LinkedIn Profile Optimization Tips

LinkedIn Profile Optimization Tips

The following offers insightful LinkedIn profile optimization tips for job seekers of all industries and experience levels. This means taking advantage of the many features for populating your profile with unique and substantive content.

• Related: LinkedIn Profile Components

I don’t believe there is a single “right way” for building a LinkedIn profile. My style is one that is developed over many years of first-hand practice while serving a broad-range of professionals across multiple industries and occupations.

With these considerations in mind, here is a high-level look at some LinkedIn profile optimization tips.

About

About is the opening portion of your LinkedIn profile – just below the introduction card. This is a 2,000-character limit opportunity to communicate your skills, experience, and personality.

• I believe in writing the about section in first-person tense (I, my, etc).
• You should aim to establish your seniority level as well as your industry and occupational specialties. This means writing a professional description that uses action-oriented language and relevant keywords.
• I recommend writing in two to four-line paragraphs.
• You may use bullet points and special characters or add/link to external documents, pictures, websites, videos, and presentations.

Aside from the words on paper, the layout and presentation of your content matters a lot. Below is a sample of an about section for a LinkedIn profile. I blurred this because the point is to give you a taste of the visual layout and presentation (not the words themselves).

About Sample

Experience

Experience is where you add the work history details to your profile. This section is comprised of several fields including job title, employment type, company, location, dates, description, and media.

• Similar to the About section, this should be written using first-person tense.
• I recommend aiming for a 3-line summary that offers a high-level description. This needs to communicate the scope of responsibility.
• I recommend that you avoid copy/pasting information directly from your Resume.
• You should also resist the temptation to write long-winded job descriptions here.
• Specific achievements or initiatives from your work history may be listed in long-form in the Projects section.

Here are some helpful instructions related to your experience section including adding, editing, or removing jobs and handling multiple jobs at one company.

Job Opportunities

Open to Job Opportunities is a feature on LinkedIn allowing you to discreetly let recruiters know you’re open to new opportunities. The great thing here is you’re able to indicate job titles and geographic locations that interest you without letting your network know that you’re looking.

• You may select five maximum job titles from LinkedIn’s pre-populated titles. It’s important to select ones that accurately represent your experience level, occupation, and/or industry concentration.
• You may select five maximum geographic locations which are offered at the local, county, state, and regional level. For instance, if you’re looking for a job in Chicago, you may input any of the following geographies: Chicago, IL, Greater Chicago Area, Cook County, IL, or State of Illinois.
• You may select as many of the job types that you’re willing to pursue. The list includes full-time, contact, part-time, intern, volunteer, temporary, and remote.

Job Opportunities Sample Form

Projects

Projects is one of the most underutilized and overlooked sections on LinkedIn. This area allows you to add individual or team projects to your profile to highlight your work experience in greater detail. Adding multiple projects means populating your profile with substantive, achievement-driven content.

Here is a related article with tips for Adding Projects on LinkedIn.

• I recommend writing projects in an active first-person format.
• Projects can be specific and more long-winded than your work experience.
• You may list as many projects as you’d like.
• Projects are conveniently displayed in a collapsed format which means they can be as long and detailed as you’d like, without being an eye sore.

URL

Customizing your LinkedIn Profile URL is a simple step you can take to enhance your professional image and make your profile more easily found. Here are step-by-step instructions for customizing your profile’s URL. If you have a common first or last name it’s possible that your first URL choice has already been claimed by another user on LinkedIn, so you may need to be creative. No matter what, try to keep your URL short and easy to remember.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, optimizing your LinkedIn profile is a time-consuming process requiring attention across multiple components of your LinkedIn profile. This article aims to provide a high-level overview of strategy and philosophy for handling a few key areas of your profile. Ready for professional assistance enhancing your LinkedIn profile? Check out our popular LinkedIn Optimization service.