Seven Things Your LinkedIn Profile Says About You — Like It Or Not – Liz Ryan

Dear Liz,

I’m having a hard time updating my LinkedIn profile. I have great skills (in my opinion) but most of my experience is with tools and technology that are also very common.

Part of me wants to stand out, but a lot of my friends have told me “Look, LinkedIn is like a fruit market. You list what you’ve got, and recruiters who want what you bring will contact you. It’s not a place to tell the world how you feel about your work and your industry. Nobody cares.”

I’m not a recruiter but when I browse through LinkedIn profiles myself, I’m struck by the way they all sound alike. If I were a recruiter having to plow through so many nearly-identical profiles I would die of boredom.

I want to strike the right note in my LinkedIn profile, halfway between “I’m just another business zombie” and “Look how creative I am!”

What do you recommend for my LinkedIn “voice?”

Thanks Liz!

Ariana

 

Dear Ariana,

The simplest way to think about your LinkedIn profile is this: your profile is your online billboard.

You get to choose what you say about yourself. Everybody else gets to decide how to react.

When you walk around town you wear certain clothes and avoid others. Your clothes say a lot about you. Some people dress to blend in. Other people dress to stand out. Everybody gets to decide which clothes to wear.

Your LinkedIn profile is the same way. There is no “right way” to write a LinkedIn profile.

In my experience, most people are too timid when it comes to writing their LinkedIn profiles. They try to blend in when there is no benefit to doing so.

They forget that thousands or tens of thousands of other people have the exact same keywords on their profiles.

Every day recruiters tell me “I love to see a LinkedIn profile or a resume that sounds like someone has taken the time to speak to me. It’s refreshing. When I can see how someone thinks, I already know a lot about them.”

LinkedIn can be an anonymous, purely transactional marketplace if you want to see it and use it that way. It can be a warm, vibrant and human place for you to share ideas and build “glue” between yourself and other LinkedIn users.

You get to decide what LinkedIn will be for you!

Here are seven things your LinkedIn profile says about you — whether you want it to, or not!:

1. Your profile tells the world how you see yourself professionally — in your LinkedIn headline and your Summary, especially. You get to choose your own brand. Your past job titles do not make up your brand all by themselves! Your present job title doesn’t, either. Your headline and Summary could be completely different from your current job and your past jobs — it’s entirely up to you.
2. Your profile tells us the side of you that you’ve chosen to make public on LinkedIn — in your headline and your profile photo, especially. There are many faces you could show us — your photo tells us which one represents you as you see yourself.
3. Your profile tells us hows strongly your current role influences your brand. Some people make their LinkedIn profile all about their current job. Some people make their profile all about their career before and beyond their current job, and some people make their profile about themselves as people who happen to have jobs. You get to choose — and you also have to choose! Every branding decision is a choice.
4. Your profile tells us what you think is important in your work history. Some LinkedIn profiles include long lists of keywords. These profiles tell us that a LinkedIn user wants us especially to know about their technical or functional skills in standard categories. Some people use the work history section of their LinkedIn profile to tell Dragon-Slaying Stories, instead — the times when they came, saw and conquered at their past jobs (or at school).
5. Your profile tells us how proficient and comfortable you are with written English (or whatever language your profile is written in).
6. Your profile tells us how you are most comfortable addressing strangers. Some LinkedIn profiles are businesslike and formal. Others are casual.
7. Your profile tells us what you care about. The blog posts you’ve written, the Influencers you follow and other profile categories tell LinkedIn users what’s most important to you, at work and elsewhere.

When it hits you how momentous your LinkedIn profile can be in expressing your personality, perspective and values, you realize that the words you choose to describe yourself on LinkedIn carry a lot of weight.

Your next step is to start writing. Don’t censor yourself. Write a lot, until you are comfortable with your self-description. Get your friends involved to help you.

Here are three LinkedIn Summaries to get you started:

Account Manager

I’m an Account Manager at Wiggly Systems, where I help fourteen national accounts use our products to grow their companies. I got into Account Management from Inside Sales, first at Micro Gadget Emporium and now at Wiggly.

Outside of work I’m a lifelong Cubs fan and I write short stories for fun.

Some people don’t want to talk about their personal lives on LinkedIn. That’s fine! It’s up to you.

Entry-Level Marketer

I graduated from State U. with a degree in Advertising in May 2017. I’m looking for my first post-college job. At school I was a Resident Advisor for 27 freshman women, vice-chair of the Young Advertisers club and the organizer and promoter of our monthly Karaoke Night at the campus bowling alley. Check out my writing samples below!

This new grad is aware that she doesn’t have any “career-type” work experience to talk about. So what? Everybody was a new grad once! She uses her LinkedIn profile to tell us how she’s been rocking it since long before she graduated!

She knows that only the employers who value her talents deserve them.

HR Director

I love to build an organization’s HR infrastructure around their mission and goals, to help them hire and retain great employees. I’ve started six HR departments for successful firms in the Bay Area. I’m an evangelist for smart, nimble processes and great culture.

All of these Summaries use complete sentences. The writer becomes a real person when they speak directly to their audience, rather than listing disconnected Skills and keywords.

You are a whole person! You get to tell us exactly how you want us to see you.

We are dying to know!

All the best,

Liz

Reprinted from: Forbes – https://www.forbes.com – 5.31.17