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LinkedIn (part 1): Updating your profile
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LinkedIn, a social networking site best known for connecting business professionals, should be included in your internship and entry-level job search arsenal. Krista Canfield, a career expert at LinkedIn, recently reviewed an Entry Level Careers reader’s profile, offering praise, suggesting room for improvement and providing examples of how she can maximize LinkedIn’s features during her job search.
Amanda Montgomery, a University of Alabama student graduating in May 2009 with a B.A. in Advertising, volunteered her profile for critique. (Note: This information has already been supplied to Montgomery, and she has since made necessary changes. So, if you plan to hire an entry-level professional with advertising and marketing expertise in the near future, I recommend visiting her profile.)
Praise
1. Current position, location and school are detailed and represented properly.
2. Detailed experience and completed summary.
3. Belongs to many groups, and all of her awards and honors are included.
Room for Improvement
1. Status update. Right below Montgomery’s name, title and location when she logs into her account, there’s a section that says “What are you working on?” Whenever a LinkedIn user makes updates to their status, that update goes out virally to their network. This is a great way for her to let her connections know what she’s up to and where she is. You can also update your status when you have a question you’re looking to solve.
2. Vanity URL. Montgomery should change the link to her LinkedIn profile to a vanity URL so that she is easier to find. Under Edit My Profile, Edit My URL, change it to something like www.linkedin.com/in/amandamontgomery.
“Claiming your name” or customizing your URL will make your profile come up higher in Google search results for your name. This is important because if you do a Google search on your name – which you should do periodically anyway – you’ll often see old, irrelevant information about you or another “Amanda Montgomery.” This can be disconcerting for potential employers that search for you online. Since you have complete ownership over your profile, you can change and update the information so that it best suits your needs and truly reflects who you are and what you’re doing.
3. Photo. She should include a photo in her public profile. Choose a simple, professional headshot. Under Edit My Profile, go to Add a Photo. Adding a photo helps people that are visually oriented remember you immediately.
4. My Websites. Under Edit My Profile, go to Websites and select “other” in the drop-down box. Montgomery should type in the title of her employer, school, blog or whatever Web site she decides to include, then paste the link underneath. Selecting “other” vs. “My Website” or “My Company” is better for branding purposes. She could also link to alumni groups – anything that’s going to accentuate her professional brand.
5. Summary. The style of a person’s summary description is totally up to them, but they should keep in mind that this is one of the first things that a potential employer may read. Make it as engaging as possible, and avoid overused clichés.
LinkedIn’s analytics team took a look at some of the more than 29 million profiles on its site that closely resemble résumés and found that there were six “over abused” phrases. Make sure you stay away from these unoriginal terms in your resume and profile: proven track record, problem solving/solver, fast paced, due diligence, cutting edge and results oriented.
Here are words you should use instead (power words or words of action and accomplishment): arranged, improved, trained, generated, created and presented.
6. Experience. Montgomery’s experience section is detailed, but the formatting is off. She should either arrange the experience into bullets, or type out the descriptions under each position in sentences. Treat your LinkedIn profile as your online résumé. Under Edit My Profile, go to Edit Experience and paste or type the revised text.
7. Recommendations. Montgomery needs to ask some of her stronger contacts for recommendations. A great way to do this is to recommend others. When you give someone else a recommendation, there is a greater chance that you will receive one in return. Under Edit My Profile, My Experience, go to Request Recommendation and select the appropriate contact.
When requesting recommendations, it helps to focus someone on the characteristics for which you want to be acknowledged, like your work ethic, attention to detail, etc. Recommendations don’t have to come just from people who work above you.
| Part 2: Maximizing features --> |
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