Anne Marie Mills, drawing on her experiences as a summer intern at LinkedIn, will be sharing her advice in a new weekly piece. Welcome to the first “LinkedIn Tip of the Week”! -ed.
LinkedIn Tip of the Week
Profile Completeness
Hopefully, by now you’ve started building up your LinkedIn profile with your resume information.
There are 5 big things that you should do to build a complete profile.
1) Top Card – This is what we call the top box of your profile and it includes your profile photo, your headline, industry, location, your specific linkedin.com address, and other basic information about your background. To be complete, you must have your industry, location and a photo (smiling face, not a logo please). However, you can increase how many times you show up in search results by also including a headline (sell yourself!) and a unique address (you can edit the one they give you to be just your name or something more meaningful to you).
2) Summary – The summary section is required to be considered a complete profile. You can go as in depth as you would like, but keep in mind that if it’s too long, a recruiter might not make it to your positions. You should use this to tell your story (think elevator pitch) and stand out from the crowd. This is also a great place to explain why you are making a career switch, if that’s the case.
3) Positions – You not only must have a current position, but you should also have at least two previous positions. Keep in mind that being a student here at Owen and anywhere else, is most definitely a position! In the description of your positions, which does need to be in your current position for completeness, you can talk to what concentration you are working toward. In addition, you can also use the courses section to associate your coursework with this position.
4) Education & Skills – We know you’re proud to be a part of the Owen community, so add it to your profile. You should also include any other education institutions that you have attended, although you don’t have to go all the way back to high school. Now that we know you’ve been educated, we also want to know what you consider your top skills. You should list at least five, but I know you have more than that, so go to town!
5) Connections – Finally, go out there and network! To be a complete profile you should have at least 50 connections, and that should be easy enough when you include your classmates, professors, and other professional connections. Remember, the goal with connections is to connect with those who you know well and have spent time with professionally. As you add connections, you can use any of the options (colleague, classmate, done business, friend, or other) but if you click ‘Don’t know’, you probably don’t know them well enough to connect. However, if you met them at a conference, it is ok to use ‘colleague’ or ‘done business’, since there isn’t an exact match. It is also recommended to personalize the personal note.
I hope that this helps you build a great profile, but remember this is just a start. There is a lot you can do on LinkedIn, so stay tuned for more tips and tricks each week!
Loading ...