Having a LinkedIn profile is not enough to automatically have the security of being contacted by the best headhunters and thus achieve the job of your dreams . An incomplete, anonymous and carelessly created LinkedIn profile has the same value as a curriculum vitae locked in a desk drawer. It exists, but no one will ever notice it. As a search and selection agency for qualified personnel , we find ourselves consulting LinkedIn every day in search of new talent , to add to those already present in our large databases.
Thanks to this long experience we can therefore explain to you what are the characteristics that transform a mediocre LinkedIn profile into an effective tool for being contacted by companies and recruiters.
Here, then, are our tips for improving your LinkedIn profile today:
An effective LinkedIn profile in 10 simple steps
1. Pay attention to the headline
The headline of your Linkedin profile is the writing that appears immediately below your name and surname, next to your photograph. This is perhaps the most important element of your entire LinkedIn page, effectively representing its title. Optimizing the headline means making it highly descriptive and making it stand out from those of other users: this platform, in fact, has more than 300 million members, and a bit of creativity is needed to get noticed. A simple headline like ‘Account’, therefore, has no chance of standing out. Much better to adopt the headhunter’s perspective and insert keywords capable of strengthening the message and, at the same time, optimizing this text string also from an SEO point of view (and therefore towards search engines like Google). There are 120 characters at your disposal: make the most of them!
2. Pay attention to your profile photo
A Linkedin profile without a photograph is certainly at a disadvantage. Having said that, it must be clarified that LinkedIn is not Facebook, nor even Instagram. The photo must therefore not be artistic, nor excessively constructed: it must instead represent you for who you are, and therefore preferably in the capacity suited to the role you play or what you are looking for. The photography used must be professional, but not cold , and must clearly show your face.
3. Create an effective summary
Your LinkedIn profile provides your contacts with a convenient summary of who you are. This section should therefore include all your skills and professional experiences, i.e. everything that can be useful for a recruiter. But be careful, this does not mean that the summary of your LinkedIn profile must transform into a curriculum vitae: instead it must be something more discursive and more attractive, therefore capable of narrating and gracefully summarizing your strengths, as well as your goals for the future. By reading it, a head hunter or HR manager needs to understand not only your skills, they also need to get an idea of your personality.
4. Don’t forget your contacts
Don’t make life difficult for those recruiters who decide to include you in their list of potential candidates to contact : your LinkedIn profile must contain your updated contacts, so as to allow recruiters to communicate with you in a few seconds. Without updated contacts, a Linkedin profile is practically useless!
5. Constantly update your skills
LinkedIn has a section dedicated to your skills. When creating your profile it is essential to complete this part with the utmost sincerity, without exaggerating your skills , which however must be continually updated. What have you learned or improved in the last year?
6. Update your work and educational experiences
Make sure you have entered all your work experiences in the appropriate area, and that you have specified the start and end dates of the working relationships, the name of the company, the role held, the main duties and everything that could be useful to a recruiter to evaluate your person. And remember that this part is not a curriculum vitae, it is much more: in fact, you can find in this section images, videos, articles, links, papers, in short, anything that can shed light on your experience and the objectives achieved during your career .
7. Grow your network
The advantages of having many contacts on LinkedIn are many and different. Surely, to give an example, a recruiter will appreciate a commercial profile with a thousand contacts more than an equal profile with just 40 contacts. But don’t surround yourself with random contacts: the most astute headhunters, in fact, will also take a look at the composition of your network, and will only be fully convinced when they discover that a large part of your connections are made up of professionals in the same sector as you.
8. Join inspiring groups, and become an active part of them
A LinkedIn profile created and left to itself cannot be very successful. To fully exploit this platform, to have a good reason to access it every day and to have something useful to share with your network of connections, it is advisable to join Qualchb and become an active part: in this way you will keep yourself updated , you will expand your network and get noticed.
9. Do not refuse – without reason – new connection requests
LinkedIn is not a platform that invites users to publish private content : your LinedIn profile, in this sense, should remain something visible to anyone. For this reason, except in particular cases, there is no concrete reason to refuse connection requests. Maybe you are not interested in that specific person becoming part of your network, but you must also think that that new contact will serve to connect you (potentially) with many other users, among whom – who knows – there could also be an important person for your working career.
10. Don’t dwell unnecessarily
A recruiter looking for talent online finds himself viewing not one, but 10, 100 or more LinkedIn profiles. For this reason you must be exhaustive but concise , to avoid wasting the time of people who, frustrated by your verbosity, may decide to look elsewhere.
