06 takeaways from this video:
00:00:30 Linkedin is good for two main career purposes:
- Discovering new opportunities. Businessess looking for new clents and recruiting talent, and employees wanting to get discovered by headhunters and businesses.
- Making the most of your current position. Deepening your professional network in your current industry, marketing your company’s products and services and brand reputation, and growing your reputation as a specialist in what you do so as to attract bigger and better opportunities.
There are two places where you can represent yourself:
- Your company page
- Your personal profile
Most people tend to look for personal profiles than they do company pages, therefore you should spend more time and effort promoting your personal profile.
00:02:20 Five requirements of an attractive Linkedin Profile:
1. Professional headline
00:03:01 Your professional headline appears:
- On your personal profile
- On Linkedin & search engine search page results
- On the ‘similar profiles’ widget on the right side bar of other Linkedin users’ profiles
- On the ‘people you may know’ page
- On every message you send inside of Linkedin
- On every connection invitation you send
- On the application form that is sent when you apply for a job through Linkedin
Because your headline is so crucial, its purpose is NOT to tell people what you do (your current job title). Your headline should immediately tell the person viewing your profile your:
- Level of expertise. Are you an expert? Specialist? Freelance? With 5 years experience? Amature?
- Who precisely you want to meet. Do you want to work with startups? Clients in a particular industry or country? Recruiters in a certain country? Executives?
- How you help your target audience. Do you educate? Coach? Manage?
- How your target audience benefits. How your target audience’s life will be better after having worked with you.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: For more on professional networking and creating your elevator pitch, read the book The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds.]
Humans tend to be either:
- Positively motivated – Want more free time, money, happiness, etc. This kind of manager would see spending money as an investment if it leads to returns in the future
- Negatively motivated – Want to avoid debt, disease, homelessness, etc. This kind of manager would see saving money as a priority and would rather not lose what they have than risk and gain more in the future
2. Contact details
00:08:15 So a recruiter, headhunter, or potential client likes your headline and summary and wants to know more. How do you want them to contact you?
- Linkedin’s messaging app
- Your professional website
- Your blog
- Your email address
- Your telephone number
- Your Skype profile
- Your social media profile
A secondary benefit of your contact details is that it improves your search engine optimization (SEO). Instead of having a link to your website that says ‘My Website,’ Link to your professional website using keywords relevant to your website.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: To learn more on SEO and tracking visitors to your website through analytics, read my interview with Data Consultant Benjamin Descazal.]
3. Summary/Call-to-action
00:10:08 Linkedin gives you approximately 2,000 words which you should use to support the legitimacy of your professional headline. You should include:
- Case studies of companies or projects you’ve worked with and how your solution impacted the results
- Call-to-action so the recruiter, headhunter, or potential client understands what you want them to do such as:
- Contact me at: xxx@xxx.com or +33 (0)1.23.45.67.89
- Visit my website at www.cadrenglish.com for more information and case studies
- Download my 2016-17 Intensive Training Workshop Catalogue
- Purchase How to Shape Human Behavior 2nd Edition on Amazon
- Forward my CV to your Director of Human Resources
- Etc.
- Contact details. Yes, your contact details are just under your photo and the person can access them by clicking the ‘Contact Info’ button, but you can’t expect the person to make an extra click just for your email address, so include it in your summary.
4. Skills & Expertise
00:11:31 Although there is a lot of ‘I’ll endorse you if you endorse me’ arrangements for specific skills, this section still acts as an excellent form of social proof.
Researching and identifying the industry-leading ‘buzzwords’ and ‘corporate lingo’ companies look for in candidates, and then placing those words at the top of the list for people to ‘endorse’ you for can give you an added desirability through sheer word repetition throughout your profile. If you don’t choose your own keywords, Linkedin’s algorithm or your connections will, and how they choose to describe you might not be how you want to be known.
Consider the objective of your profile. Whats important is that your skills & expertise correspond with your headline and summary to create a congruent profile.
While ‘closing skills’ might be a desirable skill recruiters want in a candidate, entrepreneurs with ‘closing skills’ may drive away potential clients.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Need help identifying your corporate buzzwords? Check out the Corporate Bullshit Generator.]
5. Interests
00:14:50 This is simply one more location for you to put your desired keywords onto your profile so viewers get a certain impression from you.
