Developing your LinkedIn profile

Written by Anna

In my last blog post, I shared tips on some LinkedIn features to help you land a job in Prague. But today, let’s focus on the heart of your LinkedIn presence: your profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your cornerstone, the first impression that recruiters, colleagues, classmates, and even professors see when they search for you. It’s similar to your first impression for anyone who sees it—and it’s often crucial for recruiters.
I’ve been using LinkedIn since 2018, and if there’s one person who deserves credit for pushing me to refine my profile, it’s my dad. His reminders to update my LinkedIn were frequent (and, at times, persistent)! His advice and insights have been invaluable, shaping my profile into what it is today. Even with six years of work experience and counting, I regularly refresh my profile to keep it current and compelling.

In this post, I’ll share all the tips and strategies I’ve learned to help you build a standout LinkedIn profile. Some tips are big, some are small, but all are designed to make your profile catch the eye of potentialemployers and connections. Let’s dive in!

• About a.k.a Summary Section: Your summary section of the profile should briefly describe the different roles you have worked in throughout your work experience. If you don’t have any work experience, I would recommend giving a short description of the skills you have acquired so far and the projects you have worked on.
• Experience Section
  ○ Roles: When you add your work experience on LinkedIn, do not add your designation within the company (Intern, Associate, etc.); instead, add your job role. The job role is what you actually do within the company and your department, and this is something you get when you look at a job posting on any job website.
  ○ Description: While you can use the responsibilities provided in the job posting, it is much preferred to list down the work and responsibilities you took on when working in that role. This allows the recruiter and managers to look at what you did, and it will also be helpful for you to explain this during interviews.
  ○ Accuracy of the details: The work experience you add to your resume must match your LinkedIn profile, and this is one of the most important reasons why it is important to keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date because most recruiters end up checking both of them. This means keeping the same job roles and descriptions and making sure that the months and years of each role you have held, including the companies, exactly match your resume.
• Licenses and Certifications: There is no doubt that we all are constantly upskilling ourselves in specific skills to either find the next best job for us, simply learning that particular skill based on what our work demands, or simply learning the skill. So, when you complete a specific certification on any platform, add it to the Licenses and Certifications section. You can also add the skills you have learned in that certification program, which will automatically also appear in the Skills section of the profile.
• Skills: LinkedIn has recently introduced one of the most unique features, in my opinion: when you add a new skill to your profile, you can also specify where you have learned that skill, either as part of a Certification program or as part of your work experience or studies. This way, when someone has a look at your profile and specifically your skills, they will know where you gained that skill from.
• Recommendations: Recommendations can be provided by your work colleagues, fellow students, and even fellow professors that you have worked with, including professors that you
  work with for your final thesis. To request a recommendation from a specific person, go to Add Profile Section -> Recommended Section -> Add Recommendations, and then type in the specific
  person for whom you want to request a recommendation. Indicate your relationship and
  position with that person, add a personalized message requesting a recommendation, and hit
  the “Send” button.

If you want to add any of these sections to your profile, go to your LinkedIn profile and select the button “Add Profile Section.” It will give you a list of Core and Recommended sections to add to your LinkedIn profile.
I hope these tips will help you refine your LinkedIn profile, even if you are starting out brand new. Enjoy tweaking your LinkedIn profile!