The Master Guide to LinkedIn for iOS Developers

Building a profile that gets the right leads to your dream job

8 min readApr 17, 2019

I use Swift & iOS as examples since thats what I do.

One of my biggest mistakes in my career was not having my LinkedIn filled out until 2017.

I thought since I’d mostly made my living freelancing and as an entrepreneur, that filling out a LinkedIn was a boring waste of energy.

Two years later, I realized I could not have been more wrong.

I was desperately looking for new ways to get more leads for freelance work or the right fulltime opportunity and needed to maximize my search.

I read books on it and studied the best profiles. I created the best profile I could based on the latest information available.

My LinkedIn brings me several leads per week with potential new jobs, all because I’ve made it easy for those who need my skills to find me.

My LinkedIn attracted iOS opportunities from several companies including:

Facebook and Instagram
Apple (for several positions)
Amazon (for several positions)
Expedia
Duolingo
DoorDash
Just about every funded startup in Austin (where I live)

Several developer circles will tell you LinkedIn is a laughable waste of space only useful for Suits.

They are wrong.

I get that it feels salesy. We didn’t become developers to be salesy.

But we also want to work at a company we like.

If you take advantage to its fully capabilities, you can get access to your dream job.

And access is the first step.

Who this guide is for

This guide is for iOS developers, but it also works for developers who know the specific type of job they want. It’s important to pick a niche.

Ex: iOS ARKit developer.

The guide also assumes you have some experience, even if informal like a side project. You can’t sell yourself if you got nothing to sell.

If you’d like to use a LinkedIn for Reference, here’s mine.

Picking a Great Cover Image 🌃

Use websites Pexels.com and PixaBay.com and search for terms related to the type of job you’re trying to get.

If you’re looking for a iOS job, you might search “iPhone” and find an image that stands out to you.

You might also brainstorm traits you want to convey, like “welcoming” or “collaborative” and search for those terms, too.

Once you download an image, you can open it using PhotoPea.com (or Photoshop), select the crop tool (press ‘C’) to fit LinkedIn’s cover image size (1584px by 396px).

If you’d like to be extra, you can add your name to the image like me.

If you put it on the right like me, it gets cut off on mobile so add it to the center to avoid that.

How your Profile Picture can make a great first impression 🤝

Having a have decent photo will make you look better than 90% of developers.

Look at mine — it’s not great, but it’s good enough.

It’s great if you can take a great photo without it being professionally done — a good natural photo is valuable.

If you do want to get it professionaly done, use Thumbtack.com and search for “Portrait Photography”. You can get a good deal there.

Golden Hour right when the sun is going down

If not — find a place with good lighting and has either a blank light-colored background or a pretty background.

A good time to do it outside is during the golden hour, right as the sun begins to set.

When taking the photo, take the photo where the camera is equal level as your head or slightly above it.

Move your neck forward (literally to the point its almost straining) and adjust your head to face directly at the camera.

When the shot is being taken, you will want to squint — close your eyes a bit. It helps you look more relaxed and confident.

Practice this look a lot. Getting a good photo might take some time.

I recommend wearing something business casual. A suit doesn’t look right on a developer.

Once you’ve taken a good photo, open a photo editor. You can adjust the brightness and contrast so you stand out more and even blur the background a bit. Look at my medium photo: I did similar things there.

Here’s a great video on creating a great Linked Profile Pic.

How to Craft a Title that gets Noticed 👀

Your title will serve you best if you Craft it in a way that helps you achieve your goals.

Sometimes, this is easy. If you’re a Senior iOS Developer and work for Amazon, setting your title as that will attract high quality leads itself.

Sometimes your job title isn’t enough. Maybe you’re a Junior iOS Developer and you are positioning yourself to be a mid-level Developer next job.

Omit the “Junior” part of your Job title. So now you’re just “iOS Developer @ [Company]”.

You might find you want to work with a specific technology like ARKit. Use a separator after your title:
“iOS Developer @ [Company] | ARKit trained”

If you have NO job but are looking for one, the title is a great way to share that:

“iOS Developer| Swift | Looking for new opporunties”

Building a Winning Summary Section 🤓

Your Summary is perhaps your best opportunity to sell yourself, so you’ll want to pitch yourself as best as you can here.

One underrated part of the profile is you can show you’re also someone fun to work with. Start your profile with a small story that leads into your accomplishments.

Check mine out:

After the intro, Dive DEEP into your accomplishments.

Put your most relevant accomplishments in order from first to last.

Be aware of the keywords you are using. Make sure you’re using language that is in alignment with the job you want without it appearing spammy.

You might be in a position where you want an iOS developer position but have never been hired for one.

You might write things like:

Built an ecommerce iPhone app with 60k lines of code
Won 3rd place in hackathon with iOS app
Worked directly with ARKit on several apps (if you want an AR job)

You may have never officially worked as an iOS Developer, can mentioned you acted as one on a relevant project.

If you have a website that you think represents you well, link it!

Github? Link it!

Great Stack Overflow? Link it!

Anything that adds to your impressiveness.

If you have testimonials that you got outside of your official LinkedIn Recommendations, mention them near the bottom.

Setting up a Great Experience Section 📈

Recently, I changed my title for one of my freelancing ventures from “iOS Developer” to “iOS and Node Developer”.

I wrote a personal project in Node and eventually used that knowledge to build some web apps for a few clients.

Changing that single job title to include Node with its description brought me an extra two leads avg per month for available Node Jobs.

Get very specific with what you’ve done, as long as its relevant for the job you want.

If you’re not sure what’s relevant, google “iOS Developer jobs [city]”, look through some of the listing and see the type of things they mention.
Use those keywords to help you target the ones you like the most.

Make sure you format the section to make it easily readable, too. You can even use emojis. Quality recruiters WILL read your specifics, and quality recruiters will represent quality companies.

How to sell your Education even if you didn’t graduate (like me)

If you went to a great school, this section will sell itself.

If you did not, or even went to college and did not graduate (like me), you still have lots of great opportunities to sell yourself by mentioning:

The projects you worked on
The Classes your took (Algorithms and Data Structures almost always help)
Your GPA
Any clubs you were part of

Six Useful Tips for the Rest of Your Profile

Every Other Part of your Profile is Extra.
Adding Articles, Accomplishments and Recommendations always look good to have and will help put you over the edge if a company is on the fence.

Writing about what you do helps others see how you think about problems and teach them first hand.
Put things that don’t fit anywhere else in the Accomplishment section
If you’re willing to move and have a location in mind, change your location to that city. It will helps recruiters and companies find you.
Follow Interests that our relevant to the work you want — Bonus points if you contribute to certain communities.
In order to get Endorsements & Recommendations, Endorse and Recommend other people. You can even ask them to trade Endorsements and Recommendations in your Profile.
Having more Connections looks good and helps your search rankings. If you need to connect with others, connect with developers that have similar jobs that you want, they’ll usually accept and often post interesting things related to your job.

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