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Aug 18, 2014 — TrackFive

How to Make Your LinkedIn NOT StinkedIn

I learned in college what a LinkedIn account was, but didn’t quite realize how great of a tool it is until I finally made one only about six or seven months ago. Admittedly, I was pretty late in the game on this one. But, not long after creating my account, I totally realized how this social media platform could actually advance someone’s career…if you know how to do it. It’s all about how you market yourself and who you are making the connections with.

How to jazz up your profile:

1. Choose a professional photo. (A blurry selfie from a hazy night on the town with bloodshot eyes and a vodka cranberry in your hand is not going to impress anyone unless you’re auditioning for the starring role in the made-for-tv movie about Lindsay Lohan’s life.) At the same time, an overly stoic picture might make you look boring. The best way to bring attention to yourself is to use a nice picture with good quality that focuses on your face. And also, SMILE. This isn’t Vogue, instead of smiling with your eyes literally smile with your smile. Basically, make your page stand out by making yourself look cleancut and in good spirits.

2. Write yourself an epic job description. In order to showcase your skills and potentially attract the attention from future employers, you’ve got to cultivate a concise and well-worded description of your current and previous positions. Having some trouble? Investigate what similar profiles to you write on their page for inspiration. What keywords are people using on their pages? Also, you can add multimedia to your job description to make you stand out even more! Putting a picture or video in your job description is rare but can attract a lot more attention.

3. Don’t write novel-long biographies. Want to know a secret? No one cares as much about your life as you do. Employers are not going to be reading your life story so keep your biography under 5 sentences of use bullet-points to make it easy and quick to glance over for employers.

4. Get wise on your buzzwords. Buzzwords are those trendy words we like to use to make ourselves sound modern, important and ultimately impress other people. But, don’t overuse a buzzword. Be creative and put together your own unique ways of basically making yourself sound super fancy.

5. Don’t get shy, make connections. LinkedIn isn’t a standard social media platform. It’s main purpose is for professionals to engage with each other, employers to recruit for their jobs, etc. So sending requests to people who do similar lines of work or work where you would like to. It can never hurt and you never know when a connection may lead to a future job opportunity. Also, joining groups is a great way to meet people in the industry and get a dialogue going.

6. Get your endorsement game on lock. Endorsing your friends and colleagues not only is a nice gesture, but oftentimes the act is then reciprocated. The more skills you have endorsed, the better you look. Why not go for it? Also, do the same for getting recommendations.

Basically, the better your online profile looks, the higher the likelihood that you can snap the attention of an industry leader looking for talented people just like you. So make yourself shine and blow everyone else out the water with a top-notch page that can transform you into the professional superstar you always knew you could be.

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