How’s your LinkedIn profile? Are you completely optimized? Is it 100% complete? My guess is probably not. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for the last five or six months, hopefully it’s more complete than it was before you started listening to this podcast.
But the bottom line is most of you do not have a complete profile. The reason I’m talking about LinkedIn today is just several hours ago I was speaking with a professional that just unfortunately was downsized in his role and he was offered some outplacement services by a well known outplacement firm. I’m not going to mention the name today, but I might in the future because I’m absolutely disgusted by the lousy advice he was given on updating his profile. So today I want to give you a couple of reminders and share with you what I believe are the top five components of your LinkedIn profile that you have to make sure you’re taken care of. Now, as a reminder, over 90% of recruiters, HR professionals and talent acquisition people are reviewing your LinkedIn profile, so you have to make sure it’s spot on.
On top of that, your LinkedIn profile is being reviewed five times longer than your resume. Your resume is going to get about 6 seconds. Your LinkedIn profile is going to get about 30 seconds. Now, 30 seconds is still a short period of time, so you need to make sure your LinkedIn profile is tight. So what are the five components?
Here we go. Number one, make sure these main areas are complete. Your headline, you get 120 characters. Maximize all those characters. If you’re a chief financial officer and you put CFO, good luck.
You’re going to be one of more than 1.3 million cfos on LinkedIn with a CFO title. It’s ridiculous. You have to separate yourself from the masses. Number two in the main areas I’m talking about is your about section. You get 2000 characters.
Optimize that with keywords, keyword phrases that are within your functional niche or industry. Also, make sure your work experience is listed. Then skills and education. The second of five is you need to be laser focused on the type of role you are looking for. You can’t just put everything in there and hope you’ll get something.
Number three of five, repeat keywords throughout your LinkedIn profile. That means in your headline, the about section, your work experience, education and skills. Number four, you need more connections. The more connections you have, the higher you’re going to be ranked. And number five, make sure you have at least three recommendations and that you’ve also given two or three recommendations.
Recommendations or social proof that you are as good as people say you are. That’s all for today. Thanks for listening. My executive recruiter insider secrets to leaping past your competition into your next great job. I’m Mike Sudermann.
Have a great day.