As a student or recent graduate, you might feel overwhelmed when thinking about building your professional brand. LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 900 million users, is the perfect place to start shaping your career path.
Whether you’re seeking internships, part-time work, or full-time roles after graduation, LinkedIn offers invaluable opportunities to connect with industry professionals, showcase your skills, and land life-changing career opportunities.
Struggling to create a LinkedIn profile that stands out? You’re not alone. Many students face challenges in building a compelling presence on the platform, but this guide is here to help
In this article, we’ll walk you through practical steps, share examples from successful profiles, and give you the tools you need to turn LinkedIn into your career launchpad
How LinkedIn Work
To successfully build a LinkedIn profile that meets your desired goal, you need to at least understand how the platform algorithm and SEO work. This is one piece of a puzzle that most articles on this topic often skip. But not us.
Now, if you are like me, you might be wondering what an algorithm is. Well, for LinkedIn, this is how the platform promotes your profile and helps you reach the audience that matters most to you or your business.
Understanding how this works will help you build a solid profile and enjoy the rest of this article.
So, how does LinkedIn’s algorithm work?
How LinkedIn’s algorithm works and ranks profiles in searches
- Engagement: The more interactions your content receives (likes, comments, shares), the higher your profile’s visibility.
- Keywords: Using relevant keywords in your profile, headline, and content can improve your search ranking.
- Connections: Building a strong network of connections can also boost your profile’s visibility.
- Activity: Regularly posting updates, commenting on others’ posts, and participating in groups can signal to the algorithm that your profile is active and engaging.
When it comes to the activities you perform on LinkedIn, we have noticed that commenting on other people’s posts seems to be the most useful. It allows more people to see and interact with your profile.
How to make your LinkedIn Profile Gain Visibility.
Being visible is the most important job of your LinkedIn profile. You need people to see and interact with your profile. Here are five proven steps to do so;
- Engage: Share and comment on other people’s posts. Dropping meaningful engagement will attract more visibility to your profile.
- Complete Profile: Fill out all sections of your profile, including your education, skills, and certifications. According to LinkedIn, an account with a profile picture will get 2X more profile views than those without.
- Optimize Your Headline: Use keywords in your headline to make it more searchable. If you are a software developer, use a software-related keyword on your headline (Example; Backend Engineer, Frontend Engineer, etc.) This will allow your profile to show up when such keywords are searched on the platform.
- Share High-Quality Content: Post valuable and engaging content that your target audience will find interesting. Quality content helps you build credibility and authority in your domain.
- Network Actively: Connect with people in your industry and participate in relevant groups. LinkedIn groups are particularly helpful. It allows you to share your knowledge with a wider audience. One of our writers got 200 new connections and 40 more profile views in one week when he shared his post with a group.
How to Set Up Your LinkedIn Profile
Now that we have covered the intro, let’s go to the technical part. How to set up your LinkedIn profile the right way.
1. Choose the right LinkedIn Profile Picture
Your profile picture is one of the most important assets of your LinkedIn profile. It is most likely the first thing people will look at when they view your profile, so spending time to choose the right one, is a solid investment.
But how do you choose the best profile picture for your account? Here are some tips to help you decide;
- Keep it as a headshot. Most people upload their full pictures as their profile pictures. This is not a crime. But it is also not the right approach.
- Dress for your industry. If you have a brand, a branded T-shirt with your brand logo is always a better idea.
- Keep a positive and exciting facial appearance. This will make you appear likable.
Here is an example of a great LinkedIn profile picture of a CEO.
2. Craft an Attention-Grabbing Headline
Your profile headline comes immediately after your name. This is where you briefly introduce yourself. For best results, deliver a punchy, keyword-rich headline that speaks directly to your audience.
Good Headline Example: Backend Engineer at KhanAcademy
Bad Headline Example: Experienced Professional with Strong Skills | Looking for New Opportunities | Hardworking & Detail-Oriented
Having a relevant keyword in your profile headlines allows you to appear on a LinkedIn search. Look at the example below for people who appear for the keyword “Software Engineer”
LinkedIn also uses keywords to refine its searches. Adding relevant and industrial-specific keywords to your profile will help you appear in this search.
3. Write a Compelling LinkedIn Bio
The LinkedIn summary section (AKA “Bio” section AKA “About”) is one of the most important sections of your profile and if used properly can be very helpful in selling your brand, increasing engagement and connection requests.
Unlike the headline, the bio section is where you tell your full story.
Take the headline the same way you take an email subject and the summary as the body of the email. If the subject is not attractive enough, people will barely open the email.
To create an attention-grabbing summary section, do these two things.
- Use storytelling techniques to attention.
- Add a Call To Action to encourage people to take action.
You can do this without even being obvious. The summary section below does that effortlessly.
Notice how they successfully invited readers to reach out?
4. Optimize Your Professional Experience Section
When optimizing your LinkedIn profile for job search, gig, or domain authority, the professional experience section of your LinkedIn profile is where you need to pay serious attention. This is because when recruiters land on your profile, they will want to know these two (2) things urgently;
- The experience you have and
- The results you can bring to their business.
and it is the job of your professional experience section to showcase these as best as possible.
Having an optimized professional experience section can increase your chance of getting an interview by more than 15%. In this section, we will show you how to Craft a winning professional experience section to match recruiters’ expectations.
Here are two steps to do that;
- Write impactful job descriptions: When writing your job description, focus on achievements using action verbs and metrics, and tailor your descriptions for different career stages (entry-level, mid-career, executives).
- Showcasing achievements: Use bullet points and numbers to quantify results and highlight industry-specific achievements. Here is what a good professional experience section should look like.
5. Leverage other LinkedIn Features to Reach More People
While millions of people use LinkedIn daily to build their professional network, there are some very beneficial features that a lot of users don’t know about or simply don’t use.
- Add relevant skills to the skills section.
- Ask for endorsements from coursemates, co-workers, or employees for the endorsement section.
- Add relevant certificates to the certification section.
- Use the featured section of your profile to showcase your most impressive jobs or tasks.
- Try the LinkedIn premium feature if you can afford it.
By leveraging these features effectively, you can enhance your LinkedIn profile and build stronger relationships and brands.
Want to learn how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for a job search or as a recent graduate? Look at the next page