Use LinkedIn to unlock career opportunities

By Tasmin Coleman

The better your LinkedIn profile, the better your chances of connecting with thought leaders, capturing the attention of other professionals, and finding new growth, learning and career opportunities.

While there’s no such thing as a “perfect” LinkedIn profile, you can set a compelling profile with these tips.

Draft a compelling summary

Think of your summary as your “elevator pitch.” It should include an introduction to you, and also highlight your accomplishments and aspirations. Keep it short and sweet, no need to list all your career accomplishments, you have an experience section for that. Feel free to highlight your unique talents and how you want to contribute. Adding a summary makes your profile more likely to turn up in a future employer’s search.

Photo

Make sure that you select a professional LinkedIn profile photo that truly represents you. It can be a professional headshot. Make sure your photo is highresolution, has good lighting and just features you.

Detail your work experience

Experience is your opportunity to tell your professional story and talk about your accomplishments within each of the roles you've had. A great way to showcase your experience is to write it in short paragraph form rather than bullet points. Lastly, it's great to talk about what you did in your role, it's even better to showcase the impact you had, results delivered and change you created.

Keep your profile active

Yes, we know, you already have enough newsfeeds to scroll through! The more connections you have on LinkedIn, the more interesting and useful your newsfeed becomes. Consider sharing, liking and interacting with posts that interest you. Realise also that networking is about giving as well as taking - consider posting or writing a short article on the network. Attend events (there are lots of free virtual events happening every single day.)

Your industry and education

Adding your industry is really important for your visibility on the platform. Often it’s how others will find you and add you to their professional network. In addition, adding your industry will give you up to 9X more profile views.

Add examples of your work

Include rich media like a photo, video, presentation or anything else that visually enhances your profile and makes it more dynamic. Keep in mind, this doesn’t have to be content you own. For example, if your company has a brand video or company brand assets, you can use them in your profile (just do not claim work as your own if you didn’t work on it).

Build your recommendations

Although skill endorsements are great to highlight your areas of expertise, recommendations can take things to the next level with a personalised testimonial about time spent working together, projects completed or skills developed. Choose at least five skills for your profile, then reach out to close contacts for recommendations that are relevant to your current role – or next career goal. Start by giving recommendations to others. Often, they will return the favour.

Customise your invites.

While many connections occur organically on LinkedIn, there will be situations where you’ll want to reach out and make specific connections depending on your circumstances. For this to be effective, however, you need to create a customised invite that provides your profile highlights, who you are, what you do, along with a personalised message about why this connection matters to you. With so many users and so many requests, it’s important to be intentional about your message.

Connect with the right people, companies and groups

Start by connecting with existing professionals in the industry you are working in and your employers of choice. If you meet a new coworker or connect with a professional during a networking event (or anywhere!), seek out their account and send them a LinkedIn request that contains a short personalised message. Take the opportunity to connect with recruiters and HR professionals from your employer of choice. Be sure to also look for groups and pages in your industry to join and follow – this will provide you with insights and give you a platform to connect with others in the business.

Add volunteer experience

Adding volunteer experience is a great way to round out your professional identity and uniquely tell your story. List your volunteer experience and give a quick 1-2 sentence description of what you do/did for each specific organisation.