Having a LinkedIn profile is quickly becoming a necessity among job seekers for many headhunters and HR representatives are turning to social networks to get the best candidates.
However, it is not enough to create a simple profile and hope that companies will check your account. With more than 14 million members, you need to be aggressive and proactive to catch the eyes of potential employers. The key, my friend, is personal branding.
Fortunately, LinkedIn is offering 10 tips to improve your personal profile:
- Don’t just cut and paste your resume. Instead, describe your experience and abilities as you would to someone you just met. And write for the screen, in short blocks of copy with visual or textual signposts.
- Use specific adjectives, colorful verbs, active construction (“managed project team,” not “responsible for project team management”).
- Write a personal tagline. That line of text under your name? It’s the first thing people see in your profile. It follows your name in search hit lists. It’s your brand.
- Write a 30-second description, the essence of who you are and what you do, and use it in the Summary section to engage readers. You’ve got 5-10 seconds to capture their attention.
- Point out your skills. Also: particular abilities and interests, the personal values you bring to your professional performance, even a note of humor or passion.
- Explain your experience. Help the reader grasp the key points: briefly say what the company does and what you did or do for them.
- Add websites that showcase your abilities or passions. Then edit the default “My Website” label to encourage click-throughs (you get Google page rankings for those, raising your visibility).
- Make a point of answering questions in your field, to establish your expertise, raise your visibility, and most important, to build social capital with people in your network.
- Get recommendations from colleagues, clients, and employers who can speak credibly about your abilities or performance. (Think quality, not quantity.)
- Build your connections. Connections are one of the most important aspects of your brand: the company you keep reflects the quality of your brand.
Originally posted on November 19, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
These great principles apply to entrepreneurs, too. The trick for us is to calibrate our personal brand to our business brand. I’ve learned that you have to plan this out before you touch the LinkedIn page itself. Have simple notes at your side that summarize the key points of your personal-business brand.
My site is all about practical applications of Success through Balance. I strongly beleive in the power of Napoleon Hill’s Master Mind. In modern terms, LinkedIn is a reflection of that. I have been reveiwing LinkedIn based sites and have included yours in the review. Please take a look at the review and add your comments. Zale http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ZaleTabakman <- A connection to me adds 1,600,000 people to your network. You can find it at networking and LinkedIn
Here are is a flash course I have developed that shows how to use LinkedIn to generate revenues.
It assumes you already know how to create a profile – but want to acccess your network.
I have had several LinkedIn people review it, but I am looking for a few important bloggers as well. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
http://www.zaletabakman.ca/2007/12/19/seven-ways-to-use-your-linkedin-network/
Zale
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ZaleTabakman <- A connection to me can add 1,600,000 people to your network