Three Ways to Update Your LinkedIn Profile and Make It Awesome
Posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2017
We’ve walked you through how to set up your LinkedIn profile. We’ve looked at how to step up your LinkedIn game.
But now, you find yourself in need of an update. Maybe you’ve been working a new summer job, or are taking some new courses at school. Maybe it’s just been awhile since you’ve made any changes to it.
You’re constantly acquiring new skills and experiences, and so your LinkedIn needs a refresh. Here are some things to try.
Add Your Transferable Skills
Your transferable skills are the abilities you have that carry over to all your jobs. Things like communication, time management, and analytics can all be considered transferable skills.
We have a whole guide to finding and using your transferable skills right here.
Once you know your transferable skills, you can build them into your LinkedIn profile. This will help you establish your personal brand—those characteristics that you want to be known for in your professional life.
One way to include your transferable skills in your LinkedIn profile is to add them into your summary. Your summary is your opportunity to tell potential employers why you’re different from everyone else—what is it about you that makes you the ideal hire?
Your transferable skills are exactly the kinds of qualities that will set you apart from your competition. By updating your summary to incorporate them, you show potential employers your strongest assets right from the start.
Add Media
One nifty feature of LinkedIn is the ability to add media to both the job and education sections. This is a good place to highlight work that you’ve done.
For your work positions, if you completed some impressive projects that you’d like to share (and that you have your supervisor’s permission to share), you can feature them right on your page. These will embody the skills and experiences that you did at this position, and show potential employers the finished product of this work.
If you don’t have much relevant work experience, don’t worry! The education section on LinkedIn also allows you to show off any big school projects that you did. This is especially great for any public-facing projects—the kind of projects that had real-world impact. Having this demonstrates to employers that the things you learned in school have tangible, positive effects outside of the school environment.
Reach Out for Recommendations
One awesome aspect of LinkedIn is the ability to reach out to contacts and ask for recommendations. The recommendations section of your LinkedIn profile is where other users can leave comments about you.
It can be very powerful to have a few quality recommendations on your profile. Supervisors and professors are often a great source for this.
LinkedIn has a built-in function for requesting recommendations, but that shouldn’t be your first step. Your first step is to email the person you’d like a reference from, to make sure it’s okay to ask.
When you get a recommendation, the more specific it is the better it looks. So when you reach out to see if someone will give you a recommendation, it can be helpful to remind them of what particular qualities you embodied.
This can be something like: I’m reaching out to see if you would be willing to give me a recommendation for the project leadership I did in your class or the database I developed for you while I worked for you. The more specific, the better.
If you do score a recommendation, remember to thank the person! It’s a big deal to leave someone a recommendation, so a thank-you note is definitely required.
Add Some Visual Branding
If you really want to make your LinkedIn pop, it’s time to work in some visual branding.
To really step up your job hunt, you can create a unique brand across all your job hunt materials. This means that your cover letter, resume, portfolio, LinkedIn, personal website, etc., all share a few key visual identifiers.
Why? Having a brand makes all these materials cohesive, instantly appeals to employers and makes you look super organized. It sets you apart and keeps employers reading.
This doesn’t have to be anything too wild, either. A simple colour scheme, shared fonts, and a similar header in all your printed documents keeps things unified.
On LinkedIn, you can change your header image to something that matches. That way, when an employer is holding your resume and goes to your LinkedIn, they’ll see the match and know that you took the time to make things look awesome—and that’s a big deal.
By taking the steps to update your LinkedIn, you’ll build a strong professional online presence to help you find leads, apply to jobs, and impress employers. It can have a big impact on your career.
If you would like to learn more about the Algonquin College co-op program, please visit our website at https://www.algonquincollege.com/coop/, connect with us at coop@algonquincollege.com or call us at 613-727-4723 Ext.7623. You can also follow us on Twitter @AlgonquinCoop.
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