A successful summary tells your professional story succinctly and creates engagement between you and your reader. It is written toward your goal and target audience.
Whatever you do, stay away from resume speak. Write your summary in a natural, conversational manner. If you aren’t sure, read it aloud to judge whether it sounds natural or stilted. Ultimately, the goal is for the readers to feel you are speaking to them directly, telling them exactly what they need to know about you.
State very clearly who you are and what you do. What are your core values? Once again, check out your YouMap® profile! Your YouMap® can help you determine what sets you apart. Also consider what results a person can expect from working with you. Why are you on LinkedIn? What are you trying to accomplish? What is your career vision? How did you get to this point in your career? Why do you do what you do? What motivates you? What is your career mission?
Take the time to make your summary your professional manifesto. By investing the time in writing your professional story, you are shaping your professional image into one that is high level, interesting, and attractive to recruiters and hiring managers.
Not sure what a great profile looks like? My company tweets out profiles we’ve optimized (unless our clients tell us to keep our work confidential). You can see examples of great profiles here: https://www.linkedin-makeover.com/linkedin-profile-examples/
Don’t plagiarize but do look at these profiles as inspiration!
Splash Around
Taking the time to truly optimize your LinkedIn profile will yield opportunities far beyond what you would have attracted by simply copying and pasting your resume. Optimized profiles collide with more searches and appear in search results more often. They also have more profile views, get more invitations to connect, and receive more messages via LinkedIn.
Once you have an optimized profile and a strong LinkedIn network, the next step is to get active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more than just a bunch of profiles— it’s a social network. The more active you are, the more LinkedIn will elevate your profile in search results. The more active you are the more people will see you and notice you. The more active you are the more opportunities will be presented to you. So how do you get active on LinkedIn?
First, start off by reading your LinkedIn feed. If you find it difficult to navigate to LinkedIn on your laptop or desktop computer, install the LinkedIn app on your phone. This way you don’t have to make time for it. Instead, access it when you have time: waiting in line, through commercial breaks, on the train, before meetings, during boring meetings, while eating lunch, etc. Your LinkedIn feed is like a newspaper in which all the articles and posts were put together by your network of connections. It’s a great way to stay on top of what’s going on in your industry, community, and network.
Most people tend to get caught up in having to create content and become so paralyzed they do nothing. Rather than focusing on creating content, focus instead on curating content. If you are reading an interesting article, share it. Think of your LinkedIn’s home page newsfeed as an online networking party where that tiny little status update is the virtual embodiment of a person standing in the middle of the room, looking for someone to talk to.
How do you want to respond to this person? If you simply want to smile and nod, click the Like button. If you want to engage and start a conversation, click the Comment button and type something pithy. If you want to promote this person and give them a bigger audience, click the Share button.
Success on LinkedIn comes when you have an optimized profile, a strong, robust network and activity; and engagement on the platform. Then when you find yourself with a new opportunity, that doesn’t mean you shut down and disengage with LinkedIn. This professional platform isn’t just for job searching. It’s a place to network, forge relationships, help others, educate, add value, and inspire. Keep adding to your network, stay engaged, and add value, and you will never again have to find a job. Jobs will find you!
For more in-depth self-help for LinkedIn, you can pick up a copy of LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Dummies or visit LinkedIn-Makeover.com to work with Donna’s team of professional LinkedIn profile writers.
You might be wondering how to tackle some of the other sections of your LinkedIn profile. Lisa Jones will wrap up the section on LinkedIn to touch on some basics of other relevant LinkedIn profile sections.
Supplementary LinkedIn Sections by Lisa Jones
Many hiring managers and recruiters will tell you that having a LinkedIn profile is a must, and this is advice I strongly agree with. As Donna pointed out, an online presence is vital, regardless of whether you are looking for a new job or seeking stronger professional visibility to manage your career.
Creating a LinkedIn profile and using it to successfully network with other professionals will provide a more effective way to start conversations with those who are able to hire you or will refer you to someone who can. Many recruiters and hiring managers spend a large amount of time on LinkedIn, which makes social networking a must.
As with your resume, your LinkedIn profile needs to be positioned, branded, and aligned with your career objectives. It’s important to make your profile distinctive and appealing to your audience and, as Donna also stressed, not a copy-and-paste of your resume.
LinkedIn profiles are much more than a resume because you have more available space to add content along with the ability to add media such as slides, videos, and graphics. When writing a resume, it’s best to write in short, concise sentences leaving out pronouns and articles. However, when writing an LI profile, you can show your personality to draw people in to read more about you and the kind of work environment where you will excel.
Even though Applicant Tracking Systems will not be reading your LinkedIn profile, keywords are essential because they are an integral part of how people search for you. I don’t agree with keyword “stuffing” and implore you to use keywords in a contextual way when writing accomplishment statements to demonstrate your knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Keywords are especially important in LinkedIn profile headlines and should be positioned for viewing on a mobile device as well as a desktop computer. (Log into your LinkedIn profile from both your mobile and desktop to see how your headline displays after you update it). I also suggest focusing on adding “hard” skills to the headline to shape how you want to be perceived.
For example:
Senior Accounts Manager | Territory Management | 15+ Years Leading Business Development & Channel Management | Fortune 500
Tip: Use the headline to showcase what is most important and relevant about you and your career goals. Showcase motivated transferable skills identified in your YouMap®. Use synonyms for skills commonly found in job descriptions. For example, “Logistics” might be more industry appropriate than “Make Arrangements.”
Remember, the Summary section of a LinkedIn profile provides 2,000 characters and is the best place to be creative with the information you include. You can add links to websites, podcasts, and other multimedia tools. However, it is most important to focus on information that clearly communicates the value you will bring to an organization.
I also suggest adding keywords (skills) in each section of your profile that are relevant to your career goals to break up large blocks of text for easier readability and a more visually appealing profile.
Tip: Make sure any graphics uploaded to your profile are clear quality or this will detract from professionalism and may cause readers to move on to other candidates. Also, LinkedIn currently limits your photo file size to 8MB.
Following are the additional LinkedIn sections, beyond the headline and summary, that I recommend you take time to complete.
Experience
This section
is where you showcase your work history. As with your resume, do not write out your job description. Instead, write a brief paragraph to summarize the value you bring (or brought) to an organization based on the role you are seeking.
A brief paragraph followed by accomplishment statements is the best format to use, starting with your most current, high impact statements. Write your accomplishment statements by explaining the challenges you faced and how you overcame each challenge.
Tip: Avoid paragraphs longer than five lines and keep accomplishment statements (bullets) to only two lines. You will lose your reader if they must read lengthy paragraphs.
Start with your most current job and follow the advice in the resume writing section. No one wants to read information that is not relevant to your career path. Choose your most relevant accomplishments. Remember, transferable skills are important if you are changing careers.
Education
List your most current education. Never list your high school unless you did not pursue further education. However, if you have been out of high school for at least five years, leave it off.
Volunteer Experience
Establishing yourself within your professional community on a local and national level is important to achieving long-term career success and credibility. Listing volunteer work is as important for those who are job seeking as for career management.
Many career services professionals caution against including outdated community service that does not serve your current career interests. While you might choose to feature transferable experience from the distant past, when it comes to volunteering, this does not typically apply.
Using a 5-year rule is a great starting place when considering what to include in the volunteer section of your profile. Volunteer experience older than five years should relate to your next desired job. Improve the volunteer section by listing the name of organizations you have volunteered with and including the corporate logo, if available. When you add the organization name, LinkedIn will pre-populate the logo if the organization has a LinkedIn company page.
Tip: LinkedIn gives you the option (as with other sections) to choose a beginning and end date. If you are currently volunteering with an organization, select the “I currently volunteer here” checkbox.
Accomplishments
The accomplishments section is the place to list your publications, certifications, patents, courses, projects, honors and awards, and test scores.
Tip: The five-year rule should be used with caution here. When I work with IT professionals, we exclude more technology certifications and capabilities than we keep. New certifications supersede old ones. Keep only those certifications relevant to your audience. Due to rapid technology changes, some information may be out of date and/or irrelevant to the career path you have chosen. However, always remember that age and relevance are not synonymous. If it matters, include it. If it doesn’t matter, exclude it.
Skills and Endorsements
LinkedIn allows you to add fifty skills to your profile. This is where you can showcase your motivated transferable skills. Your contacts can endorse you for skills. Therefore, avoid adding skills that are irrelevant to your chosen path. You want your contacts to endorse you for skills you want to be known for.
Tip: Skills can be moved and reordered to draw a reader’s attention to the most important skills. To move a skill, click the edit pencil in the upper right corner. Then, click on the four stacked horizontal lines to the right of the skill and drag it up or down.
Regular LinkedIn profile maintenance is key, just as with your resume. Make your profile clear and targeted to the job you are seeking. If you appear unsure of what you are looking for, a recruiter or hiring manager will be unsure of your capabilities and knowledge. Keep it relevant and keep your profile updated.
Finally, remember to network and to nurture your network connections after you have “linked up.” It’s important to not only network with hiring managers and recruiters but to also network with those in professional associations and community and alumni networks.
Now, it’s time for me (Kristin) to take back the reigns and shift from job search materials to interview strategy!
How to Wow Interviewers
The focus of this interview section is to help you showcase what you do best and connect that to what the employer needs most in a job interview. According to Jobvite, failure to differentiate yourself—in other words stand out—is one of the top reasons for not receiving a job offer.
Because the specific focus of Show the World! is telling your story in a way that makes you stand out, I will not cover interview topics such as overcoming nerves, how to answer trick questions, salary negotiation, and so forth. For a comprehensive interview resource that covers those topics and many more, you can pick up a copy of my interview preparation book, 5 Surprising Steps to Land the Job NOW!
Preparing for the Interview
For your upcoming interview, you’ll want to cross-reference your YouMap® to the job description and write down success stories to create a bridge between what you offer and what the employer needs through real-life examples.
Highlight key words and phrases in the job description that indicate what the company seeks in a candidate, such as skills, experiences, personality, and character traits.
Next, create a chart following these steps:
• List requirements you highlighted on the job description in the Employer Need column.
• List skills, traits, strengths, and values you’ve captured in your YouMap® under What I do Best, in addition to any related experience.
• Write a brief results-focused story to substantiate what you do best under Tell My Story.
An example is shown below.
By completing this mapping exercise, you will be equipped and prepared with solid stories linked directly to the requirements taken from the job description. When asked, “What can you do for us?” and “Why should we hire you?” you’ll have these answers in the bag if you map yourself to the job description using the above technique.
Why Do You Want to Work Here?
Research, research, research the company and be prepared to connect your values to the values of the organization. What is it about the culture that makes you a good fit? I talked about this previously in “Targeting Opportunities” and “Cover Letter Basics,” so you are well on your way to nailing this question.
How many times have you heard someone wasn’t selected for a job or was let go because, “It just wasn’t a good fit”? My friend, Caroline, shared recently that she memorized a company’s mission statement and incorporated it into her answer to “Why do you want to work here?” She got the job!
The more you know about the company, the better you’ll be able to determine if you are a good fit for their culture and be able to tell them why you are.
Tell Me About Yourself
At the beginning of an interview, an interviewer will often invite you to tell him or her about yourself. The most common way people answer this question is with an overview of their work history:
“I graduated in 2005 from UNC Chapel Hill with a degree in computer science and a minor in business. After graduating, I went to work for Microsoft as a business analyst on the Microsoft Office team. I was promoted to senior business analyst after eighteen months and then moved to the ASP.NET team.”
Boring. Predictable. Unmemorable.
These work history speeches don’t reveal anything new or interesting about you and are simply a dreary recap of your resume. “Tell me about yourself” is a great opportunity to stand out from the competition and demonstrate a clear picture of what you do best that the employer needs. This is another instance whe
re you can put your YouMap® to great use.
Print a copy of your one-page YouMap® for each person you’ll be meeting in the interview. When you’re invited to “Tell me about yourself,” give them each a copy and draw their attention to the My Unique Contribution statement. Share your unique contribution and tell them a brief twenty-to-sixty second success story to back it up. Explain you’ve invested a lot of time to really know who you are and the value you will bring them. What do you think the statistical chances are the other candidates will do this?
Example:
“The best way to describe myself is by sharing this summary with you. I have a reputation of generating innovative ideas that haven’t been considered. For example, last year I was responsible for the launch of a new injection therapy, but physicians were resistant to the new protocol.
I had to figure out a way to make it easier for the doctors to use, so I collaborated with the hospital to innovate and influence hospital protocol. As a result, the process was streamlined, physicians began prescribing the new drug, patients had a better experience, and I increased my sales by 210% over the prior year.
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