LinkedIn is the biggest business-to-business social network. Your LinkedIn profile is a lifelong asset because of the big audience on this platform. LinkedIn has almost 722+ million members and about 40% of active users contribute to use it daily. These numbers get weight by having 30 million companies on LinkedIn and 91% of marketing executives listing LinkedIn as the top place with quality content.

Setting up a great and engaging LinkedIn profile is the road to success. More than half a billion professionals worldwide gather on LinkedIn and search for quality content and professionals. These great numbers not only give you more chances of jobs, but also an opportunity to get exposure, learning, personal branding, developing business relationships, co-working, and social proof. Other than that, LinkedIn also has search ranking authority. If you type your name on Google, most of the time your LinkedIn profile will come at the top of the search results. And same comes with your skills; if you have added your skillset with proper strategy and keywords, your LinkedIn profile gets ranked in result of search queries on google.

How to get your required job on LinkedIn?

To get your expected job on LinkedIn, you need to create engagement on your profile to make it visible for people as well as the LinkedIn algorithm. Following are the ways to do so:

Join groups:

Join groups related to your niche to get the latest information and strategies from seniors. Get yourself where you feel is the possibility of decision-makers from your field. Interact with people and give solutions to the queries posted. Make your presence a social proof of your skill and let recruiters see you and consider you a reliable person.

Make connections:

Connect with maximum people. Remember, more connections mean more opportunities. Do not take this wrong by adding irrelevant individuals. Be conscious of your circle and connect with the people, who can help you polish your skills or can get help from your skills and hire you.

Connect with the people who can be worthwhile in your personal grooming and career flourishment. If you are a content writer, your circle may include developers, HRs, and CEOs. Connect and greet. Introduce yourself and share your portfolio asking how you can help in their business. Effective communication can help you land a job more easily.

Create Engaging Posts:

Post stuff relevant to your field with engaging hashtags and interact with people. Always remember, you are here to have better career opportunities and every post/comment can reach anywhere and leave a positive as well as a negative remark. It is not recommended to create automated posts. Instead, people want to hear your story and engage with posts that are more human.

Tip: Try to use hashtags that have more followership instead of generating your own.

Use Job Feature:

Turn on the job feature and get an alert whenever someone posts a relevant job. Synchronize your email with it and get notified timely. LinkedIn is a broad platform with a large number of decision-makers not only offering project-based or home-based opportunities, but it can also facilitate full-time jobs in top-notch companies.

 Write Articles:

Short articles get more reach and it is suggested to add them to give more authenticity to Linkedin profiles.

Above are the ways to get into the eye of a recruiter, to make a viewer into a potential client is the job of your Linkedin profile setup.

To have an impactful profile, here is the procedure:

How to set up a Great LinkedIn Profile?

Profile setup is mandatory, as you are taking control of what a recruiter is seeing about you. That is your personal branding online. Other than that, If the profile is not 50% complete, you cannot show up in search results.

Here are the sections that need to be optimized and the recruiter will see them in the hierarchy.

1. Profile Picture:

Your profile picture is the first thing that a viewer is going to see. It is the first impression that is going to last longer. People scan and make an impression within less than a single second. The first thing to keep in mind while posting a picture is that it’s LinkedIn, your professional presence, and has nothing to do with heroic clicks from vacations.

Do’s:

• Should be clean, not photoshopped.
• Should have expressions, smiling.
• Should be the latest.
• Should represent what you are as a person.

Look into the camera directly, smile, and have a neutral background. No sunglasses or shades. In the end, it should look like you.

If you are confused and want to know what people consider about its likeability, confidence, and other traits, you can get feedback from websites like Photofeeler.com.

Don’ts:

• Photoshopped
• Expressionless
• Blurry
• Cropped from the group photo

By clicking the profile photo, you can also add frames like “open to work” and “#hiring” etc.

2. Cover photo:

It is the photo at the back of your profile picture. By default it’s blue and most people do not bother to update it. It can complement your field and give a quick overview of what skills you have or what you are doing these days.

It can be;

• Your skillset written on a nice background (writing, designing, public speaking, etc). Customizable banners can be created by combining images and text. Canva.com can help you with this by using ready-made templates.
• From your professional achievements (speech from the conference, team workshop, or work desk, etc)
• Services that you are offering and their key attributes
• Some graphics relevant to your profession
• Your workplace
• Or some stock photos of your hobby or extra-curricular activities. You can get high-quality cool photography from unsplash.com or pixabay.com without royalty.

Simply, it can be anything representing yourself in any way and giving a positive impression.

3. Tagline:

It’s more like an ad to draw the attention of the audience to your profile. You have 120 characters to describe yourself. They should not be wasted saying automated words like “professional” “ambitious” or “competent” etc. They are highly overused and do not leave a positive mark. You can decide what you want the recruiter to see at first. Other than that, it appears in the meta description if searched on google. Formula to have great description is;

• What do you do?
• How can you help?
• What makes you different?

Do’s:

• Make the description sound sharp and sweet
• Add your keywords to it
• Think of the keywords that people could use while searching relevant to the services you are providing

4. About me:

This section gives your description or summary. It should be easy on the eye and skimming of your skill set. You can describe in it;

• What do you like to do and currently doing
• What you do for others
• What value do you bring to the companies
• Social proofs; link to your website, blog, Slideshare, and to your portfolio
• Rich media; you can also add videos and pictures that can portray you

It can be narrative and mainly buzzes with storytelling but should not be surrounded by only “me” and “I”.

Do not forget to add an appropriate call to action and contact information at the bottom.

5. Experience:

In this section, list all of your work experiences. Link your profile to the company you are working with. That will add your visibility on the company profile as well. Most of the recruiters consider volunteer and internship experience worthwhile as paid job experience. Add that as well.

6. Education:

Add your education with complete details, major and specialization, etc. Again, link to college or university so you can be traced and get a reach to the alumni network. If you are a newbie and do not have much professional experience at hand, more emphasis can be given to the education section by adding projects, co-curricular activities, etc.

7. Skills:

Add the skills that you really are mastered at. A maximum of 50 skills can be added, but the main thing is to focus on quality, not on quantity.

Add specified things, instead of generic words. For example; if you are a website SEO writer, do not only add generic “content writer”. If the recruiter is looking for it will prefer to reach the person with specified skill. Moreover, skills also contribute to SEO and ranking of the Linkedin profile.

Tip: You can also give a quiz relevant to your skills. It leaves a positive mark and authenticity to your skill.

8. Endorsements:

Skills added can be reinforced by your connections, they can be your colleagues or peers, etc. These endorsements contribute to more exposure and strength of LinkedIn profile. More endorsements mean more trust in the viewer’s eyes.

Tip: Endorsements from the person who already has the same verified skills as you impart more effect. LinkedIn algorithm prefers to mention it; “XYZ is endorsed by ABC, who is highly skilled at this”.

9. Recommendations:

It is a commendation added by your employee or any other co-worker. Good words definitely leave a good mark, especially from a more authoritative person. You can ask for the recommendation and also have the option to request modification and even hide it from your profile.

Tip: You can ask and give as many recommendations as you want, there is no limit.

10. Contact:

Always add your email in the contact section, so people should have a second option to reach you somewhere. If comfortable, you can add a contact number and Skype ID as well.

Tip: Update your custom URL to have better search ability.

All set, Your LinkedIn profile is ALL STAR now. BANG!! you are prone to more job opportunities and a step closer to your dream job.

I will be sharing strategies to direct clients hunting using LinkedIn and much more. Stay connected and scale your business more effectively in two shakes.