Back in July Claudine Meilink of Studentbranding.com challenged her readers to the “Back to School Linked in Challenge.” In short, she shared tips on how job seekers can best complete and improve their LinkedIn profiles in order to optimize their online presence in regards to their job search.
Similar to Claudine’s readers, I created my LinkedIn profile while I was still a college student (actually as part of a class assignment) and neglected to use it to it’s full potential until very recently. Although I’m no longer a student and won’t be going “back to school,” I’m going to follow Claudine’s LinkedIn challenge to find out if her tips can help to further improve my online presence and personal brand.
I encourage you to follow along with me as I take the challenge and share which tips I find helpful or unhelpful or more or less important when aiming to maintain a strong online presence and network.
- Upload a photo.
- Complete the Education section.
- Update and expand upon your experience.
- Link to your Twitter and any websites or blogs that you maintain.
- Add a meaningful summary.
So far, without many alterations, I can check off a majority of the steps from phase 1 of the challenge. I have a head shot profile picture, I’ve included my education, relevant activities, and accomplishments, my past experiences, links to my Twitter, portfolio and blog, and a short summary.
Claudine mentions that LinkedIn offers the opportunity to provide potential employers with your “resume on steroids,” and while I think all of the tips from phase 1 are helpful, this is the first tip from the challenge that I can use to improve upon my profile. While I have included my experience, I have listed it identical to the way it is found on my printed resume.
For this phase of the challenge, to improve upon my listed experience I added three or more skills or tasks that I preformed at each of my past jobs or internships. Resumes are often limited to one page, forcing job seekers to choose 3 or 4 skills per each experience listed on their resume. Claudine makes a great point when she encourages her readers to take the opportunity to include everything they can about their past experience. This was definitely a helpful tip.
For those just creating a LinkedIn profile, don’t leave out anything. Include as much as you can when listing your past experiences and elaborate on the tasks and skills completed for each one. For those of you aiming to improve upon your already existent profile, go back and add 2 or 3 additional skills or tasks for each experience already listed.
As for the last two tips. I have those checked off already as well, but I certainly encourage everyone to link their profiles to any relevant and work related websites. (Twitter, blog, portfolio) And of course as Claudine recommends, definitely include a summary that highlights why an employer would want to hire you!
Make sure you subscribe to our blog find out what happens when I take on Phase 2 of Claudine’s LinkedIn challenge next week.
