3 things your LinkedIn profile should have (and 2 things it shouldn't be)

Susan  Pierotti, Creative Text Solutions Like you, I've seen many LinkedIn profiles that don't give me a clear idea of the person it is describing. That's the problem, isn't it? They are generic in tone and don't make out the individual as distinctive. And yet, we all want to be noticed apart from the competition, don't we? Would you like to know how to make your LinkedIn profile work better for you? Read on! [caption id="attachment_163" align="alignright" width="150"] Nan Palmero/Wikimedia[/caption] 2 Things a LinkedIn Profile shouldn't be Ok, let's get the negatives out of the way first. A LinkedIn profile is neither a CV or an author bio. What do I mean by that? 1 An author bio is the sort of thing you read about on the back of a book (for hose of you who still like print - like me), or on a sheet describing the speaker at a conference. Here's a hypothetical example: 'Joe Blog has been speaking on the Global Financial Crisis years before it began. With an MBA from Harvard and a PhD in Economics from Oxford, his entertaining style is in demand on the international scene. He lives with his wife and children in a thatched cottage in Surrey, UK.' This gives you a microscopic version of who Joe is and why he is qualified to write or talk on financial affairs. This is in not what your LinkedIn profile should look like. 2 Neither should it look like a CV or resumé. This is where I find most people err in their LinkedIn profiles. A CV describes what you've done - plain and simple. It is a list of your achievements and where you've worked. It's a useful tool for prospective employers to build up a picture of whether you can do the task. But here's the bad news - there is always somebody else who can do what you can do. Employers want their job made easy - have we picked the 'right' candidate for our firm, team, workplace? they are looking for much more than who can do what. 3 Things your LinkedIn Profile should have Here's the good news. LinkedIn is a free gift! It is designed so that you can insert causes that important to you, charities you work for, schooling, groups that you follow. It is so much bigger than just the normal CV. What I will give you now are 3 tips to make it work better for you. 1 Don't describe what you've done but where you want to be. A friend of mine is creative, empathises with people well and is able to see the 'big picture'. She is stuck in a job which is 'small'-minded, doesn't value its staff and has no forward thinking. However in applying for the same role in other industries, she says that no one seems to want to know about her creative side. I checked out her LinkedIn profile. Up the top were her recent achievements in the boring job, with her activities as a worker with children with disabilities and her theatre work right down the bottom. I suggested that an employer wanting a creative person with her ability to empathise would want to see everything in the first three lines. If you were that employer, wouldn't you? If you had the perfect job, you wouldn't need to be on LinkedIn. Your profile is there to promote you, the whole you, and to link you.and that great job and potential employer. Think where you want to be and use your LinkedIn profile to get you there. 2 Use SEO words throughout your profile. I am an editor and proofreader. I use these words and variations of them (edit, professional proofreading, etc) not only in job titles but in describing what I've done. If you have specialised in any area, e.g. editing for the health sector, put that in wherever you can as well. The employer who wants and need to contact you doesn't want to wade through hundreds of LinkedIn profiles. They want their search engines to optimise the search and reveal a number of suitable candidates. Your profile will continue to climb to the top if you have the right key words in your LinkedIn profile text. 3 Get references! You must have done one job somewhere, some time for somebody who liked what you did. Ask them for a reference. There are tabs on the profile page that set this up for you. Ask your friends; if they agree, even write one out for them that they would be happy to endorse, send it to them and ask them to post it on your profile. People who look up your LinkedIn profile will see wonderful things written about you (no one writes a bad reference!), so get some!   Apply these few tips and your LinkedIn profile will increase SEO activity, increase people's awareness of your profile, and provide a fuller picture of who you are, thus adding to your chances of success. Creative Text Solutions can assist you in improving your LinkedIn profile. Contact me at http://www.creativetext.com.au for all your proofreading and editing needs.