How to Create and Optimize your LinkedIn
LinkedIn is essential now more than ever, especially if you’re looking for a job. It hosts more than 600 million professional profiles, provides job seekers with access to over 30 million companies, and is one of the most popular places for employers to post job openings.
Let’s start with the basics, which is first creating your LinkedIn. Head over to the LinkedIn website or app and sign up for a free account. (You can upgrade to premium later on if you decide that’s something you need).
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn
Profile Picture
First things first, upload a profile picture for your LinkedIn. It doesn’t have to be a fancy professional headshot but use your best judgment and keep it classy.
Make sure you have a clear photo that shows what you look like since people with a picture are 14x more likely to get their profile noticed by recruiters!
Headlines
Linkedin headlines are an opportunity to communicate your professional brand and help you stand out to recruiters and hiring managers. Use your headline to concisely highlight your role.
Here’s an example with different variations:
“Driving product growth and strategy at Menti”
“Product management at Menti”
“Product manager at Menti driving product growth”
About Summary
Profile summary is the number one thing recruiters look at when viewing a profile.
That's why it's essential to use your summary as an opportunity to introduce yourself and highlight your skills, passions, and experience.
Be sure to use industry keywords relevant to the job you’re looking to get and sprinkle them throughout your summary or headline since it gets picked up by LinkedIn’s search system.
And lastly, this is your time to be proud of your work and showcase your career accomplishments and aspirations.
Use this checklist after you create your summary to make sure your summary can answer these important questions.
Who are you?
What do you do?
Why does your work matter?
What is your contribution or impact?
Here’s an example summary:
“Hi, I love solving problems and driving product developments that improve the end-user experience for customers. Currently, I am a student at Menti University looking for product roles in the non-profit industry. I have experience as a Product Management intern at Company X where I helped drive impact by developing a new feature that grew users by 3x.
In my spare time, I love volunteering at the county zoo and looking for new reads at the bookstore. Some of my main skills include User Experience Design, Wireframing, Data Analysis, SQL. Currently learning about crypto and Python.
Hot tip: Creating a summary of 40+ words will help you be found more easily by your professional community on LinkedIn
Featured section
This is a great section to add any media you have that helps bring your story and work to life.
It displays below the About section of your profile. With Featured, you can highlight posts you've authored or reshared, articles you've published on LinkedIn, as well as images, documents, videos, and even links.
Experience
Add your past and current positions here. Think of this section as a synopsis of your resume.
Don’t include all the bullets your resume might have for each job, instead add a short description with 1-2 sentences describing what you did and your impact.
Education
Add in your education and any honors, awards, or activities you participated in during school.
More Tips
An easy way to start getting some ideas and inspiration is by searching for key leaders or influencers in your industry or company. Take a peek at their profiles, and get some ideas. You can also check out the profiles of your colleagues, managers, friends, and mentors, to get a broad range of inspiration.
Keep your industry and location current! Members with a location listed receive up to 19x more profile views.
Show that you’re open to work. Click “add profile” on your page then select “intro’ and “looking for a new job.”
Follow the official Linkedin TikTok, they post tips and even have a playlist for bite-sized quick tips.
You can also follow our Menti LinkedIn and browse the LinkedIns of our Career Exploration mentors for more examples!
Add key skills (allows you to highlight your abilities, strengths, and expertise, and helps you build your credibility among peers, colleagues, managers, and even recruiters, and members with five or more skills listed are discovered up to 27x more in searches on LinkedIn, and receive up to 17x more profile views.)
Endorsements (When a connection endorses you for a skill, it strengthens your profile and increases the likelihood that you'll be discovered for opportunities related to your skills)
Use recommendations to build credibility ( A recommendation recognizes the great work you've done and also provides specific examples of how your skills, strengths, and experiences show up)
Don’t underestimate volunteer experience (40% of all hiring managers view volunteer experience as equivalent to formal work experience - LinkedIn data shows that members who've added volunteer experience receive up to 6x more profile views than those without - helps to round out your professional story and showcase what you're passionate about outside of work)
If you’re looking for roles then come join our Menti Discord where I and other people in our Menti community post opportunities coming from our networks and workplaces.
