Hi. I'm Matt Youngquist of Career Horizons.
I've been a career coach now for 20 plus years, and one of my specialties
has always been the use of social media tools and technology
to enhance one's career success and find new jobs.
Today, I'm going to be sharing a series of tips
about how to set up your LinkedIn profile for best results.
There are millions and millions of people on the LinkedIn site,
but I haven't met a lot of people, I think, who fully understand
all the nuances or some of the cool ways you can set up your profile
to really increase the odds of being found by employers and recruiters out there.
So the first tip I want to share
before anything else is with regard to a setting on LinkedIn.
Now, LinkedIn has dozens of settings, but the ones I want all of you -
the one I want all of you to take a look at and potentially switch off,
is the share profile alerts with your network setting.
Where you're going to find that is in the Me menu > settings and privacy submenu >
Then you have to click on the visibility header on the left > and visibility
of your LinkedIn activity.
If you follow those steps, you're going to see a setting called "Share
profile updates with your network,"
and I would encourage you if it's not already turned off,
to turn it off and leave it off as that will just prevent automatic alerts
going out to the people
you know, telling them that you're messing around on LinkedIn,
which may not be the best idea if you're in a confidential job situation.
Tip number two I would share is with regard to your photo
at the top of your LinkedIn page.
Now, LinkedIn is mostly a text medium,
but at the very top you can add a photo of yourself and
there's a rectangular box behind the photo where you can put a background image.
So these images will really help your profile stand out from the crowd.
So I encourage you to put a photo on there that not only is a good shot of yourself
smiling, looking presentable, dressed appropriately,
but make sure the lighting is good as it's in focus.
We don't want a selfie against a wall or some cropped image of you
from 20 years ago. Have one really good photo.
And then see if you can find an image to go behind it that will complement it.
An abstract design, a skyline, maybe some metaphorical imagery.
All of that just helps your profile pop off the page.
Tip number three is with regard to your LinkedIn headline.
Now the headline is the strip of text
right under your name at the top of your profile.
It can be up to 15 or 20 words long.
And by default, it's going to just have your current or last job
title and company.
But since words in the headline count very heavily in the LinkedIn search formula,
I always encourage people to go in there and add maybe five, ten words
related to your skills, your strengths and your industry focus.
So, for example, a chief financial officer I've got on the screen here.
You know, we might edit his to go beyond just his title
and add something that says perhaps, "Expertise in
financial reporting, analysis and operations." Again, just to give
those extra words a bit of extra weight and help him become more findable.
Another quick tip I would share, especially for newer users of the system,
is when you join LinkedIn, everyone gets a unique Web address
that will take people to your LinkedIn profile.
What a lot of people don't realize, though, is you can customize this.
It doesn't have to be the big, long, randomized one that LinkedIn assigns you
when you first join.
So all you have to do here is take a few seconds, go to the Me Menu
> View profile > click on the top right link that says Edit public profile and URL
> and in the top right of that, you're going to see your current address
and you just click the little blue pencil
and you can change the section in the final box there to anything you want.
Just as long as it's not when someone else on LinkedIn has already grabbed.
So typically
your first or last name, middle initial, just something you're comfortable with.
So you have a short, custom LinkedIn address to share with people.
Moving right along,
there's a section on your LinkedIn called "Open to Work"
that there's a lot of confusion around, but this is a setting that lets you signal
to employers and recruiters you're open to being approached about new jobs.
You're going to find that setting at the top of your profile page.
It's going to be a box on the left
that says "Show recruiters you're open to work," and
there's two options for it unless you just want to leave it off.
If you open that section up, you can specify any job
titles or locations you would consider career wise.
So you'd want to fill that out appropriately.
But most importantly, at the bottom, it says "Choose who sees you're open,"
and you can either say, "I
want all LinkedIn members to know I'm looking for a job," or "Only recruiters."
And I highly recommend recruiters only because if again,
you're in a confidential situation that not only, only shows paying
recruiters, you're available, not random people,
the vast majority of people on LinkedIn will not be able to see that setting,
but it also blocks anyone from your current company.
Seeing that setting turned on.
So you'll want to read the fine print just to make 100%.
you're sure you're comfortable,
but for many people, turning it to "recruiters only" is going to increase
the number of opportunities that find them on LinkedIn.
So as we shift down into the meat of the profile,
there's a section a little farther down.
It's called the about section,
and it's probably the most creative part of LinkedIn because really
all it is is a great big blank box that you can put anything you want.
So some people put nothing.
Some put a little snippet of text from your resume but what, what
I encourage in the spirit of findability is put one or two paragraphs
describing what you do, your strengths, what you think differentiates you.
And after you put that narrative text in, put a list of bullets that have maybe 15
or 20 of your top skills and strengths, because again,
it's the keywords that recruiters are going to use to find you.
I might even at the bottom put in a list of industries
you've worked in or are targeting, because industry words
are another very common thing that employers and recruiters look for.
So I would make the most of that section, fill it out, get some good information
about yourself.
And again, that's just going to help your overall findability on the system.
Now, right down from the About section, you're going to see another section
called the Experience section.
And it's - it's
the one that's most equivalent to what's on the bulk of your resume.
It's your work history.
Now, two little tricks I give you about that.
One is that if you don't have
a description of each of your jobs, I would put at least a few sentences
or a short description of your tasks, your job responsibilities.
Again, just because LinkedIn runs on keywords.
So the more language you have in there describing what you do,
it's going to increase your chances of being found.
The second thing I would do that is not as well-known
is the titles on LinkedIn count very, very heavily in the search algorithm.
They get extra credit.
So beyond your actual work titles, you might think about as you see
on the screen here, "Can I add just a few extra words
that I want to get superpower on?" So in this case, on the screen,
I've got a CFO where we just added "- cloud, SAS and analytics products"
because that was the environment he was in.
And those words now are helping him get found for those kinds of jobs.
Same thing right underneath that we put in parentheses "Heavy FP&A Focus"
because he was trying to attract
jobs, dealing with financial planning and analysis.
So resume, it doesn't matter much, but on LinkedIn, think hard about your titles
and if you can augment them or enhance them
just a little bit with some good words, it goes a long, long way.
OK, we're on the home stretch here.
The next tip I want to share
is with regard to the Skills section down near the bottom of your profile.
Now, if you don't see that section, you might not have it enabled quite yet.
You want to go up to the add new section at the top of your profile, you'll see
a button where you're going to find the skill section and can plug it in.
But what this section does, it's pretty simple.
It gives you 50 slots to fill with 50 skills, strengths and competencies
you possess.
So I'd encourage everyone to max that out at 50.
All you have to do is click the plus sign next to that section.
LinkedIn is going to make some suggestions of skills it thinks you might have.
You know, you can pick some of those, but most importantly,
you click the add another skill button.
And if you start typing any word, like let's try "finance,"
it's going to bring out a dropdown list of all kinds of terms in the system
that relate to whatever you typed in.
So the system's going to help you.
You can type in "team," "project," "business," "marketing,"
whatever you do for a living, and it's going to give you a ton of suggestions
and just pick from the list until you get to 50.
But again, maxing this section out is really going to help recruiters
pick you out of the crowd and find you.
The final tip I have for you today is with regard to a section called
Recommendations on LinkedIn down near the bottom of your profile.
Now a lot of people wonder about this setting.
It's basically just a modern form of letters of recommendation.
It allows people you know and are connected to
to write testimonials about you that then get published on your profile.
Now, not everyone needs to do this, and there's plenty of people
who never quite get around to this.
But if you have some friends or colleagues that you think would say
nice things about you, it's not a bad idea to reach out and see
if they'll go on record and submit some text for your profile.
All you have to do to make that happen is go to the top of your profile,
click "Add profile section," go down to "Recommended"
and you'll see a button that says "Add recommendations." If you click on that,
it's going to walk you through the process of who do you want to ask.
You get to write them a little note asking for a recommendation,
and then if they choose to cooperate, they'll send one to you.
And don't worry, you get to approve it first
so it doesn't go on your profile
until you take a look at it, make sure you're comfortable with it,
and then you approve it and it goes up and you've got this
nice little testimonial at the very end of your page.
So there you have it.
Nine key tips on how to supercharge your LinkedIn profile
and make yourself much more findable than the average person on LinkedIn.
Good luck and hope you've found some of these tips useful.