LinkedIn is your home base for your personal brand. It is where recruiters, hiring managers, and networking contacts come first when they are learning about you. This is how you can define yourself on your own terms. You give people a glimpse into your competency, your experience, and your personality.
Give some thought to how you want to present yourself holistically. Think of three descriptive words that you want to be associated with. For each section of LinkedIn, ensure it supports your chosen words from image and headline to experience copy and recommendations.
The six areas and one key activity to showcase your personal brand
Professional headshot
Your headshot is the number one item people look at when visiting your profile. In less than three seconds your visitor will size you up. Are you friendly, open, competent? This is not the time for dimly-lit selfies. Take a photo that lights your face. Make sure your features don’t compete with a distracting background. You can also use an inexpensive service to get a headshot that looks professional. Here’s one that uses AI » aragon.ai (I have not used it previously.)
Profile banner
Your headline should clearly state who you are and the value you bring. Make it succinct and inclusive of keywords related to your field and target role. To find these keywords, identify 15-20 target positions you would want to apply for. Copy/paste the core job descriptions (all of them at the same time) into ChatGPT and ask it to identify the top 15 keywords. These are likely the keywords used by recruiters in their searches. A tool that can help is headline analyzer.
About section
This is the second most important part of your profile. This is where you come to life and your personality shines through. The best way to do this is through storytelling. Share more about you, your work (including accomplishment), and how you perform through an interesting story instead of bulleted buzzwords. A good format is to write about overcoming a work challenge. Set up the situation/challenge, the work you completed, and the results achieved. Include quantifiable results whenever you can.
Pro tip:
Include good formatting in your About section. Include white space, short paragraphs, and short bullets so it’s easy to read.
Experience section
Keep your experience current and only show the last 10-15 years. Make each position succinct with what you did in the role and what you accomplished without relying on jargon or ill-defined buzzwords. Include quantifiable metrics in your bullets showcasing the results only you achieved. Here’s a fun tool to help you write better bullets.
Recommendations
Recommendations are social proof that you are as good as you say you are. Get at least three recommendations from current or prior colleagues, preferably superiors. Ask each to highlight something specific about what makes you valuable in your work. Ask them to use examples. And give recommendations to others so people can see how you articulate your opinion of others.
Activity: Create or respond to content
Outside the recommendations you give, how you create, curate, or respond to content will give others clues about your expertise, results, and personality. If your work is in a particular discipline, share your insight into it. My friend Lindsey Matens does this well turning finance into a conversation topic. Additionally, make insightful comments on others’ posts on your area of expertise. When making or engaging with posts, keep the tone positive and constructive.
You can check out my LinkedIn profile to see how I incorporated many of these suggestions into my profile.
Wrap-up
When you invest in these areas of your LinkedIn profile, contacts and hiring managers can get a sense of who you are as a person and some of the accomplishments you achieved. This makes you more distinct, attractive, and approachable. It invites connection. This is the first step in setting your reputation and increasing the chances of bigger opportunities coming your way.
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