Mir is a certified professional resume writer and volunteers her time with Dress for Success.
LinkedIn facts: (from Kinsta.com)
- Users only spend about 17 minutes on LinkedIn per month.
- 39% of LinkedIn users pay for LinkedIn Premium
- Only 3 million users (out of the more than 500 million) share content on a weekly basis. This means that only about 1% of LinkedIn’s 260 million monthly users share posts, and those 3 million or so users net the 9 billion impressions.
- With more than 20 million companies listed on the site and 14 million open jobs, it’s no surprise to find out that 90% of recruiters regularly use LinkedIn.
About 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions (managers, VPs, Directors, C-level).
So, to use all of these statistics to paint a picture:
There are many more or less “inactive” users on LinkedIn, and there are two main groups of people who use LinkedIn regularly:
- Recruiters and hiring managers who are using LinkedIn to find and vet candidates
- There’s the 1% of the 260 million LI users you talked about, Katie: these are ambitious, career-focused professionals who are using LinkedIn to make connections, to stay informed about trends in their industry, to market themselves for future career opportunities, and to build their personal brand.
So what I’m excited to talk to your listeners on today’s podcast is how to be one of the one-percenters.
Katie to introduce the three things.
1. Create a well written, complete, and keyword optimized LinkedIn profile
2. Build your network, give/get recommendations, and follow target companies
3. Engage with others and write/post original content for your network/followers
1. Create a well written, complete, and keyword optimized LinkedIn profile. There are a few components to your LinkedIn page and you want to fully flesh out your entire profile.
Complete Your Personal Profile.
LinkedIn research shows that users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities via their LinkedIn activities. Also, LinkedIn takes into account the completeness of your profile in its search algorithm, which means you’re more likely to rank higher on the search results page if your profile is 100% complete.
Get the Headshot Right.
It might be worth hiring a professional photographer to work with you. The photo is crucial. One study used eye-tracking software to find that recruiters spent 19% of their time on any given LinkedIn profile just looking at the photo. So, it’s important to get it right.
Also, profiles with a photo get up to 21x more views and 36x more messages. You definitely don’t want to leave the photo space blank.
Use good lighting to get a crisp, clean image. Choose the right top, jewelry, hairstyle, and so forth. Smile and look at the camera. Keep the background simple and crop appropriately: head and shoulders. Not too close, not too far away.
I’ve been writing resumes and LinkedIn profiles for 10 years and I think people are now really starting to get the photo right. I used to see a lot more people using photos of themselves in formal wear -- like from a wedding photoshoot, in spaghetti straps or a tuxedo -- or in a much too casual setting -- in sunglasses, with a child, with someone obviously cropped out.
Use Your Headline to Get Noticed.
By default, LinkedIn assigns you a headline that consists of your job title @ your company name. So, it might read something like, “Sr. Software Engineer at IBM.” Many people don’t realize that they can use this space more strategically.
Your headline should clearly explain what you do and who you do it for—in language a hiring manager or recruiter would use. When someone conducts a search on LinkedIn, possibly looking for potential candidates to fill a role, the search results display, at a glance, a few key pieces of information.
Also, you want to be strategic about keywords; your headline is a great place to include keywords that will position you for the jobs you’re seeking.
What about your job title? There really isn’t one “right” way to address this, but my favorite tactic is to use the headline to promote what you want to do next, while not overtly advertising the fact that you’re not currently working. So, for instance, if your last job was as a project manager, but that job ended five years ago, you put an end date of 2014 on that job and use your headline to say something like:
Experienced Project Manager
...or go with something more specific and memorable that also builds your credibility, like:
PMP-Certified IT Project Manager
For people who want to shift careers, you can’t do too much to change the job titles you have had in the past, but you can use your headline to position yourself for the job you want next. So, for instance, if your career so far has been in one thing and you want to move into another thing, your headline is a great place to highlight that. I’ll use the example of a 12th grade English Language Arts teacher who wanted to leave teaching and get a job with an educational software company as an English language arts subject matter expert. Her headline used to be:
English Teacher at Sanderson High School
….and, when we gave her a LinkedIn makeover, we changed her tagline to:
Educational Software Development Consultant with an M.Ed. in English Language Arts and 15+ Years of Classroom Experience (remember that you only have 120 characters)
Nail the “About” Section.
Whatever message you decided to promote in your headline, elaborate on it in your About section.
Start with a compelling opening statement. If you’ve been on LinkedIn lately, you know that you can only see the first line and a half of the summary and you actually have to click “See more” to continue reading that section. You want to make that first interesting enough to get someone to keep reading.
Use keywords throughout your summary. You have up to 2,000 characters to play with. Don’t be afraid to inject some personality, tell a story, use a casual, conversational tone, and talk about what makes you unique or what your professional passions are.
Keep it readable by using short paragraphs or bullet points. And definitely highlight your qualifications and skills. These are most likely going to dovetail with some of your most strategic keywords.
...
