For its weekly Entrepreneurship event — Wicked Wednesdays, the N-House Community had the privilege in hosting Jenson Tham — Relationship Manager at LinkedIn to share on leveraging LinkedIn for career success. LinkedIn is the world’s largest social network for professionals and many use it to connect with others for networking, jobs, investors and the like. Jenson shared on LinkedIn profiles can be improved to stand out from the rest. From his sharing, I learnt 5 steps on how to use LinkedIn effectively:
- Choose a professional-looking photo
Jenson shared that members of LinkedIn with a profile picture gets up to 9x more connection requests, 21x more profile views and 36 more messages! We always say not to judge a book by its cover but the picture is our first chance at impressing recruiters and score some brownie points!
Now, not any photo will work. Since LinkedIn is a place for us to show off our professional side, it’s best that the photo represents how we will look like at work or any professional setting.
2. Write an impactful headline
Most people end up with the default headline, their current job title and the company because they are unable to describe themselves succinctly. Jenson shares that having a good headline is important as on an average, each profile is only being looked at for 6.27 seconds and hence, the headline is the first thing they’d see.
A good headline could be a personal motto, or what you’re good at and interested in. A customised headline allows you to distinguish yourself and give recruiters a reason to view your profile. Another tip Jenson shares is to avoid hyperbole such as ‘Expert’ and ‘Superior’ unless you’re able to back yourself up.
3. Have a compelling summary
A good LinkedIn summary gives information on your professional background and abilities. Jenson says the summary should be succinct, about 40 words long and focused on your career accomplishments and aspirations. You can write about what you’ve done, what you’re interested in and what you’re looking for! Your LinkedIn summary should sum up your biggest value and convince readers to continue scrolling.
Most people have the misconception that summaries have to be written from the third perspective but in fact, they should be more personal to engage readers so write it like you’d introduce yourself to someone you just met!
4. Detail your work experience
You may or may not have much work experience but if you do, updating your work positions would increase your connection request by 5x, giving you 8x more profile views and 10x more messages. To make your work experience more convincing, videos and presentations you’ve done before can be added too!
Another thing that helps recruiters search for you would be the skills you add. So, add at least 5 skills (such as java, python, public-speaking) and get them endorsed. This will increase your chances of being found by recruiters up to 27x!
5. Make only quality connections
LinkedIn is the world’s largest social network for professionals. We are on it to make connections so the more the better right? Nope! While we network on LinkedIn, unlike other social media platforms, we should only make quality connections as it influences our feed on LinkedIn. The higher quality connections we make, the higher quality our feed on LinkedIn would be.
However, that said, having many connections is still important as it influences the number of people you can see. LinkedIn gives us up to third degree searches. One way to make more connections would be going for talks and events, and talking to the people who attend as well. We can then connect with them by sending them a message detailing where we met, what we discussed and what we hope to connect on.
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That’s 5 points I’ve learnt about how to improve my LinkedIn profile and impress recruiters! As an undergraduate student, I understand how hard it is to make ourselves stand out and I feel Jenson has shared with us crucial points on how to make use of LinkedIn well! Let’s all get started on our LinkedIn profiles and prepare ourselves for work life well!
Cheers, Claire.
