When building your LinkedIn profile, remember:
- Your social media communications should complement your resume without duplicating it. Along with your professionally written resume and biography, a well-crafted LinkedIn profile is a critical component of your job search toolkit. It’s not designed to cover your entire professional history. Your profile should provide enough information to compel people to connect with you — and possibly request a job interview!
- To have a strong online presence, you must be clear about who you are and who you are not. An unfocused LinkedIn profile may be worse than no profile at all. A successful LinkedIn profile gives readers a snapshot of your unique value and how you can contribute to their organization’s success.
- Your LinkedIn profile offers you considerable room to showcase projects, publications, and experience. Strategically leverage it to fully illustrate your personal brand parallel to your other career marketing communications.
- You want an online profile you can control— independent of any employer —that demonstrates what kind of job candidate you are (and what you do).
- Because it is a marketing piece, you should develop a headline that instantly attracts the attention of your reader. You have approximately 20 seconds to catch a visitor’s attention. Consequently, you must find a way to stand out in a crowd. If your profile is like every other profile on LinkedIn, you won’t stand out and you won’t be found.
- Stand out with your LinkedIn profile by highlighting the strongest qualifications you have for an employer in your LinkedIn headline, backing up those qualifications with accomplishments throughout your profile summary, and using strategies that will help you become found by the people who most need someone like you.
Remember, don’t try to be all things to all people. Although you can create different targeted versions of your résumé to target different types of positions, you’re limited to one LinkedIn profile. Make it count! By investing the time to concisely express what makes you unique and valuable, your LinkedIn profile WILL attract attention from prospective employers. A purposefully crafted LinkedIn profile will lead to increased visibility that produces meaningful networking opportunities and job leads.
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Article written by Margi Williams and reprinted with permission of Examiner.com