How to Write a LinkedIn Summary That Will Help You Make an Excellent First Impression.

Tips to Write an Excellent LinkedIn Summary

Photo by Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels

Why Do You Need a Good LinkedIn Profile?

If you are a high school or college student, there’s a couple of reasons why you need to make a LinkedIn profile now; you can use LinkedIn to network with other professionals or students to find new business, career, and educational opportunities.

Search for jobs and internships, especially remote ones, and market yourself by beginning to develop your brand. The significant part about LinkedIn is that it’s pretty different from a paper resume.

LinkedIn is more colourful more engaging, and you can showcase your experiences. It’s a chance to display your personality, creative pursuits, and vision for the future.

It’s not restricted to that one page or bullet point format, and it’s a way to mark milestones in your career because you can update it in real-time.

How to Write a Good LinkedIn Summary.

Your LinkedIn summary is a brief description of your profile that shows your personality, professional experience, or goals and what makes you unique.

So it’s that first impression of your profile that explains aspects of your personality or character that may not come across in a traditional resume. And it’s also a great way to show off your written communication skills.

So I’m showing you a blueprint that you can use to write your summary quickly and effectively. First off, here are a couple of different examples of content that you can include in your resume.

Content

You can talk about your career goals, passions, interests and projects, professional or educational experience, accomplishments, and hard and soft skills.

Structure

In terms of structure, there are different ways to structure your profile.

You can use a bullet point or numbered list, a keyword-rich description, contact info, media or other links, a hook, anecdotes, and statistics.

So now, we will combine these elements of content and structure to make an excellent summary. You will match one of those elements of the content with one or more of those elements of the structure.

So I’ll give you an example.

For example, you can list your career goals in bullet points or numbered lists.

On the other hand, you could write about our professional experience by including an anecdote describing one of those experiences you’ve had in your workplace or an internship.

Or you can talk about your hard and soft skills by including some statistics of examples of projects you’ve worked on to showcase how you’ve used those skills.

And you won’t just do this matching process once. You’ll keep matching different elements until you’ve created a comprehensive summary that you love.

So now, let’s jump into some actual examples of how you can write the LinkedIn summary and match these different elements.

The first example combines the elements of passions, interests, and projects with structural elements of a hook. Please read the sample.

“When I decided to study archaeology in college, I pictured myself as an Indiana Jones in the making. Although I soon learned that my chosen field involved is less swashbuckling and far more reading. I never lost my hunger to uncover the hidden stories of ancient civilizations.”

So the person who’s writing this is presumably an archaeologist, who’s making a LinkedIn, and they are using this as a hook or apart at the beginning of their LinkedIn summary to grab the reader’s attention.

And this summary of this excerpt of an outline is humorous, and it conveys an authentic passion for archaeology without really flaunting it, which I like. So here’s another example of an excerpt of a summary.

We’re combining hard and soft skills with a bullet point or numbered list.

“As the owner of my own web design business, I have five years of experience in these areas: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Market research, Wireframing, and Prototyping with Adobe XD and user testing.”

So that might sound like a bit of jargon, but if you are a recruiter or an expert in this field, you’ll know what these skills entail. This quick bullet point list allows the reader to quickly scan your skills and see if you fit a particular position.

Let’s look at the following example here; we’re talking about professional experience while including a keyword-rich description.

And in this description, I’m going to bold those keywords that I’m talking about.

So here’s the example.

“What I enjoyed most about my job as a customer service rep at the best hardware store were the conversations I had over the phone, my nap for problem-solving, and my empathetic mindset. I can turn the most disgruntled customer into an enthusiastic one. I learned how to collaborate with our customers and stay organized, keeping track of my most effective solutions and storing them in an Excel spreadsheet. For future reference.

So this description includes keywords that you might see in adopting a job description in a field such as Human Resources, or customer service, any of those types of careers.

And by weaving these words, these characteristics, such as empathy, problem-solving and collaboration, and organization, into your LinkedIn summary, you’re proving with an actual concrete example to a recruiter that you have what it takes to take on a particular position.

In this example, the writer describes their accomplishments while using an anecdote. Here’s the model.

“My first concert in middle school was a disaster. Arriving in the auditorium Late, I forgot to tune my violin and proceeded to play an off-key solo in front of the whole school. I’m now the lead Violinist of my university’s orchestra ten years later. And I’ve composed pieces that schools across the state have performed. I also haven’t forgotten to tune my violin since.”

So you may think that this excerpt is a little cringe. But the point is, this anecdote shows that the person or the writer is self-deprecating while allowing the writer to brag and showcase their accomplishments in music in a more subtle way.

Here is a different example where a writer explains their career goals while including contact information.

“I’m looking for an internship opportunity at an organization where I can explore the role of artificial intelligence and education. I’m excited to share my experiences and learn from others in this field. So please feel free to contact me at (email address).”

So this excerpt would likely be included at the end of the LinkedIn summary. It indicates that this person is specifically looking for an internship, and it gives a straightforward way for others to contact them very efficiently.

Add excerpts of your own LinkedIn summaries in the comments down below so that we can discuss them together and maybe provide feedback to one another.

And if you did like this article, please remember to give it a clap, follow me to receive notifications whenever I write a new article and stay tuned for the next one.