you to reply to their messages and then give them your details. You can even include your blog link in this section.

About

Consider this section as your summary. Answer the Who, What, When, Why, How of you.
Who are you?
What do you do?
When did you start doing this?
Why do you do this?
What inspired you to take the path that you’re onto?
How do you achieve your targets?
Answer these questions about yourself and the about section should be ready. LinkedIn gives you 2000 characters for this section. Use it wisely.
Use Grammarly to check your spellings, Grammatical errors and mistakes. And even after all this you still have trouble writing YOUR about section, then check out other people who do the same work as you and see what they’ve written.

via Team Coco on GIPHY

Featured:

Post, Articles, Links, Media (Photos, Documents, Presentations)
This section is for featuring a post of yours that had a great reach, or an article which you thought was your best write up. You can even include items that you’ve published or a link to something you created like a blog or want to add a media like images, or a PDF, certificates, etc. which you think will highlight your work.

Background

This section includes your job and internship experiences, as well as your education. These should be in chronological order. The latest should come first and then oldest in the end.

Experience:

Now, when you are making your resume, you are restricted to one or two pages, and you have to be to-the-point. But that’s not the case with LinkedIn. It doesn’t even limit you if you have ten jobs. So go ahead and mention all of the internships you took and the jobs you took.

But remember, Internships are for a shorter duration, but it is not the case with jobs. If you have held positions for only a few months, it might be best not to include it as it might give your employer that you are not stable at a job. But if you think that the job is essential to mention, then go ahead.
Now don’t just mention your Designation, Company details, your tenure and run away.

Take some time to write the job description or the tasks that you were handling in the organisation. If you are not a writer, then take some help from your writer friend to help you draft this section effectively. If they are not available, then open the email you received while applying for the job. You will find the full job description in detail. Don’t just copy-paste the content as it is. Please read it carefully and see what all things you did and any other additional responsibilities you took. Then edit it as per your suitability.

You also have the option of adding various links related to your work here, or you can upload your document in this section.

Education:

Include the Schools you went to, the college and the university where you got your Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. You can also mention any diploma courses you took here.

License & Certificates:

This section includes the licenses and the certifications you have. Now don’t go and put your school cooking First prize in Fancy Dress certificates here. Mention only the credentials that are related to your field or will help you in your career.
If you have a LinkedIn profile as a company page, you can put the licences that your company has.

via GIFt Delivery on GIPHY

Volunteer Experience:

Have you worked with an NGO for a drive and volunteered at a CSR activity? This is the place to mention it!

Skills & Endorsements

Skills here don’t mean whether you are kind or punctual. Here it means skills that you have which are essential for your careers. You can put up to 50 skills on your profile. You even have the option of rearranging skills in the order you want.
There are five types of kills.

Top Skills:

You can select any three skills you want and make them your top Skills and pin them to the top.

Industry Knowledge:

These are related to the industry you work for. These skills can be connected to Sales, Graphic Designing, Architecture, Engineering, Marketing, Human Resources, etc.

Tools & Technologies:

These will be technical skills. Like MS Office, Analytics, Database Management, Report Handling, etc.

Interpersonal Skills:

These will be communication, Empathy, Listening, management etc.

Other Skills:

These will be a combination of all the skills.
E.g., If you’re into Human resources, then it will be Recruitment, Employee Training, Payroll Management etc. And if If you are a Digital Marketer, then it will Be Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Advertising, Funnel, Automation, Email Marketing etc.

Endorsements:

You can endorse or support each other’s skills by clicking on the plus sign. LinkedIn will ask you questions like how well do you think that person is on that skill and how do you know that person. It is good to build endorsements from the people you know and have worked with because it builds credibility.

Accomplishments

This is the place where you can show off all of your talents.

via Awkwafina on GIPHY

Publication:

Do you have an article that got published somewhere? or were you mentioned in any of the articles or journal? Put it here.

Patents:

Created something new and got it patented? Put it here.

Courses:

Done any course which you think deserves mention? Put it here.

Projects:

Been a part of a project or started a project which did well? Put it here.

Honours & Awards:

Got honoured for doing something or received an award for your professional talent? Put it here.

Test Scores:

These will mostly include a test you took for a course, but if you have a test score you took in the college and think it is something boast about, then put it here.

Language:

Know any language besides English and your native language? Put it here.

Additional

Recommendation:

This section is for the recommendations or reviews you receive for your work. You can request someone whom you’ve worked with to give you a recommendation. But ask only those people whom you’ve worked with, so it looks genuine.

Supported Languages:

You can make your profile available in a language other than English. This feature comes handy when you’re working with clients who are not that familiar with your language.

That’s it, guys! This is how I optimised my profile and got freelance projects and earned some extra cash.

Now go ahead and optimise your LinkedIn profile.

You can checkout my profile here for reference.

I will soon be writing about how you can network on LinkedIn and generate more leads for your business.

Check out this post on how to keep your business consistent.

Till then, Tada.

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