Elevate your LinkedIn profile
Level up your career opportunities
In the ever-evolving landscape of professional life, your online presence matters more than ever. It doesn’t replace the human connections and the need to invest in building your network but rather enhances them.
Data varies depending on the study but confirms one fact that nearly all recruiters review social media profiles. Over 60 per cent of employers have rejected applicants based on their online presence.
Data varies depending on the study but confirms one fact that nearly all recruiters review social media profiles. Over 60 per cent of employers have rejected applicants based on their online presence.
Whether you’re actively looking for an opportunity or maintaining your professional image, LinkedIn is your go-to platform. Companies and agencies often bypass traditional job postings and head straight to LinkedIn in search of candidates.
If you’re anything like I was a few years ago—treating LinkedIn as a mere formality rather than a career-boosting opportunity—this guide is for you.
Back then, my LinkedIn profile was a copy of my CV and a tool to hunt for job openings. However, as my “passion project” was growing and evolving, opening a new opportunity for a career pivot, I faced a dilemma: How could I manage dual identities while employed? Could LinkedIn be more than just a promotional platform for my current job and company? How could LinkedIn work for me?
To navigate this challenge, I invested in a LinkedIn consultant (yes, it cost me a whopping $500!). As I worked with coaching clients delivering my career development program ReEnvision. Create a new career path, I conducted extensive research myself and discovered valuable insights.
Now, I’m sharing my key learnings to help you elevate your online presence:
Ownership: Remember, even if you work for a company, your LinkedIn profile is entirely yours. You are not limited to talking on the matters of your current role or your current employer only.
Strategic Platform: View LinkedIn as a platform to build your brand around your expertise.
Futureproofing: Use it to advocate for your qualities, values and transferable skills tailoring your profile for any future opportunities.
Possibilities: Your LinkedIn presence isn’t confined by your current employer or job title. Broaden your definition of “experience” including any research, volunteering work, extracurricular activities, internships, or professional association involvement.
Work in Progress: Your LinkedIn profile is a dynamic work in progress. Think of it as your personal marketing toolkit, adaptable for every next step you want to take in your career. Customize your profile to resonate with each potential connection and each next move.
Story matters: Consider the tone you’re setting as an intentional career journey led by your enthusiasm, curiosity, and professional interest. If you had career gaps or what may seem like an unconnected experience, tell it as a deliberate choice with a focus on transferrable skills and diversity of experience.
Before updating your LinkedIn profile, adjust your privacy settings to prevent automatic notifications. Go to ‘Visibility of your LinkedIn activity’ and turn off ‘Share job changes, education changes, and work anniversaries from profile.’ This ensures that your network won’t receive a flood of updates for every minor edit you make. Particularly crucial if you’re currently employed and wish to keep profile changes discreet.
Customize Your URL to read your name and surname instead of a random combination of symbols.
If your name often gets mispronounced or you’ve used different names in your career, consider adding the phonetic spelling in parentheses or recording video/audio as well as including preferred gender pronouns.
If you are actively looking for a job, mark yourself as #OpentoWork.
Check your “Google” resume by searching your name online and go through every relevant entry editing if it doesn’t agree with your professional image.
Set all other social platforms to allow friends’ only access. Keep only your LinkedIn profile as public unless you use other social platforms for professional purposes.
Whether you are actively hunting for a job or would like to keep an eye on the market, set up job alerts to capture keywords for skills, qualities, qualifications and responsibilities for relevant positions.
Follow and research companies you might be interested in and explore if you already know someone who works there.
Search for people with similar profiles or those in positions you are interested in and explore what captures your eye, and what you like or don’t like. Mine LinkedIn for interesting and relevant profiles picking up headlines, phrases in the About section, writing and presenting styles, relevant keywords and general ideas to present your experience in the best light.
To make the best possible impression, accompany your profile with an on-brand headshot photo picturing you as if you were on the way to a networking event or job interview in your desired industry.
According to various surveys, profiles with a photo receive 21 times more views and 9 times more connection requests.
If your name often gets mispronounced or you’ve used different names in your career, consider adding the phonetic spelling in parentheses or recording video/audio as well as including preferred gender pronouns.
Choose a LinkedIn banner background that potentially reflects your professional interests, achievements, or aspirations for the next role and industry.
Alternatively, you can keep the background in a plain colour. You may consider colour association. Play this game: If you were a colour, what colour would you be? Maybe yellow? Tell me, what it is like to be your type of yellow? Are you warm and friendly, vibrant and enthusiastic, positive and creative? Use this as an idea to choose a picture and language style to convey your personality.
Headline is the most important section on your profile where you want to offer the most relevant information, packed with keywords featuring what you are doing now, what you want to do, your top transferrable skills or experiences you want to be known for and to keep growing.
Write an information-packed headline as if a person who comes across your profile wouldn’t read any further than your headline.
Provide a snapshot of your expertise, experience, specialty areas and career aspirations. Here are some examples:
Commercial Finance Manager | Big 4 Chartered Accountant | Financial Planning Expert | Behavioral Finance Expert
Business Growth Advisor | Specializing in Scalable Growth Strategies | Champion of Sustainable Business | Streaming Media
Aspiring Financial Analyst | BA in Economics | Former Intern at City Bank | Fluent in Spanish, English and French
Commercial Data Analytics Manager | LSE MSc
People development Lead, Career advisor FS Insights & Data
Web Developer, Front End Specialist, MBA, Nonprofit board member
This section is more than a professional summary of your CV. This is a place where you answer the typical interview question “Tell me about yourself” in an engaging and relevant to the opportunity manner, not only highlighting your career story, but bringing your personality through your writing and narrating style, focusing on core transferrable skills, areas of expertise, special achievements and moments in life that shaped who you are in your work and life, as well as inviting readers to connect to discuss professional subjects, contact you for job opportunities or expand professional network.
I’d recommend writing your story in the first-person perspective.
Research and AI will be your friends in case you don’t know where to start. Here are a few types of professional summaries:
Mission-based summary highlights how your role extends beyond tasks – it’s about wider impact and unpacks the essence of your experience that speaks to diverse audiences. For example: telling stories for brands, designing systemic commercial solutions, and driving sustainable organizational change for multinational organisations. Couple it with details of your current role and areas of professional growth and passions.
Short summary - summarise your experience, state your current role, add competencies, and focus on including loads of relevant keywords. For example: I have over 10 years of experience working in big data analysis. Currently, I work as a chief data specialist in XYZ, designing data analysis algorithms, developing and introducing big-data analytical tools etc. Before it, I served as …. Core competencies: data science, cloud computing, network protocols, machine learning.
Personality Driven Summary – centred around experience that led to develop and exhibit certain personal traits which are transferrable and highly sought after in the job you desire. It starts mainly by hooking people to a personal story, highlighting soft skills and then introducing some hard skills. Works well for students and young professionals.
Blended summary – has the best of both worlds. It is light, fun yet professional as if you are having a conversation with a new colleague and feeling on the same wave.
Accomplishments summary – this is to share your awards and publications. innovations, and significant achievements in the industry. The key here – quantify what is quantifiable.
To help you start, consider the following questions: What led you in your career? What still interests and inspires you and where do you hope it will take you? What are you enjoying the most and what are your strongest points. I refer to it as a silver lining- something that you bring to the table every time you are engaging in work or a project. Does your detail-oriented nature allow you to spot opportunities or risks? Do you love bringing a different perspective based on your varied industry and cultural experience or does your drive make you focus on delivering the best experience for your customers?
Use hashtags for key areas of expertise.
Education: choose what to include and what is relevant to your goals. You don’t need to state everything.
Certifications: include any credentials that will promote your brand and relevant to your current and future career goals. Reskilling and upskilling speak well of you as a dedicated life-long learner.
Skills and Endorsements: bulk up on keywords that align with the opportunities you are seeking; delist skills you don’t want to exercise any longer. Pin the top five skills for them to be visible on your profile.
Honors and Awards: feature those that are most representative and reflective of your career goals.
Minimise to optimise to prioritise: list only significant and relevant experience and information, the rest can be summed up under “Early career engagements” and keep description of each position concise focusing on essence.
Give and receive recommendations: it’s fine to ask to feature certain keywords and traits in recommendations. If you parted well with your previous employers and bosses, ask them to write a recommendation for you.
Proofread, proofread, proofread. Run your profile through one of the spell-checking AI tools to help you spot typos.
Post more frequently about industry issues.
Remember, what you choose to like, retweet, share, and comment on from other people says just as much about you as what you post yourself.
Expand your network by connecting to people who graduated from your university, people who do the jobs you’d like to do and work for companies you’d like to work for, people with similar professional interests.
Join professional groups and forums related to your broad interests and professional expertise.
To establish yourself as a valuable contributor and an expert, comment on posts regularly, which is not necessarily frequent. Engage in topics that interest you, you don’t need to pay attention to everything.
To make your LinkedIn feed interesting and useful, connect and follow great creators and credible publishers and institutions, which will allow you to repost and share insights that you find valuable.
Lastly, treat this process as if you would dress up a window of your shop. This is your professional face that people will see before they will get to know you personally. What impression would you like to leave with them? That you are experienced? Inventive? Hardworking? Creative? Reliable? Teambuilder and systemic thinker?
Connect with people and grow your network. I know it may feel iffy for you to reach out to people who you may not know, therefore first explore all current connections and then reach out to new people and share what you like about their experience or what you find valuable about their posts or any questions you may have. Personalise your connection request to feel authentic. Remember, they are not Gods, they are real people with dreams and challenges. Connect on a human level.
Here’s a metaphor that helps me and I hope it will help you. Think of networking as a children’s playground. When a new kid comes in, some will rush to welcome a newcomer, some will show their toys and ask what he/she got. Some may run away to play their own game and that’s alright. At least you are in your own game.
To play the game, you need to be in the game.
Good luck with your career recalculation and establishing your online brand.
If you need support in defining What’s Next in your career and ready to invest your energy to proactively create career that inspires you, join our program ReEnvision. ReCalculate. Create a new career path.
For further support, you can find tools and useful articles assisting you with recalculating and building your career in our blog.
