Speaker 1 (00:00): Want to know how to get the best LinkedIn
profile photo for you? Then keep watching. In this video, I'm going to give you tangible LinkedIn
profile photo tips that you can implement today to get the best LinkedIn profile for you. Let's get
started. But first for all the guidance that you need to get hired, subscribe to my channel. I post
weekly content that will help you along every step on your journey toward landing that dream
job. Hit that subscribe button and click the bell to be notified whenever I drop a new video,
I don't want you to miss a beat. My name is Cindy Makita Dodd. I am a career strategist and
coach also found a Hired Institute. I help driven professionals land their dream jobs and accelerate
to their next promotions. Part of working with my clients entails me having to give them the hard
truth about their LinkedIn profile photos. Speaker 1 (00:59):
The truth is that you want to put your best foot forward. Your LinkedIn profile is what
is on the front line, selling you to the potential employer. And in this video,
I want to show you exactly how to have an amazing LinkedIn profile photo that you not only put
your best foot forward, but you can impress any hiring manager or recruiter. Take note.
You don't have to hire a photographer to have a great LinkedIn profile headshot. In this video,
I'm going to show you the top three tips that you can use to have an amazing LinkedIn profile photo,
but I'm also going to show you how you can easily take yours. Today. Here are the top
three things that you want to be aware of when you are taking your LinkedIn profile. Photo
number one is lighting. Good lighting makes a huge difference. It can help you take your photo from
average to fantastic. Lighting can help brighten you, but also brighten
your space or the background. soft, natural light works wonders, but some staged light,
for example, a ring light or other can also be grate for when you are taking a profile photo.
Speaker 1 (02:09): Number two is your eyes. As humans,
we connect through eye contact. So you absolutely want to make sure that you are looking directly at
the camera. And number three is to smile. Smiling makes you appear more confident and approachable.
A study of over 800 profile pictures came to find that smiling in your profile photo makes you
appear more likable, competent and influential. The choice is ultimately up to you if you want
to smile or not, but I highly recommend a good smile to have an amazing LinkedIn profile photo.
So now I want to walk you step by step into how I would take a LinkedIn profile photo with my phone,
as well as my computer. And I'm also going to show you how to edit it. So right after this video,
I want you to do the same. Okay. So right now I'm on my phone, what I've done is I'll just
flip my camera really quickly. I'm in front of a window. So I'm going to flip this. Okay. So I
have the natural lighting, which was step one. I'm actually going to turn my camera so that I have it
landscape. That's always the best when you want to take profile photos or anything like that.
I want to make sure that it doesn't look too much like a selfie. Okay. So I want it to be leveled.
I'm going to make sure that I'm making eye contact directly with the camera. I want to look nice and
poised and then I'm going to smile. Speaker 1 (03:36):
Okay. So let's try that again. Remember number one is lighting I'm in front of natural lights.
Number two is make sure to make eye contact with the camera. And then number three
is to smile. So I'm going to try and put my arm a little bit down on this one
so that it doesn't look too much like selfie. I'm going to try to do this one straight on,
but I'm going to be looking at the camera again. Let's try it.
Okay. And then I'm going to try another one just to have some variations. You never know.
So I'm kind of angled in this one. Let's try it one more time. Okay. There we have it. Let's see
how they turn out. Speaker 2 (04:16):
Okay. Now that I've taken my photo on either my cell phone or my computer, my laptop or desktop,
the next step is to do a little bit of editing to make sure that I have a standout photo and I'm
going to show you exactly how to do it. So I'm going to open two sites. The first is remove.bg
and the second is canva.com. Both of these sites are free to use, which is great. So the first
thing that I want to do is actually remove the background on my photo and you'll see why in a
second. So I'm going to click upload image, and I'm going to find the headshot that I selected,
which is actually already on there. Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay. And as you can see, it automatically removes my background. So there's a few parts in which I
actually want to restore because you can see, over here it cut off my hair. So I click could edit
all of these are minor things. I'm pretty sure you're just going to come up just fine.
So we're going to go to erase and restore, going to decrease that brush size. What I
pretty much just want to do is make sure that all along the edges that I have all of my hair.
So we're going to click restore here. Speaker 2 (05:37):
Okay. So for me, that's good enough. I'm happy with that. So I'm going to
download it, click download image, and then I'm going to hop over to Canva
once in canva.com, you have to create a free account so do that. You're going to choose,
create a design. And the size that I want to use is Instagram post. Im gonna click that.
Because I've already downloaded my image without the background from the back, uh, remove.bg,
I'm actually going to upload that image into Canva. And I'm actually going to create it in a
circle, which I'll show you how to do in a second. So I'm in Canva. Step one is to go to uploads
and you can either drag and drop your image into there. Or you can click upload media
and find your image. Step two, I'm going to go over to elements. And I want to select a circle
because that is the frame that I want to use. So under the frames I'm going to click the circle.
I'm going to drag it onto my screen. Speaker 2 (06:45):
I'm going to enlarge it so that it fills the space. Nice.
Now I'm going to click uploads and I want to drag my picture onto there. Perfect. And now
the next step that I want to do is I actually want to insert a color. So this is really going to make
your profile image stand out. So there's two things that you can either do, either insert
a color to fill the entire background, or you can choose to just have a circle,
a color on the outside or on the outline, which I have on my profile picture at the moment. So
two ways you can do this. Let's first start off with just creating the outline. So I'm going to
go to shapes. I want to select circle. Speaker 2 (07:35):
I want to make sure that the circle is slightly bigger than the image that I currently have.
I'm going to click position at the top and I'm going to go to
that. So I can actually make this a little bit bigger
so that its nicely positioned in the center.
Then I'm going to actually put another circle in to make this, this one.
It seems like a lot of work, but it is so worth it once you see the outcome.
I'm going to go position. I'm going to send it backward. And here, it's just about playing with
the sizes of everything. Speaker 2 (08:33):
What's nice is that once it's on LinkedIn, you'll barely see some of the sizes. So
just going to move this to the side so that I can, I'm just doing a little bit of editing,
moving things around so that I get the circle right in the center. Perfect.
Perfect. So that is one option of what I can do. What's great is that I'm looking
directly at the camera. Um, I can send to this even a little bit more if I want to
zoom in a little bit more, I can, so I can make sure that my face falls the entire circle
that's even better. Speaker 2 (09:25):
Perfect. So that is one step of what I could do. And then the second thing I could do
is I can choose to not have the white on the background and I can choose to maybe make this
a bright color. Say, I want to go for a light blue or even a brighter blue, just to make sure that
I'm standing out. This is awesome. Actually prefer this better. Great! So now I have my
profile picture, which is awesome. I have a bright background behind it. I'm smiling. I'm looking
directly at the camera and I did this all through my phone. So the next step is to just save this as
your name first and last name, maybe I just say profile picture, and I'm going to download it,
save it as a PNG, which is perfect. I'm going to click download. And then the next step is to just
upload it to LinkedIn. There you have it. Speaker 1 (10:25):
I have just created a standout photo for myLinkedIn profile, and I'm so happy with
the outcome. If you follow the exact steps that I did, please comment below, send me a link to your
LinkedIn profile. I would love to have a look at your new picture. Don't forget to download
my free guide, the standout candidate toolkit for step by step process that you can use to not only
stand out from the masses of job seekers, but get noticed and get hired into your dream jobs. A link
to the download is in the description of this video. If you found this useful, please give it
a like comment below any questions that you have when you're creating your LinkedIn profile photo.
Thank you so much for watching and I cannot wait to see you at the next video. Bye for now.