3 Tips to Having a Strong LinkedIn Profile

Social media is all about connecting with people and sharing experiences. Every online profile you make shapes your online persona. Hopefully, for many millennials job recruiters and other professionals don’t scout you based on your Instagram account. They will typically look at your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is considered the social network for professionals. While it is a place to sometimes share thoughts and other posts, it most likely won’t be a picture of you and your friends’ most recent trip to Tahoe. Here are three simple tips to creating a powerful and engaging LinkedIn profile.

Clear and Engaging Profile Picture

In this case, a picture is really worth a thousand words. This is the first impression you give off to whomever is viewing your profile. Whether you like that or not, it’s just the reality. This doesn’t mean you need to have a photo next to the White House being endorsed by President Obama. However it is important that you have a clear headshot of just you dressed in decent clothing. This will give the employer or whomever else is viewing a way to put a face to your name.

Use Keywords to Distinguish your Profile

With more than 200 million users on LinkedIn it is often difficult to distinguish your profile amongst others. By using keywords you can optimize your profile to appear in search queries by employers. LinkedIn offers tons of opportunities to enhance your profile with keywords. Here are a few places to start:

• Location — make sure your location is accurate.
• Professional Headline — Short and sweet. For example: Full-Stack Web Developer | Senior Programmer | 20+ Years Specializing in Programming Web-Based Applications
• URL — customize it!
• Summary — Focus on keywords here. Try to limit the amount of “filler” words.
• Experience Section — Very important! People can find you based on your current position or past positions at various companies. Make sure to link to company profiles if applicable.

Measurable Accomplishments

When listing your work accomplishments and experience it is important to focus on what matters. An employer cares about what you can accomplish and by how much. The more sheer facts and or metrics you can include in this section the better.

Lets say you worked as the lead mobile developer for a social application. “Built fully-scalable mobile application with 100,000 daily active users” is much more powerful than “created awesome application with cool feature and great functionality”. Always look to provide facts and metrics, as long as they’re accurate they are exponentially more powerful with them than without.

If you are looking to create a professional online presence, look no further than LinkedIn. Like building any profile, there are tricks and tips to creating one that catches the eye of your dream job. These were just a few to get you started!

Originally published at due.com on July 13, 2016.