5 Easy Ways to Enhance Your LI Profile

Enhance your Profile when Job Searching

Your LinkedIn Profile can be a shop window to the world with incredible reach to the sectors and areas you are interested in when job searching.

It allows you to both subtly and discreetly let your contacts know you are looking , as well as announce to the world you are on the market.

Recruiters (and AI bots) use LinkedIn to find possible candidates for their vacancies using keyword search in the paid for modules that they use, such as Sales Navigator, Recruiter, Jobs and Career Pages.

The best way to update your LinkedIn profile is to ensure it shows that you are searching for a role by being clear, focused, and tailored to the direction you want to go.

1.      Fill out all the Sections on your Profile

If you look at your LinkedIn Profile you will see that there are multiple sections you can fill in including:

·         Your Headline/Banner - including your Open to and Profile areas

·         About - including your Skills

·         Services

·         Featured

·         Activity – your posts

·         Experience

·         Education

·         Skills

·         Organisations

Before you start filling these in take a moment to understand what your aims are and clarify your goals. Decide what role, industry, or career path you’re aiming for.

Every update should align with these goals — don’t just list everything you’ve done.

Your Profile should be forward looking and clearly signal your next career. It is NOT a CV so should NOT read like one.

2.      Make your Profile ‘future focused’

Use keywords that recruiters search for relevant to your future role or career. For example, on your Headline/Banner:

“Project Manager | Agile | Digital Transformation” or “Operations Leader | Helping Companies Navigate Change Successfully”.

If you are looking to change career, then highlight your transferable skills: “Marketing Graduate | Aspiring Data Analyst | Skilled in Research & Excel”.

Your photo: use a professional, friendly headshot.

Update your banner image to one that is aligned with your personal branding and career direction.

3.      Your Experience

Don’t just list your job duties; this is not your CV. Instead focus on your results and achievements.

Each of your roles should highlight what you have achieved, the numbers, what impact you made and so on.

If you are looking to change career then you should emphasise your transferable skills such as leadership, problem-solving, communication, technical proficiency, business development…

Make sure it is easily readable.

4.      Skills & Endorsements

Add all the skills that are relevant to your future direction and target job and remember to remove those that are not. Get colleagues and business associates to endorse you.

Services:  Include these if relevant to showcase what you can offer clients or companies.

Top Skills: Your Top Skills from your Skills section can be highlighted here as well.

Featured: You can pin your top posts, blogs, articles, links to achievements and certificates here to showcase your key assets.

5. Set job alerts for your target roles.

LinkedIn has quite a sophisticated jobs service which is customised to you. If you click on LinkedIn Jobs, it will take you to your own page. Cleverly the system will:

·         Let you create job alerts

·         Use your profile to suggest jobs and roles

·         Allow you to show recruiters you are ‘open to work’

·         Track your applications and collate those jobs that you have applied to or show an interest in

Bonus Tip! Before you start to edit your profile turn off the’ update my contacts with changes’.

The above is an excerpt from our latest book - Your Next Career: Developing Your Job Search Strategy & Toolkit available now on Amazon