30 Tips To Having A Better Linkedin Profile in 2023

You’ll always need a LinkedIn profile that sticks out, no matter what stage of the job-search process you’re in.

LinkedIn is by far the largest professional network on the planet, with more than 600 million users worldwide. You need a LinkedIn profile that is optimized and up-to-date if you’re serious about your job and professional success. Your LinkedIn profile is your opportunity to get your name and face in front of hundreds (if not thousands) of industry people. That is necessary if you are looking for work.

However, simply having a LinkedIn page isn’t enough. You’ll need a LinkedIn profile that stands out, says the right things, and allows you to connect with people who can help you advance your career. Here are 30 quick and easy ways to make your LinkedIn profile stand out.

What Is a LinkedIn Profile?
Tips To Having A Better Linkedin Profile
Conclusion
Frequently Asked Questions
References

What Is a LinkedIn Profile?

Your LinkedIn profile serves as a professional landing point for managing your personal brand. It’s a fantastic approach to let people know who you are and what you do by showcasing a basic history of your professional experiences and accomplishments. Use your LinkedIn profile to provide a personal touch to your resume or CV that a traditional resume or CV may lack.

By utilizing your profile or the profiles of other users, you can use a range of features to help you achieve your goals. A thorough LinkedIn profile will assist you in making connections with potential opportunities.

Tips To Having A Better Linkedin Profile

We’ve put everything you need to know in one spot, from writing a killer summary to marketing your successes, initiatives, and talents. Read on for expert-approved tips on how to make your LinkedIn profile stand out—and start getting noticed by recruiters.

1. Put in the effort to make it great

Simply, the more information you provide on your profile, the more likely recruiters will locate you. From that perspective, completeness is critical. It’s also crucial when a recruiter has spotted your profile and decided to click on it: He or she is interested in learning about your skills, professional experience, and what others think of you. So don’t be a slacker and fill out every element of your profile. What’s the good news? As you work, LinkedIn will assess the “completeness” of your profile and make recommendations on how to improve it.

2. Obtain a Unique URL

Instead of the awkward combination of digits, LinkedIn assigns when you sign up, it’s much easier to market your profile with a personalized URL (preferably linkedin.com/yourname). What is the best way to obtain one? A Public Profile URL can be found at the bottom of the gray box that displays your basic information on the Edit Profile screen. Select “Edit” next to the URL and enter the address you want to use. Click Set Custom URL when you’re finished.

3. Pick a Fantastic Image

Choose an image that is clear, welcoming, and appropriate for the job, and stick it up there. Do you know what it means to be “appropriately professional”? Examine the attire of those in your target organization, industry sector, or business level. Comparable. (A blogger who experimented with numerous LinkedIn photographs to see which drew the most attention recommends: “If you can show yourself in action, do it.”) “A picture may convey a lot of emotion, charisma, empathy, and other soft talents that are difficult to express in words.”

4. Create a Catchy Headline

Your headline doesn’t have to be your job title or company—in fact, it shouldn’t be, especially if you’re looking for work. Instead, use that space to highlight your area of expertise, value proposition, or “so what?” It’s best if you can be as clear as possible about what sets you different from the competition.

5. Make the Most of Your Target Job Descriptions

Examine the job descriptions for the positions you’re interested in and enter them into a word cloud generator like Wordle. What words stand out to you? They’re probably what recruiters look for when they’re looking for folks that are similar to you. Make sure you use those terms and phrases throughout your overview and experience.

6. Don’t Take Up Too Much Room in the Summary

“Your summary should ideally be three to five brief paragraphs long, with a bulleted portion in the center.” It should take the reader through your professional interests, key abilities, distinctive qualifications, and a list of the numerous industries you’ve worked in over the years.”

7. Use Numbers Right Up Front

“You’ll want to showcase past results in your summary, just like you did in the remainder of your resume.” Include data and case studies to demonstrate your success whenever possible. ‘I have helped more than 40,000 businesspeople—from entry-level to CEO—understand how to properly use LinkedIn,’ says social media strategist and speaker Wayne Breitbarth in his summary’s second sentence. Never undervalue the impact of a few crucial statistics on a reader.”

8. Be welcoming and warm

“The summary section is your prime opportunity to showcase the good stuff about you, with your target audience in mind. Give ’em a little chance to get to know you. So what do you think the first impression is going to be if you craft your summary like some long, pompous speech? Or worse, craft it in the third person? They’re going to think you’re pretentious. And it’s going to be hard for that reviewer to get a feel for your personality and style. Be you here. Keep the brand message in line with all of your other professional marketing materials, but realize that LinkedIn is a platform designed for interaction.”

9. Avoid using buzzwords

What do the phrases “responsible,” “effective,” “analytical,” “strategic,” “patient,” “expert,” “organizational,” “motivated,” and “innovation” have in common? On LinkedIn, they’re among the most overused terms. Come on, we know you’re capable of more inventiveness!

10. Treat Your Profile Like Your Resume

Your CV isn’t just a list of job responsibilities (or at least, it shouldn’t be)—it’s a showcase of your greatest achievements. The same is true of your LinkedIn profile: Make sure your experience section has bullet points that describe what you did, how well you did it, and who you impacted.

11. But Use the First Person

On your résumé, you shouldn’t use the first person, but on LinkedIn, you can (think “I’m a passionate development officer who collected $400,000 for cancer charities last year,” not “Jackie Stevens is a passionate development officer).

12. Get Personal

“Your profile is not a résumé or a curriculum vitae.” As if you’re having a discussion with someone, write as if you’re talking to them. Bring your own individuality to the table. Make your values and passions known to others. Discuss what you do outside of work in your summary. You want people to be curious about you.”

13. List your accomplishments

Recruiters spend endless hours scouring LinkedIn for high-performing candidates. When they locate them, they make contact with the high performers. Knowing this, you’ll do yourself a favor by positioning yourself as a high performer in your summary and experience sections (think action words, successes, and mention times when you’ve been promoted or hand-picked for projects).

14. Even if you’re unemployed, include a current job entry

“If you solely include your previous employment in the experience section but show nothing current, you’ll most likely be overlooked in most searches.” Why? Because most recruiters only look for candidates using the current title field; otherwise, they’d have to go through thousands of people who held a specific function (for example, graphic designer) 20 or more years ago. If you’re unemployed, the simple remedy is to create a dummy job listing in the current section with the job title(s) you’re looking for—’Full-Time Student/Financial Analyst in Training’—followed by a phrase like ‘In Transition’ or ‘Seeking New Opportunity’ in the Company Name field.”

15. Multimedia should be included in your summary

“When it comes to showing your work, a picture is definitely worth a thousand words.” In your LinkedIn profile summary, you can include images, videos, and slideshow presentations. Instead of simply talking about your work, you can demonstrate it. Alternatively, put oneself in action. Alternatively, you may give a presentation. “Click ‘Edit profile,’ scroll down to your summary, click the box symbol, and then ‘add file.'”

16. As well as your professional experiences

You can repeat this process with each of your professional experiences. So, take advantage of this: Include links to your company’s websites, projects you’ve worked on, articles you’ve written, and anything else that can give your work a more multimedia aspect.

17. Projects, Volunteer Experiences, and Languages can all be added

Can you communicate in Mandarin? Do you have a certification in project management? Do you volunteer every weekend with Dress for Success? These “extra” profile options (shown on the left when changing your profile) are an amazing way to highlight your unique skills and experiences and make your profile stand out.

18. Once a month, ask for a LinkedIn recommendation

When someone tells you, “You did a fantastic job on that assignment!” invite them to document your achievement by writing a LinkedIn recommendation. Also, don’t be scared to tell the recommender exactly what you want them to focus on. Generic recommendations like “Lea was a pleasure to work with” aren’t particularly useful, but something specific like “Lea’s contributions on the project enabled us to raise predicted savings by 5% over our original plan” will really highlight your skills.

19. However, make them strategic

Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s career advisor, advises, “Make a strategic plan for your recommendations.” “Ask different people to speak about specific abilities or experiences you’d like them to highlight.”

20. Don’t Be Afraid to Pick and Choose Which Recommendations to Display

Let’s face it: not every LinkedIn endorsement is well-written or even related to your career success. Fortunately, the platform now provides you recommendations before they go public, and you can choose whether to add them to your profile, ignore them, or leave them waiting. You can also manage existing recommendations by clicking the “Edit” icon in that area and selecting “Show” or “Hide” for each one. You can also ask for corrections from the person who wrote it if it’s near but not quite right.

21. Keep track of your endorsements

Endorsements can be a wonderful method to show off your abilities—as long as your profile doesn’t have too many to give the correct impression. Keeping your talents up to date is the key to making them work for you: Drop old abilities from your profile and add the ones you actually want to be known for as you migrate between careers, develop new skills, or take on new responsibilities. When people come to your page, they’ll only see the abilities that are most relevant to them.

22. Update Your Status

You can update your LinkedIn status as often as you want, just like you can on Facebook. So, go for it! Update it once a week, ideally professionally and strategically (sharing the piece you just authored, not what you had for lunch today). Your whole network will see your updates in their news feeds as well as in their weekly LinkedIn network updates emails.

23. Become an Author

On the site, anyone can write and publish their work. Share your thoughts on what’s going on in your profession, comment on recent industry development, or demonstrate your writing abilities. It’s a fantastic method to stand apart.

24. Add Your Blog

Consider utilizing a plugin like Social Media Auto Publish or WP LinkedIn Auto Publish to automatically publish new posts to LinkedIn if you have a WordPress blog.

25. Be a Groupie

LinkedIn Groups are a fantastic resource, and they can help you land a job. You can demonstrate your involvement in your field by joining groups relevant to your career or industry. But, more significantly, you’ll be connected to individuals and become a part of meaningful debates in your industry almost immediately—it’ll be like an ongoing, online networking event.

26. Have a minimum of 50 connections

Recruiters can deduce one of three things if you have 50 or fewer LinkedIn connections: 1) You’re a recluse who knows few people, 2) You’re afraid of connecting with others, or 3) You’re afraid of technology and social media. None of these are desirable. We’re not advocating you become one of those weirdos who proudly flaunt their “abnormally high number of connections,” but you should have at least 50-100 people with whom you’re connected as a starting point.

27. Do not include people you do not know

LinkedIn can cancel your account if enough individuals reject your request and indicate they don’t know who you are.

28. Don’t Go Too Far

It’s tempting to go crazy with all the bells and whistles LinkedIn has to offer, especially because you’re not confined by the 8.5×11″ limits of your CV. While details are useful, there is such a thing as too much. Take a step back and look at your profile from the outside to see how it seems. Is it enticing—or obnoxious? Make the necessary changes.

29. Maintain Confidentiality in Your Job Search

“Many individuals are unaware that LinkedIn has privacy settings—and for good reason.” ‘You want to be discreet when you’re out looking for a new job and are fully engaged in your current position,’ [Nicole] Williams explains. ‘Updating your profile, connecting with recruiters, and having an influx of new people are all signs to an employer that you’re leaving.’ You can customize your settings so that your boss is unaware that you’re hunting for work.’ The privacy options are simple to find: Simply sign in and select settings from the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner, where your name appears”.

30. Make certain that others can find you

In the contact information part of your CV, don’t forget to include your email address (or blog, or Twitter account, or anyplace else you’d like to be discovered). You’d be astonished at how many folks forget about this!

Conclusion

It doesn’t have to take hours of your time to make your LinkedIn profile work harder for you. Try going through these ideas in order, building from one to the next, and you’ll discover that you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, even if you just have a few minutes during your lunch break or in the evenings. You’ll be shocked at how much of a difference your LinkedIn profile can make once you’ve fully utilized its capabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the maximum number of skills you can list on your LinkedIn profile?

You can add up to 50 skills to your LinkedIn profile.

What Is a LinkedIn Profile?

Your LinkedIn profile serves as a professional landing point for managing your personal brand.

Why do I need a LinkedIn profile?

LinkedIn allows you to have an online personal brand that makes you visible to key decision-makers and recruiters. If your profile is updated on LinkedIn, it also appears in the Google search list. This automatically increases the chances of being hired or at least viewed.