10 things to improve your LinkedIn profile

1. Profile picture – You should have a good headshot, not too far away, not too close, do not have a busy background.  And it shouldn’t be a picture of you on a boat having a party with a drink in your hand.  LinkedIn is professional.  Keep it professional.  And it’s necessary to have one!  A lot of people do not even want to connect with people who do not have a photo.
2. Profile URL – do not use the default LinkedIn URL that LinkedIn gives you. Edit it to be just your name or some derivative. This also makes it nice and clean so you can publish an easily remembered URL in your email signature or on your business card.
3. Headline – this is the text right up under your name. By default, LinkedIn makes your headline equal to the last title and company you were at. This is one of the most important parts of your profile because it follows you around all over LinkedIn – whatever you do on LinkedIn, people see your name and your headline. You need to edit that and do three things with it:
   1. Let it describe your brand in 120 characters or less,
   2. Include some of your key words you want to be found for
   3. Let it have some “pop” to it to help draw people in and make them curious or interested in clicking through to see the rest of your profile.
4. Summary section – You should put a summary together that really tells a future employer what you bring to the table. This should be a longer version of your brand. Explain why people would want to hire you. Make it keyword rich. Talk about your passions, key skills, unique qualifications, industries. It’s also a great idea to add your contact information in your summary. LinkedIn gives you a place to put this information but it ends up being buried. Make it easy on others to reach out to you.
5. Experience section – for each of your jobs, you should focus the summary description on achievements while you worked there.
   • It should not read like a job description and shouldn’t include words like “I was responsible for” or “I managed” or “I provided.”
   • The best way to quantify accomplishments is by using numbers, percentages or dollars. If you were involved in 3000 procedures during your time there, then say that.
   • You do not need to include months along with the year in your duration. You only need to include the year.
   • The titles you have held at all your prior companies can work for or against you. If the titles you have listed add value and relevance to the next position you will hold, that’s good. But if not, I would recommend changing the titles so they come close to what you are looking for if at all possible. They do not have to the exact title the company gave you. Let the titles include some of your key words if you can.
6. Volunteer experience – if you are volunteering, use this section. Shows you are still active.  If you are not volunteering while in transition, I would recommend you find something that you are passionate about and volunteer some of your time to it.
7. Skills – consider this a list of keywords that help you get found. You can have as many as 50 in your list. Add to the list and include more of the keywords you want to be found for when someone comes to LinkedIn and starts doing a search.
8. Education – you should not include any dates on your education.
9. Recommendations – the best way to raise your credibility is to have some recommendations. You should ask some of your connections who know your work to write you a recommendation. There isn’t a magic number of recommendations needed. But you should try to get as many as you can.
10. Engage on LinkedIn – Put some content out there either as a post or in some of your groups and show what you’re worth. Let your network know how smart you are in your field. Even if you just like some other things that other people are posting will show some level of engagement.

Bonus tip: Remember that people are not readers, they are skimmers. They won’t read long sentences or long paragraphs. The shorter your content is the more likely it will be that someone will read it. The more you can keep it to bulleted lists the better.