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11.2 LinkedIn Profile

Learning objective

By the end of this checkpoint, you should be able to create an effective LinkedIn profile.

Overview​

Most of you will already have LinkedIn profiles. If you do, you can skip this section. For those that don't have a LinkedIn profile, read along

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking platform. You can use it to do the following career-building activities:

  • Find and apply to job listings.
  • Grow your professional network.
  • Find someone to conduct an informational interview with.
  • Share and find work-related news and tips.
  • Share your professional history and projects with employers.
  • Get recruited.

In fact, 95% of employers use LinkedIn as their go-to platform to source talent, which means that it's essential for job seekers to have a complete LinkedIn profile.

Your LinkedIn profile is, effectively, an online version of your resume that's even better. It's interactive, follows a standardized format, isn't limited to a couple of pages, and allows you to attach work samples. Additionally, having a complete profile makes you 40 times more likely to receive job opportunities. This checkpoint covers how to create a robust LinkedIn profile for your job search.

LinkedIn profile components​

Because LinkedIn profiles are similar to resumes, you can build your profile by copying and pasting lot of the information that's on your resume, which makes creating a profile easy. There are, however, some additional components and considerations, which you can review below.

Tip: Before you start making lots of updates to your profile, it's smart to turn off your activity broadcast so that LinkedIn doesn’t notify your contacts each time you make a change to your profile.

Custom URL​

When polishing your LinkedIn profile, make sure to create a customized URL for your profile. Customized URLs look cleaner on your resume and make it easier for employers to find your profile.

Ideally, your customized URL should follow the naming convention “FirstName-LastName” or something similar. If that combination is unavailable, choose a variation of your name that's still recognizable, simple, and professional.

To customize your LinkedIn URL, follow the steps in this link.

Profile photo​

One of the first steps in completing your LinkedIn profile is to add a profile photo. When you have a LinkedIn profile photo, you can get up to 21 times more profile views than users without a photo.

You want your profile photo to showcase the best, most professional version of yourself. The photo should reflect what you might look like when you go in for an interview and should be representative of what you look like currently. Here are some guidelines that your LinkedIn profile photo should adhere to:

  • Smile. Like everyone else, employers prefer working with people who are friendly and fun to be around. A smile is the best way to signal that you are that type of person.
  • Be professional. No sunglasses, hats, or potentially offensive logos.
  • Be in focus. Either use a neutral, nondescript background or a camera lens that blurs your background so that you're the main focus of the photo and nothing distracts from you. For the same reason, you should be the only person in the photo.
  • Opt for high-quality. Your photo doesn't need to be taken by a professional photographer, but it should be high-quality, have sharp (not fuzzy) focus, and be well lit. (No selfies!)



Background photo​

The next thing to consider is customizing your background photo. This is the long photo that’s displayed at the top of your LinkedIn profile. While it's okay to keep the generic image, uploading a background image can add visual interest to your profile and help it be more memorable to viewers.

If you do choose to customize your background photo, try to choose one that's the same color scheme as your portfolio or resume in order to keep a consistent brand, or pick an image that reflects your location or the industry that you're transitioning into. Just keep it professional, high quality, and simple (you want it to enhance your LinkedIn profile, not be a distraction).

You can either use your own image or something that you find online, like from the free photo-sharing site Unsplash. Below are a few ideas.

A skyline of the city where you live:




A solid color that matches your portfolio or resume's color scheme:




A graphic that reflects your industry:




Headline​

Next is your headline. This is the copy that you see below your name. LinkedIn automatically makes your headline the title of your current job, but you can update it to reflect the job that you want. For example, "Frontend Developer," "Technical Project Manager," or "Digital Marketer."

To avoid hiring bias, don't use phrases like "open to new opportunities" in your headline.

About​

Like the summary section of your resume, the LinkedIn About section is an opportunity to control your story. Be strategic about what you write in this section, knowing that how you describe yourself influences the way that viewers think about you.

Are you the former technical support person, or are you a software engineer with expertise in hardware and networking? Are you a marketer-turned-designer, or are you a UX designer who is well versed in what customers want?

Generally, you can use the summary section of your resume as a starting point. But because you're not limited on space, it's okay to expand. For example, it's helpful to say what motivates you, share a relevant personal antidote, identify your top skills, demonstrate that you're someone who works well on a team, mention impressive projects, or provide links to your portfolio.

Finally, write in first person. Viewers know that you're filling out your own LinkedIn profile, so it's a lot more natural to use language that reflects that.

Here's an example of an interesting LinkedIn About section:

Hi! I'm Amy and I tend to flex my right-brain muscles more often than not. In the fifth grade, I took a bunch of my mom's magazines, clipped them up, and created a student newsletter because our class didn't have one. It was poorly constructed, stapled together on wide-ruled, loose-leaf notebook paper, but it became really popular—so much so that other students in my class started creating their own zines to compete with mine. My fifth-grade teacher was impressed by the engagement and told me that I was an "innovative" 10-year-old that should hold on tight to her creative skills. She also let me skip gym class so that I could start producing the class newsletter with Microsoft Word. (Shout out to ClipArt!)

I am a digital media entrepreneur, marketer, and full-stack web developer who lives at the intersection of technology, art, and content creation. I currently work in marketing for one of the world's largest technology companies and spend my time outside the office empowering women through my digital platform, mentoring, and service work.

My specialties are digital marketing, growth hacking, SEO, content creation, blogging, web design, full-stack web development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, Bootstrap, AngularJS, ReactJS, Drupal, UX/UI Design, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), design principles, color theory, wireframing, and digital media.

Experience​

Your LinkedIn Experience section should mirror the experience section on your resume.

While you need to manually write in your job title, company name, and location, and select your start and end dates, it's best to copy and paste the bulleted accomplishments on your resume for each job. LinkedIn doesn't have formatting options, so you can use hyphens (-) or dots (•) for bullet points. When you finish adding entries, cross-reference them with the entries on your resume to ensure that they match.

It's true that you have more space on your LinkedIn profile than on your resume, but that doesn’t mean that an employer's attention is infinite. Resist the temptation to overload your profile with unnecessary details or jobs that you had more than a decade ago. If you do choose to add more detail to your LinkedIn profile, it should be by adding accomplishments that are relevant to the job that you want but didn't have room for on your 1-page resume.

Education​

Like your Experience section, your LinkedIn Education section should match the education entries on your resume.

Including PMcademy in your LinkedIn profile​

You should list your PMcademy experience in either the Experience section. You won't be able to add in the education section since our LinkedIn profile is not that of a school. Below are best practices for listing it in either section.

Including PMcademy in the Experience section of your LinkedIn profile​

On LinkedIn, you're unable to reorder your sections, and projects are not prominently displayed. For this reason, it can be helpful to list your PMcademy experience in the Experience section of your LinkedIn profile.

For your title, write the title of the program that you're in or that you're still in training; for example, "Digital Marketing Program" or "Data Scientist in Training." Leave the employment type blank (or "-"). And write "PMcademy" as the company name.

Then, in the description of your PMcademy Experience entry, add the details of your projects, making sure that you list all of the skills and tools that you used. When it makes sense, you should also utilize the media function that allows you to upload an image of or add a link to your Experience entry.

Skills & Endorsements​

In the Skills & Endorsements section, list the individual skills, tools, and abilities that you have. You can include up to 50, but you should focus on the ones that are relevant to the job that you want (likely the ones that are on your resume). Order them from most to least relevant. Then ask your PMcademy peer and LinkedIn friends to endorse you for these skills (it helps if you endorse their skills too).

There's some debate about if this section is useful, but at a glance these endorsements make you seem more credible. As well, these skills make your profile more searchable in general, and LinkedIn uses these skills endorsements to boost your search ranking in LinkedIn searches.

Recommendations​

Since you're probably new to your chosen field, having someone vouch for you can be incredibly valuable.

Your mentor is a good person to ask for a recommendation, since they can verify that you've mastered the skills of your program before you graduate. A peer who you've collaborated with on a project or someone who can speak to your professional skills might also be good people to ask.

Miscellaneous LinkedIn sections​

You might notice that there are a few more sections available to you on your LinkedIn profile, like Volunteer Experience. It's not necessary to include all of these sections, but inspect them all so that you know what's available to you and add any that add (relevant) value to your profile.

LinkedIn connections​

Something to think about is how many people you're connected to on LinkedIn. The more connections that you have, the easier it is for you to get introductions to a company, and the easier it is for employers to find your profile. So be intentional.

Search for and connect with past and current coworkers, past and current classmates, your PMcademy community, your family and friends, people you meet at networking events. LinkedIn also helps you find people to connect; just click on the My Network link in the top navigation, then, when the new page loads, you see a variety of people you may know.

LinkedIn is far less personal than other social media platforms, and is intended for networking, so it's okay to extend and accept invitations to connect from other LinkedIn users, even if they're strangers.

That's it for completing your LinkedIn profile. To learn about additional LinkedIn features and setting, check out this video:

Supplementary resources​

Assignment 💪​

With the insights you gained in this checkpoint:

  1. Create or update your LinkedIn profile.
  2. Find and follow our page PMcademy
  3. Connect with other fellow learners or members from PMCdemy. Note: don't send more than 30 connections each day as linkedin has daily limits. Try to send a small note as to why you would want to connect with the person as well.