Having a LinkedIn profile is a must if you are looking for a job or thinking about changing jobs. Recruiters, hiring managers, and interview team members will look at your profile. Even if you are not looking for a job you may consider keeping it up to date. You never know when a recruiter is looking for someone like you to fill an awesome role!
Let’s focus on some areas you might not be familiar with if you are just getting started or haven’t updated your profile in some time. To edit your profile, click on the dropdown under your picture (“Me”) and select “View Profile.”
Background Photo
The banner at the top of your profile is called the Background Photo. LinkedIn gives you a default one, but you may want to add one of your own to make your profile stand out from others. The current specifications for Background Photos are:
- The file must be a JPG, GIF, or PNG file.
- The file size must be less than 8MB.
- The recommended size is 1584 (w) x 396 (h) pixels.
If you’re like me you’re looking at the recommended size and saying, “What? How do I (easily) get an image that size?”
If you happen to have image processing tools then you are in luck. If you have Paint you can at least take an existing photo or image and crop the image or change the canvas size as needed. I don’t take good photos so my success using this method (with any image processing tool) has been minimal.
I found one super simple way to create a professional-looking Background Photo is to go to canva.com and create one for free! I will warn you though – if you haven’t used Canva before you might get sucked in and start creating all sorts of images (not that I would know…).
Just using a Canva template and updating it with your name and your favorite colors will add a touch of sophistication to your LinkedIn profile. Canva is super easy to use, and it won’t take you long to create a nice-looking image.
About
The About section is where you can expand a bit on what you are all about and what kind of role you are looking for. It can be short or long, depending on how much you want to share. This section could look a lot like your summary at the top of your resume, or it might contain more detail. My advice is to share what you feel comfortable sharing. You can always add more later if you start out with just a few sentences.
Featured
The Featured section is relatively new to LinkedIn. Here you can add links to posts, websites, or other locations. If you have projects stored in the cloud, say on GitHub, you can add a link here. If you have your own website you can add the link here. If you posted something on LinkedIn that got a lot of good reactions, or you were mentioned in a post you might consider adding that to the Featured section too. Viewers of your profile can get a good sense of who you are by checking out the Featured links, so make sure these reflect the image you want to project.
Licenses and Certifications
In addition to your Education there is a separate section for licenses and certifications. This is a nice way to showcase your continuous learning path. I recommend spelling out an acronym for certifications as well as using the acronym itself. For example, I hold a CSM certification, which I write out as CSM (Certified Scrum Master).
Volunteer Experience
Volunteer Experience is another separate section. In the past I’ve shortchanged this section, but I shouldn’t have. Consider adding your roles, responsibilities, and/or duties as a volunteer. Sometimes our volunteer experience shows a side of us that we aren’t able to demonstrate in our day-to-day jobs (for example: leadership roles).
Summary
Take a look at your LinkedIn profile and see if any of the following could use a little love. And remember, you control what you share!
- Background Photo
- About
- Featured
- Licenses and Certifications
- Volunteer Experience