LinkedIn claims that you’re 40 times more likely to turn up in a search if your profile is complete.
If you were debating whether or not to use a picture on LinkedIn, read that statistic again. You can’t get to 100% unless you’ve complied with the rules LinkedIn has so cleverly hidden.
So here’s what you need for a complete profile:
Your current job- Two previous positions
- Your education
- The profile summary
- Your photo
- Some text in the specialties section
- At least three recommendations
Let’s look at those requirements a bit – I have some suggestions that may help if you’re having trouble. First, be scrupulously honest about your profile. There are too many ways for this to come back and haunt you otherwise. It’s OK to be a little fuzzy about some things, but don’t lie.
Current job – if you don’t have one, what should you do? I’m not going to suggest that you be dishonest about what you write, but many people create a phantom position – and the most common one is that you’re a consultant, self-employed. Most people can make some claim of this nature; for example, when I was in graduate school, I did a bit of consulting, and I made up a company name. Just don’t claim that you’re a corporation or LLC or anything like that. If you work part-time for your university or you’re a volunteer, use that as your job description.
Two previous positions – may be hard if you’re starting out, but see if the previous hint can help you.
Education – you don’t have to be a graduate to show education. You can simply put in whatever education you had, for whatever period. But please don’t claim any degree that you didn’t actually get. Education doesn’t have to be college, by the way – and you don’t have to specify a degree awarded. For that matter, you don’t have to say that you actually finished your studies.
Profile summary – you have 2,000 characters here, and some experts say you should use every one of them. I don’t believe that – remember that you’re essentially making a sales brochure about yourself. So make it nice to read if you want your reader to stay awake. Here’s an important tip you can use for your writing: after you’ve written the summary, read it out loud to yourself. Really. If you stumble on a word, or you read something that doesn’t sound conversational, change it. Contractions are fine, because most of us speak that way. Forget what you learned about writing, and write the way you speak when you’re not trying to impress somebody. I advise putting your email address in the summary and also in the contact settings section. This enables people who see your public profile to contact you (you’re looking for a job, remember?).
Photo – do it. Just your head. Leave your pets and your favorite mountains out of the picture. Take pity on viewers with poor vision who are trying to figure out if they know you from a really small photo. Use a well-lighted picture – not artsy fartsy. And don’t use the one you got after a night of binge drinking. You should use this same photo on all social networking sites, because it’s your brand identity – essentially, it’s your logo. If you want to read more about the importance of your picture, I’ve written more here. And if you need instructions for getting your picture on LinkedIn, I’ve written about that here.
Specialties – include your important keywords in this section. If you want to search for the important ones, use the Google Keyword Tool to see which keywords work best. For example, last time I looked, “personal brand” gets a lot more hits than “personal branding.” I’ve written more about this here.
Recommendations – it’s a good idea to get at least one from each of your jobs if you can. It’s fine to ask for recommendations – my usual tack is to write one for somebody else and ask if they would reciprocate. It’s also OK to offer to write the recommendation, since these are difficult for some people to create. You’ll need three of them to get to 100% (each is worth 5%, to a maximum of 15%).
There’s a lot more you can do in each of these categories, but getting to 100% completion is important, and you should make it a personal priority.
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