21 Steps to a Killer LinkedIn Profile for your Job Search

LinkedIn is quite possibly the most important tool for opening metaphorical doors in your career. Unfortunately we’re all guilty of under utilising the functionality regardless of how many times we get told that we really should be creating a killer profile and using it to our advantage.

The bank of contacts you can accrue in LinkedIn is like “an address book of potential employers, future colleagues, potential clients, maybe even future employees if you come to hiring for your own team in the future. Right now though, for your job search, just get connected. It builds your credibility and shows you’re committed to your future career.” (Source: The Ultimate Guide to Free Tools Needed For Your Job Search)

Well, its time to get sorted and in less than a day you can have your profile perfected and begin to see instant results. It’s a time investment you won’t regret. If you’re embarking on a job search any time soon then it really is a ‘must have’!

Without further ado, here’s a complete guide of 21 steps to the perfect LinkedIn profile.

Note: This guide assumes that you have already created an account with LinkedIn and are ready to begin creating your profile, or, you already have a profile but it’s need of a spruce up.

1) Turn off activity broadcasts

Before you start you will first want to turn off activity broadcasts. This setting, found in the Privacy & Settings section, announces when you have made changes to your profile. If you leave this setting on it will most likely achieve two things. 1) Annoy any connections you have and 2) Could potentially alert your current employer of your intentions to begin job searching. So, best to turn this off to begin with.

To do this you need to hover over the avatar in the top right hand corner of your screen to bring up the drop down menu and then choose “Settings & Privacy” as shown here.

Click ‘manage’ to enter the privacy settings and then click on “Turn on/off your activity broadcasts”.

Finally, make sure that the box in the popup window is unchecked.

2) Choose your name wisely

As a rule of thumb, your name should be what you would introduce yourself as to a stranger in a professional setting. Your name on your profile should be consistent everywhere you use it, for example on your CV, or other social media accounts so that you can easily be found and identified.

I use Andy Parker everywhere. That is how people know me and what I introduce myself as. I used to use Andrew on my LinkedIn profile because I *thought* it was more professional to use my full name. In reality, absolutely nobody cares and it just meant that there was that awkward confusion when people had to ask what name I preferred to be called whilst also making it harder for them to find me online.

3) Claim your personal (vanity) URL

Choosing your own URL allows you to set your profile to something like uk.linkedin.com/in/firstnamelastname rather than the random string of numbers and letters that LinkedIn gives you by default. This makes it a much cleaner URL that you can then use elsewhere (more on that later). Best to find something as close to your name as possible.

Here’s how you do it:

From the top menu hover over “profile” and select “edit profile”

You will then be taken to your profile. Just below your avatar there will be a URL, if you click this it takes you to your public profile.

On the public profile, in the right hand sidebar there will be an option to edit your URL as shown below.

4) Use a GREAT profile photo

As LinkedIn says in their own profile checklist, “ It doesn’t have to be fancy — just use your cellphone camera in front of a plain background. Wear a nice shirt and don’t forget to smile!” Sound advice but personally I believe there is more to it than this. Statistically, your profile is more likely to get views if you have a photo but you should be looking to give off the best first impression with your photo.

Guy Kawasaki, in his book “The Art of Social Media” he suggests that your profile picture should be a close up of your face and asymmetrical. (more tips from “The Art of Social Media”). This builds likeability and shows you are trustworthy. Your photo also should not be a close up of your face cropped from a large group photo. It should be of you and you only.

The optimum image size for your LinkedIn profile picture is 500px X 500 px.

You can change the photo by simply hovering over the avatar when editing your profile.

5) A cover photo that represents who you are.

LinkedIn also offers the option to include a larger cover photo of size 1400px x 425px. This is where you can show more of your personality. If you have a photo of you in your work environment, doing what you do best then this is a great way to display your competence. It could be you giving a presentation for example.

If you don’t have a cover photo already, there will be blue space above your profile asking to “add a background photo”

6) Time for researching keywords!

Now is a good time to pause for a quick bit of research and thinking. This is where we do some quick work to help optimise your profile visibility for your job search.

Start by thinking about the ideal role you would like to move into and find some job descriptions for these roles. Begin making a note of recurring requirements and keywords as we’ll try to include some of these later on. You can then do the same by finding the profiles of some people who are already in that position and identifying the common career trends.

Finding the appropriate keywords is important as it is the way that recruiters and employers will search when they’re hiring. You want to optimise your profile to be found by these people so have your list of keywords and phrases ready.

Equally, you will also want to make note of the buzz phrases that you will need to avoid. These overused terms will not win you any awards and will unnecessarily bloat your profile.

Bonus: You can try a tool like jobscan.co to test your key words after you have completed your profile.

7) Craft Your Tagline

Your tagline, along with your profile picture is what is going to get your profile clicked on or not. Your tagline is the first piece of information that appears right under your name. As Guy Kawasaki says, it’s the equivalent of Tinder. Your tagline should be your value proposition to employers, complete with keywords to get you found. If you’re looking for a job, it should also include “seeking new opportunities” but make sure you include additional context as to what your area of expertise is and/or what are looking for.

A good example would be “Digital Marketing expert; helping brands reach new customers online through SEO & SEM. Seeking new opportunities.”

The LinkedIn tagline has a 120 character limit so use this to your full advantage.

7) Show off your skills

Moving down the profile page, there is a section dedicated to skills. This is an interesting section as you could include anything and everything; and I mean anything! However, for the purpose of your LinkedIn profile it might not be so good to have ‘sword fighting’ as your top skill.

You can include up to 50(!) different skills. Hopefully your keyword research from earlier will come in handy here and you can go through and add all the different variants of the skills you have accrued in your career journey so far. You can then order them on your profile and later people will hopefully begin to endorse you for these skills to give you social proof. Your skills section can dramatically increase your profile’s visibility. Completing the skills section was one of the tips that Joe Chernov from Hubspot gave in his blog, “How I Easily Got 25% More Views on My LinkedIn Profile”. Well worth a read for more tips.

8) The Summary

In the Summary section of the profile you have 2000 characters to win over your audience. Here you want to write an honest account, selling your personality and skills whilst remaining humble. It is best to have some data and stats to back up your argument as numbers speak louder than words when there are tangible results. As a hypothetical example, something like “My marketing campaign reached 12,000 people, converted 50 new customers and brought in over £50,000 of revenue for the company” would be perfect.

Remember to include more of your key phrases here. The phrases that people are using in job descriptions is likely to be similar to what they search, hence you want to ensure you’re covering bases.

If you have a specific ‘ask’ then here is a good place to include it. “Looking for XYZ opportunities. Get in touch via XYZ methods for more information about me”. You get the jist.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that you can now also add supporting evidence to you profile in the form of photos, external links, documents, videos and presentations (see image below as an example). These are a great way to visually demonstrate your expertise and some of your previous work. Slideshare is also owned by LinkedIn so the two work very nicely together; if you have any presentation slides then make sure you upload them.

9) Your Experience

Hopefully this should be a relatively quick section. If you already have a CV this should be straightforward to get your information into the correct places. As with the summary, make sure you use data as much as possible to demonstrate your achievements. Focus on your responsibilities, what you achieved and what you learned as this shows self-awareness and a focus on career growth and improvement.

10) The other sections

There are then a number of other sections you can complete such as Volunteering, Courses, Honors & Awards, Interests, Projects, and Education. I would suggest that you focus on Education as your priority and then dive into the rest if you have valuable things to add. You don’t need to go overboard on these and you certainly don’t need to include awards you won at primary school; just anything that helps to build a compelling story of your career journey.

11) Add your other social networks & sites

Adding your other social networks and links to your other sites adds more credibility. As we’ve explained before, being digital can get you a job so it’s always worth getting your digital footprint sorted as well as your LinkedIn profile.

Click on the ‘contact info’ button to expand the menu as shown below.

12) Order Your Profile

In essence, the content of your profile is now complete! You can now sort the sections of your profile into the order of your choice using the drag and drop functionality. This allows you to present yourself in the order that you wish, putting your best foot forward at each step.

13) Get involved with Groups

LinkedIn groups are a great way to keep your ear to the ground on what’s happening in your industry. By joining groups you get involved with the conversations and they appear on your profile itself hence showing your involvement. Being part of the same group as someone else also makes it easier to connect with them.

14) Follow influencers

Influencers on LinkedIn are respected industry thought leaders. Who you follow says a lot about who you admire and whose opinions you value so choose wisely. You’ll receive their updates in your feed but your profile also lists your followers so it gives viewers of your profile a real insight into your aspirations.

15) Get connected — personalise your requests

Now that you have your profile it is time to begin finding your connections. You can do this by either searching for people you know or you can also import your email connections and invite them. The one, crucial tip is to personalise each request. You will have a far higher acceptance rate and it’s a great chance to reconnect with old acquaintances and start a new conversation. You never know what might come of these small opportunities. You should begin to accrue contacts over time. You don’t need to be hugely choosey over who you connect with as the wider your network, the easier it is to connect with and find other people in the future through the extended network.

16) Endorsements and Recommendations

This is where LinkedIn becomes a bit more ‘social’. LinkedIn will likely prompt you to endorse some of your connections for skills when you login to your account each time and therefore it is also asking your contacts to do the same for you on occasion. Feel free to go ahead, but be thoughtful about these. You are giving someone your stamp approval so don’t give this out too freely.

When it comes to writing recommendations, you will want to give a handful of well written, complimentary recommendations to some people that you have worked with in the past. This is a sign of appreciation. Oftentimes, when a connection receives your recommendation, they will feel compelled to return the favour. Don’t count on this, I’m not suggesting you only endorse people with the intention of receiving one in return; it should be a ‘give before you get’ mentality.

You can however, ask a few of your closest contacts to write you a recommendation if you feel comfortable with it. These certainly boost your personal brand.

Keep on top of your incoming endorsements and recommendations. There is no harm in hiding recommendations or endorsements if they don’t reflect who you are or give a true sense of your skillset and expertise.

17) Show your expertise with blogging

LinkedIn now has a blogging platform alongside the profiles. This is a great opportunity for you to get some of your thoughts and insights down into words. A well formulated blog post is an excellent indicator of your writing ability and gives any reader a real insight into your thought process. It has even been said that ‘blogging is the new CV’.

18) Give your profile the exposure it deserves

Now that you have your profile, it’s time to begin including it elsewhere. Good places to start are your business cards and email signature. I recommend Moo for business cards and you can use Wisestamp to create excellent email signatures (here are some more tools to help with your job search). As a side note, personal business cards when embarking on a job search are hugely valuable to have; it’s not great to be giving out cards from your current employer when you’re on the search for new opportunities. I digress, essentially you should begin adding your personalised LinkedIn URL to any of your materials that other professionals might come into contact with to help get you noticed.

19) Proofread and check

This stage can’t be understated. The last thing you want is glaring spelling or grammatical errors on your profile. Make sure it’s well written and coherent by thoroughly proofreading and by asking at least one other person to have a close read through as well.

20) Set your privacy settings to public

The whole point of having a LinkedIn profile is so that you can demonstrate your expertise by having a good digital footprint. You’re seeking new opportunities so you WANT to be found. Change the settings so that your profile is visible to make you easily discoverable. If you like, you can even update your status, announcing that you are looking for new opportunities and would love to hear from anyone who may know of a relevant opening.

You will want to make your way through each of these settings:

And in order to edit the settings of your publicly available profile you can do that here:

And then by checking each of these boxes in the right hand side bar to edit what is publicly available:

21) You could go premium

LinkedIn’s Premium features for job seekers are worth considering if you’re on a serious search. I won’t dig into the details here but it has some features well worth considering. Plans start at £12.99 a month.

I hope this guide has given you a kickstart for building your LinkedIn presence. The trick is being complete with your information, yet succinct and without the waffle. A solid LinkedIn profile makes you more discoverable and will hopefully bring opportunities knocking.

Have you had a success story from your LinkedIn profile? Have I missed any key stages that you feel are important? Is there anything I can help with further that needs more explanation? Feel free to let me know in the comments or you can get me at @ParkerACS or @Zealify.

Note: This post was originally published on 29th January 2015.