Written by Laura Robinson

Four areas to make your LinkedIn profile stand out

Has the COVID-19 crisis give you time to reflect on what you want out of your career? Or maybe it’s highlighted that your employer doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

Whatever the reason, here are our top tips for having a LinkedIn profile that stands out from the rest to employers and recruiters.

1. Your profile

• First thing’s first – make sure your profile is up to date! It’s no use connecting with recruiters or potential employers if you’re information isn’t correct.
• Make sure the below points are all up to date (at a minimum!).
• Job title & place of work (if you are currently unemployed, you can update this to read along the lines of ‘looking for opportunities in X field doing Y)
• Past roles and your key responsibilities – don’t be afraid to blow your own trumpet
• Location
• Profile photo – it doesn’t have to be a professional headshot but, equally, a photo of you doing shots at the bar isn’t the best look to a recruiter… 
• Qualifications
• Industry

2. Content

There is a lot of content flying around on LinkedIn so it’s easy to become part of the noise. Before you post anything, ask yourself ‘Am I adding value?’ If not don’t post it.

There are three main ways to use content to increase your visibility on LinkedIn:

• Create original content – share your own posts with your own content.
• Repurpose content – it’s perfectly acceptable to share other people’s content, but make sure you add your own opinion to it, otherwise, where is the value?
• Commenting – the other way to become visible to people who you’re not connected with is by commenting on other people’s posts, this way all their followers will see it.

 3.       Groups

There are many groups on LinkedIn that you can join. Engaging with these groups is a great way to get in front of people of interest. By commenting and posting in these groups you can get your name out there and in front of an audience you might not be visible to normally.

4.  Connections

When you connect be sure to personalise your request; you need to explain why you want to connect with this person, how will the connection benefit them? There’s nothing worse than the generic ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn’.

Again, this needs to showcase your personality as much as possible and include a reason for connecting – there’s nothing worse than the generic ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn’.

We hope you found these tips useful. If you’re currently staying at home because of COVID-19, why not check out our top tips for working from home? These healthy habits are relevant even to those who aren’t currently in work!