5 Tips for Up-leveling Your LinkedIn Profile

Want to up-level your LinkedIn profile? LinkedIn is a great place to showcase your thought leadership and build your professional network. Also, your profile is one of the first places recruiters go when evaluating you for an open role. When is the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile? Here are some tips to help you make the most of the platform.

Update Your Profile Photo and Header Photo

Is your profile photo recent and representative of how you currently look? Update your headshot every couple of years, or more frequently if you significantly change your look. The header photo is prime real estate on your LinkedIn profile and helps influence your profile visitors’ first impressions of you. However, few people are leveraging custom images here. Not a designer? Neither am I! I used Canva.com to create my header photo. They have many free, customizable templates that you can choose from that are already in the optimal dimensions.

Here are some header photo examples:

Update Your Current Role

Make sure your profile is up to date with your current role. Remember to include details around any achievements you’ve had in the role so far. Try and use numbers, percentages, and dollar signs to highlight your impact.

Example: “Increased marketing contributed pipeline from paid social programs by 241% QoQ” is more impactful than “Manage paid social programs to drive marketing contributed pipeline.”

Explore New Opportunities

Are you open to a new role? Take time to re-evaluate your career goals and whether your current company and position are helping you to grow and develop. LinkedIn has a great feature that you may use to signal to recruiters that you are open to new job opportunities. You may add specific job titles, locations, and full-time, part-time, or contract job types. Only recruiters will see this status, so you may job hunt discretely.

Take Advantage of LinkedIn Learning

Whether you are interested in growing in your existing role or preparing yourself for a new opportunity, it is always worth it to invest in yourself! There is a plethora of professional development content available via LinkedIn Learning. You can try it for free for a month! There are courses of varying lengths and experience levels, and the platform recommends content for you based on your role and existing skills.

Write (and Ask for) Recommendations

Have any of your colleagues left for another opportunity lately? Have you accepted a new role? It is best to write, and request, recommendations while the working relationship is still fresh in your mind. If you take the time to write a thoughtful recommendation for someone else, they are likely to return the favor. If you are job hunting, asking a colleague to write a recommendation for you with the instruction of focusing on specific areas that are related to the role you are hoping to land can help you stand out as a promising candidate to recruiters and hiring managers.

I hope these tips help you to up-level your LinkedIn profile so that you may better build and engage with your professional network!

Want help optimizing your Twitter profile? Check out my blog post on How to Optimize Your Twitter Profile in 6 Steps.