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    Ace Your LinkedIn Profile With These Tips

    By Parisraja Bajpai
    23 Apr'22  8 min read
    Ace Your LinkedIn Profile With These Tips
    Synopsis

    Do you think you need to create a LinkedIn profile only when you start to look for a job? If yes, it’s time to revisit your thoughts. Begin preparing yourself early and well for the professional world. Read this article to know a few LinkedIn profile tips, the steps to becoming an active user of LinkedIn, and what are the essentials of a LinkedIn profile.

    Ace Your LinkedIn Profile With These Tips
    Synopsis

    Do you think you need to create a LinkedIn profile only when you start to look for a job? If yes, it’s time to revisit your thoughts. Begin preparing yourself early and well for the professional world. Read this article to know a few LinkedIn profile tips, the steps to becoming an active user of LinkedIn, and what are the essentials of a LinkedIn profile.

    With the rapid onset of digitalisation, having an online presence is of supreme importance for students and professionals alike. While social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram help you to build your personal profile and enhance visibility among your social circle, LinkedIn is a similar platform for growing your professional network. You can add a picture, post your ideas, update your accomplishments, connect with other students and professionals, look for work opportunities, market yourself, and what not!

    As a future professional, LinkedIn is a platform that you should pay substantial attention to. Let us now discuss a few ways of creating a strong LinkedIn profile.

    Also Read | 8 Reasons Why Students Should Use LinkedIn

    Setting Up An Account

    The first step is to register your email id and set a password to register yourself as a LinkedIn member. You would then need to start filling out details in the further sections.

    Section 1

    • Name | Use your official, full name.
    • Headline | The headline should very briefly summarise who you are and what you are looking for.
    • Role | Add your current position. Students may write ‘student’ in this section.

    Section 2

    • Education | Put here your highest educational qualification yet.
    • Location | Put in your current location.
    • Industry | Ideally, one needs to mention the industry they belong to. But, if you are just starting out, mention the industry you are most interested to explore, for example, marketing.
    • Picture | Add a high-resolution picture of yours that is appropriate for professional purposes. This is very important as it helps you make a statement and stand out from others.
    • Contact Info | Make sure you enter an email address that looks and sounds professional in nature, for example, firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Do away with informal usernames, for instance, sweetgirl_aru@yahoo.com.

    Also Read | What Is Cold Emailing? How Should You Write A Cold Email?

    Headline | Imagine meeting the CEO of a company, how would you introduce yourself? Think of how you would describe yourself best in only a few words. Writing just ‘student’ here won’t generate much interest in people who visit your profile. Write a bit about where you are now and where exactly you see yourself a few years down the line.

    For example:-

    • Future Lawyer
    • Aspiring Engineer
    • Eco Major, Aspiring Financial Analyst
    • Continual Learner
    • Looking for Opportunities in XYZ
    • Experienced with Python / C++

    You can write something similar to the above and/or combine two or more of such phrases as per what describes you best.

    Summary Section | The goal here is to highlight your qualifications, interests, and skills and reveal a bit about your personality too. Mention your motivations, interests, what drives you, and what your next academic or professional step is likely to be. Keep your summary as brief and simple as possible. It may look like the example below.

    Commerce student and marketing enthusiast looking to put knowledge into practice and start a career in the field of marketing. I exhibit an entrepreneurial spirit and can adapt easily to any environment.

    Another example may look like this-

    I am an Arts student at Shiksha school, Mumbai. I possess an artistic flair and am a part of the Arts club in school. I have won various inter-school competitions and have a deep interest in Graphic Designing. I am a continuous learner and looking for opportunities where I can showcase my creativity and skills.

    Experience Section | This section requires you to mention the positions you have previously held. If you are new to the work industry, write down about any academic or cultural positions you may have held in your school. Also, mention your accomplishments in the role held.

    Education Section | If you are in high school, fill in the present status, add a beginning date, and mention ‘present’. This would show your profile visitors that you are still in high school. If you have finished school and still not started college, add the dates accordingly.

    Projects | Whether you were a part of a team that developed an app, or took a project as part of the robotics team, make sure to list it here and showcase how and what you achieved.

    Certifications | List any workshops you have attended or any course certification/s that you have done. You can add a series of such achievements in this section.

    Volunteering Experience | If you have been part of an NGO, a non-profit, or worked for the betterment of society in any way, it is a good idea to mention it in this section. Whether or not you were paid for the work, admission offices of universities and recruiters often look at this section as closely as they do at your work experience. This is as valuable as any paid work you have done, or would do in the future.

    Also Read | Tips To Look For Internships In High School

    Skills Section | Enlist what you feel are your skills that would add value to your further studies and work, and try to put in at least five key skills.

    For example, let's say you are, or aspire to be, a graphic designer. You could mention your proficiency in various graphic designing software like Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw, and the like.

    Your contacts can then endorse you for these skills. This will give more validation and relevance to your profile.

    Recommendations | Here, let other people narrate your tales of glory. Ask your classmates, seniors, teachers, managers, and ex-managers to write recommendations for you. It’s best to pick people who know you well and can vouch for your skills, talent, work ethic, and character on the platform. This gives credibility and weightage to your profile. Any person who visits your profile will be able to see these recommendations.

    linkedin profile tips, best linked in profile, linkedin tips, create profile in linkedin, professional network, industry, qualification, experience, resume, work, content, careerRecommendations Help Validate Your Skills And Boost Networking

    Interests | Follow companies, business folk, thought leaders, writers, entrepreneurs, subject matter experts, and the like, who belong to fields of your interest. This would help you stay abreast of job opportunities, developments in the field, what different companies are doing, and much more.

    Activities | This shows the content you have recently posted from your profile. It’s advisable to read articles from reputed magazines and then share the same via your posts, and not just that, you may also write a brief summary, or your key takeaways from the article. This gives you more visibility and shows that you take initiative, and are committed towards your career growth.

    Comments | You can also start to comment on posts that sound intelligible and add value. Expressing rational viewpoints helps you stay in a positive light on the platform.

    Important Points To Keep In Mind

    Now, let us discuss a few additional, but absolutely important points you must keep in mind while creating or managing your LinkedIn profile.

    Do Not Add Your Resume | Avoid posting a copy of your resume to your LinkedIn Profile. Your LinkedIn page should already enlist all your achievements and experience. A generic version of the resume would not appeal to any recruiter. Also, to find opportunities you should tailor your resume for the specific role you are applying for. If somebody wants a copy of your resume, they will ask for it.

    Send An Accompanying Personal Message | On LinkedIn, you might find professionals, recruiters, professors, or other people that you would want to add to your network or take advice from, or connect for opportunities. Adding a personal message/note gives context to why you want to connect with this person. Your first impressions matter while making professional connections. Take the time to send a personal message while sending a connection request to people you want to connect with.

    Post Engaging Content | Posting content that only highlights your achievements will not suffice. “Happy to announce” posts are important, but not enough to build a personal brand. Post content that helps to build your story, your brand, things that demonstrate your subject matter expertise, and content that engages your connections. You can post about the key takeaways from a course that you did, or the ideas you derived from a book you read.

    Using Keywords | Including the right keywords in your profile helps recruiters to find you as you start to appear in their search results. When recruiters are looking for a profile to hire for a particular role, you would be easily identifiable.

    For example, a large number of people only say “intern” on their LinkedIn profiles. This does not help much. You become more searchable with the right keywords in your profile. Saying “Marketing Intern”, for instance, makes it a lot more descriptive. Recruiters would be able to discover you more easily. Add keywords that are aligned with the roles you have held previously, currently hold, or wish to apply for.

    LinkedIn is the most used professional networking portal across the globe. However, you must know that opportunities will not immediately start lining up for you once you have your profile in place. Chances are it will take a bit of trial and error to understand what exactly recruiters are looking for, but the efforts will help to make your journey smoother. It will surely put you ahead of the game in forwarding your career objective in terms of using LinkedIn, and create a strong, detailed profile.

    Also Read | Your Stream Need Not Limit Your Career Options: Check Out Some Real-Life Stories

    Parisraja Bajpai is an Organisational Psychologist, with extensive hands-on experience in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Employee Counselling, Employee Engagement, and Training and Development. She is currently heading the HR department at Nexstgo.

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