LinkedIn tips and tricks!

So we have some exciting news! Starting from this month we will also have tips about using LinkedIn as a tool in our newsletter.

Here we will focus on a bit longer explanations and instructions so you would feel more comfortable to get started with building your personal brand on LinkedIn.

But why should you?

Well, first of all this will give you more visibility and usually this helps to meet your goals faster (assuming that you don’t work in a top secret company, in that case it might be vice versa).

Believe me, it is way easier to reach out to potential candidates and make them invest time in talking to you about the role you are promoting when they see you as an expert in your field. People don’t get excited about being recognized by another HR or recruiter. They get excited about being spotted by a true professional. So don’t be shy, show them that this is you!

It is also a way to increase your own market value and reputation. Really something to benefit from when you are looking for new opportunities for your career.

But this applies in the eyes of LinkedIn as well. When you have a proper profile, then LinkedIn will show you more relevant posts on your news feed and will help to boost your posts. So LinkedIn will thank you by making you more visible.

But why does it matter to us as a community?

We would love to see the HR profession being even more valued and recognized for the hard work that each and every one of us puts in. It is one thing to promote within their own organizations all the amazing initiatives that HR keeps up and running, but we also need the wider public to see and understand all the magic that we, HR professionals, bring into daily work life.

So are you with me? Shall we get your LinkedIn profile in order?

If yes, then keep reading.

In our first newsletter LinkedIn bite we will talk about the basic steps to get your LinkedIn profile ready. Our goal is to make your profile hit the “All-Star” status.

Start with selecting the right profile picture and background image.
Note that the right profile picture should be about 75% of your face, so a picture taken from a rather close distance. Keep it professional. But hey, this doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to smile in the picture! I also recommend thinking about what you are wearing in the photo, to make sure it fits your industry.
List your work experiences and don’t forget to add summaries.
LinkedIn runs on keywords. So make sure that on top of simply listing your prior work experiences you also write a little about each of them. You might want to explain what your role was, what you achieved and what kind of skills you got to demonstrate while in this position.

Having the right keywords in those summaries will raise the odds of you being discovered.
Write a clear summary.
This is your pitch to future employers, clients or simply connections. This is the place to tell your story. Describe what makes you tick and what you are passionate about. You can tell in a simple way about your current role and frame your past. Highlight your successes. Make sure to show your character. And it is also fine to share about life outside of work.

Add a call to action at the end of your summary. What would you like the other person to do after reading your summary?
Update your industry and location.
This will only take a short moment but will simply get you one step closer to “All-Star” profile.
Add your Education.
Make sure to add your education on your profile. Here you can simply list the school and field of study or take it to the next level and keep keywords in mind again.
You can write a description about your education as well. This can be used to shared about your extracurricular activities or about your thesis topic.
List your skills and get endorsements.
Think about all the keywords that relate to your field of expertise. Which of those are you good at? Those are your skills. So list them on your profile.
The next step is to get endorsements for those listed skills. What does this mean? Other people will confirm with their names and faces that you master those skills. To get this started, you might want to go to someone else's profile and endorse them for the skills they have listed for themselves or simply as a colleague to take a moment to endorse you.
Grow your network - start adding connections!
There are so many reasons why having a sufficient network is important on LinkedIn. We will get to those in some other LinkedIn bite. For now I would just recommend to start adding connections to get your network growing.

Keep in mind that LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms. You probably share about your professional life and not so much about your personal life. So your connections don’t need to be your dear friends. You will be sharing different content on LinkedIn, so it is ok to have acquaintances in your network.

At the beginning I would recommend adding 4-5 people per day. Otherwise LinkedIn might think that you are using some kind of forbidden automation tools and might give you a warning. But 4-5 per day is a good start.