How to Make a LinkedIn Profile That Stands Out

One of the first things people are told to do these days when beginning a job search is to create a LinkedIn profile. In college and want to start being taken seriously? “Make a profile if you haven’t yet!” Looking for a new position? “Have you updated your profile?”

But simply having a profile won’t get you anywhere — you need to make sure it is a good one.

All the thought you put into curating your Instagram profile or even dating page should apply here. You want to think carefully about how you talk about yourself, how others might be talking about you, and the main takeaways someone would get from browsing your page. Here’s how to make each section shine.

Introductory Section

Photo

Yes, you need a profile picture! You might wonder why you need a photo for a LinkedIn profile when no one expects you to staple a headshot to your résumé page, but this is different. LinkedIn is a professional website, but it is also a form of social media. You would be wary of a faceless profile that requests to join your network, and so would any potential hiring managers. You don’t need a professional headshot – just a clear picture of your face with a neutral background.

Summary

Your summary statement can be a good way to help other people understand how they should review your profile. This should be a few sentences at most and provides a starting point for a conversation. Things to avoid: getting too creative with your prose, adding too much information, or stating facts that can be found elsewhere in your profile.

If you are unsure how to structure a summary in just a few sentences, start with this template: The first sentence should describe who you are (“A problem solver with an interest in financial services”) and your second sentence should prove the statements you make in the previous one (“I placed first in my school's annual case competition and I'm an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal.”).

An important note: LinkedIn will give you a hand if you fill out the rest of your profile first by prompting you to “see what your summary could look like”. It will also generate a very basic starter based on your listed accomplishments — but just because the tool is easy to use, doesn’t mean you should use it. The template aggregates information from the rest of your page to create a summary that, one, regurgitates information in other section, and two, is too generic to help recruiters. You might want to avoid this feature unless you want your summary to sound like everyone else’s.

Résumé

If you link to your résumé or CV on your LinkedIn profile, make sure the document is up to date! You don’t want to send people to a page that obviously hasn’t been touched in years.

Also important to remember: Uploading a résumé does not replace the need to give details on your experiences in your profile! Don’t assume that everyone will click through and review the document. You want to list your experience front and center.

Experience Section

Format

Keep your entries consistent in terms of formatting. It is crucial that this section be easy to read. These simple rules of thumb can help.

Avoid large paragraphs in favor of shorter bullets — just as you would when writing a résumé. You don’t want to overwhelm your reader with huge blocks of text. Use bullet point dots instead of dashes, arrows, or other symbols. The latter tend to look messy rather than elegant and are distracting to the eye, making it hard to quickly skim through the page. You don’t want a recruiter to get frustrated and give up.

Your LinkedIn profile is a digital brag sheet, so don't list your experiences without any further details. Showcase the awesome work you have done and the skills you have gained. When you list your experiences without explaining what the work entailed or how you contributed, you minimize the impact your profile will have on a viewer. To do this, start each bullet by stating what your accomplishment was and then explaining your contribution. For example: "Increased sales 45% by creating a new marketing campaign" will stand out way more to a recruiter than “Worked on a marketing campaign to increase sales."

Don’t bury all your college activities in the “Education” section. Think about which accomplishments might stand out as unique professional experiences. Those might be clubs in which you hold a significant leadership role, or activities to which you dedicate a lot of time that may be related to your career interests.

Education

Keep this section current! It is incredibly easy to let your academic experiences go out of date. As you progress in your career, you can remove entries from high school, early on in college, and so on. Keep details like your major, relevant coursework, and extracurriculars but pick a few to highlight here rather than sticking everything you’ve ever done. More significant roles can go in the Experience section above.

Final Steps

Creating or updating your LinkedIn profile might seem like one more chore on your list of job-hunting tasks, but it really can be a great tool — even when you aren’t actively looking for a new role. Not only does the platform provide you with access to potential colleagues, mentors, and jobs, but it is also a great first step to building your professional presence online.

You never know when someone will come across your profile and reach out with a request to connect. Their interest could eventually turn into a job at the just the right time in the future, so putting your best foot forward is a good rule of thumb.

Ask a friend to proofread your profile. It’s incredibly easy to miss small grammatical and spelling errors — but a recruiter who is browsing your page with fresh eyes will find them immediately. Also, consider asking coworkers, professors, and managers to provide you with recommendations specific to the work you’ve done (not just endorsements for Microsoft Word!). Keep your request simple and polite, and give the person an easy out. For example. "Hi, Annie. I'm working on building out my LinkedIn profile. If you feel comfortable, I would love for you to write a blurb on my page sharing a bit about the work we did together on ______. No worries if you can't!"

Finally, be proactive about adding connections. Doing so will help you map out who is who in your industry, not to mention give you examples of other profile pages for inspiration! See a profile that impresses you? Read through it and consider how you might improve your own page. Doing so is just another way to learn how you can stand out over time.

Original article published on Linkedin