Having an exceptional LinkedIn profile is crucial for advancing your career in 2022 and beyond. With over 722 million members, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform and an indispensable tool for job seekers, business owners, and working professionals.
In this comprehensive guide, we provide a start-to-finish LinkedIn profile checklist covering everything you need to craft the perfect profile. Follow our advice on profile photos, professional summaries, experience, skills, recommendations, and more to stand out among recruiters and connect with key players in your industry.
Table of Contents
Why You Need a Strong LinkedIn Profile
Here are some key reasons investing time in your LinkedIn presence pays major dividends:
- Get Found by Recruiters: Over 70% of recruiters rely on LinkedIn to source job candidates. A complete profile makes you far more discoverable.
- Demonstrate Your Skills: Highlight achievements, publish content under your profile, and gain endorsements from colleagues to showcase the value you bring.
- Expand Your Network: LinkedIn provides suggestions for people you may know and facilitates introductions through shared connections.
- Research Companies: Learn about prospective employers through their LinkedIn company pages and employee networks.
- Find New Opportunities: LinkedIn Jobs helps you discover openings that align with your experience and interests.
Let’s jump right into our step-by-step guide to building a stellar LinkedIn presence!
Also Read – Why has LinkedIn become so expensive?
LinkedIn Profile Checklist
Follow this comprehensive checklist to construct an eye-catching LinkedIn profile that gives recruiters and industry players all the right impressions.
1. Profile Photo
Your profile image is the very first thing visitors notice when arriving on your page. Make sure it aligns with LinkedIn’s best practices:
- Professional Headshot: Use a high-quality headshot of you alone dressed professionally. Avoid casual photos with friends.
- Upper Body and Face: Zoom in on your head and upper torso. Don’t use full-body-length photos.
- Neutral Background: Opt for a plain solid color background over busy, distracting backdrops.
- Friendly Facial Expression: Smile warmly to convey an upbeat persona. Don’t frown or make silly faces.
- Facing Forward: Look straight into the camera rather than side profiles or angles.
- Well Lit: Ensure you are fully and evenly lit with no shadows or glare on your face.
- High Resolution: Upload the highest quality image you have available for crisp sharpness.
Note: You can upload a background photo for the top banner area of your profile, but make sure your headshot still stands out clearly against it.
2. Professional Headline
Your professional headline appears right below your name and acts like a sub-headline that clearly states your current role and industry.
- Succinct Wording: Keep it short, usually 3-5 standard-size words, or 30-40 characters max.
- Start with Job Title: Lead with your current primary job title first (e.g. Digital Marketing Manager).
- Include Speciality Area: Add 1-2 words defining your specialty area second (e.g. Social Media Strategist).
- End with Company Name or Industry: Close with your well-known employer brand name or simply your core industry.
Here is one example following this structure:
Digital Marketing Manager – Social Media – XYZ Corp
Also Read – How to See Who Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile for Free: The Ultimate Guide
3. About / Summary
Your LinkedIn summary section comes next and is a hugely valuable profile real estate for pitching your personal brand and expertise.
- Charismatic Opening: Grab attention instantly by leading with an engaging opening line that conveys your passions or strengths.
- Professionally Written: Use standard capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar throughout for heightened credibility.
- Expertise Focused: Emphasize domain expertise, thought leadership, major career accomplishments, and educational background.
- Storytelling Elements: Inject personality by telling stories that illustrate key achievements rather than just listing qualifications.
- Concise Length: Keep it between 2-4 short paragraphs for skimmability, usually 100-350 words total.
Here is one framework example you can follow:
Experienced [Primary Industry / Field] leader with X+ years driving transformative growth for global brands like [Company Names]. Passionate about [Passion Topic] and leading [Type of Team] teams.
[1-2 sentences on biggest career achievement or signature strength]
Excited to connect with fellow [Industry / Field] change-makers committed to [Improving the Industry / Benefitting Clients]. [Optional closing call-to-action]
Also Read – Why has LinkedIn become so expensive?
4. Experience
Your experience section enables you to showcase employment history while spotlighting major accomplishments under each role:
- All Relevant Roles: List out all full-time staff jobs related to your current career path, even if early on.
- Time Period for Each: Include the start and end years for every position you list.
- Employer Names: Mention well-branded company names to boost the impressiveness of your path.
- Job Titles: Highlight formal position titles that convey seniority and leadership expansion over time.
- Location Details: Adding cities and countries is optional but helpful for establishing scope.
- Achievement Focused: Emphasize outstanding quantifiable achievements under each role over generic duties.
- Promotions Shown: Demonstrate upward mobility by highlighting promotions earned within the same companies.
Also read – How to Add Volunteer Experience to LinkedIn
5. Education
Ensure all college degrees and advanced certifications are captured within your education history:
- All Degrees Listed: Include details on the highest university degrees obtained, years graduated, and subjects studied.
- Additional Courses: Consider mentioning post-grad courses or specialty training programs completed more recently.
- Premium Schools Prioritized: If you graduated from a highly esteemed university or elite program, keep it visible rather than buried.
6. Skills & Endorsements
Skills and expertise areas cornerstones connecting with the right opportunities on LinkedIn. Take steps to build out this section extensively:
- All Technical Skills: Cover every professional hard skill where you have legitimate hands-on experience and competence.
- Transferable Strengths: Also incorporate broadly applicable soft skills like communication, team leadership, strategic thinking, and more.
- Premium Skills Up Top: Re-sequence any particularly desirable or scarce skills to the top using the edit pencil icon.
- Endorsed by Colleagues: Proactively ask colleagues who can vouch for your abilities to formally endorse you for relevant skills, ideally with personalized messages.
Also Read – How to Add Specialization in LinkedIn to Showcase Your Expertise
7. Recommendations
Written LinkedIn recommendations function like testimonials vouching for your capabilities and character:
- Recent Colleagues: Ideally get recommendations from managers or team members from within the past 5 years who can speak first-hand of your work.
- Well-Known Names: Big names at recognizable brands lend even more credibility.
- Variety of Relationships: Strive for diversity by getting recommendations from bosses, direct reports, clients, vendors, mentors, and others.
- Skills Reinforced: Encourage recommenders to endorse strengths already highlighted elsewhere in your profile for reinforcement.
8. Media Gallery
Embedding visual content within your profile’s media gallery adds dimensionality and substance:
- Project Imagery: Show rather than just tell by including photos, infographics, presentations, videos, or other artifacts from initiatives you drove.
- Relevant Links: Supplement with links to online published articles, podcast interviews, or other external platforms hosting your thought leadership content.
Pro Tip: You can request contributors be tagged in any content you did not solely produce yourself to showcase collaborative initiatives you helped lead.
9. LinkedIn Posts
Publishing your own posts directly under your profile establishes you as an industry expert over time as you build up content accrual and engagement:
- Industry Commentary: Position yourself as an authority voice by commenting on the latest news, trends, and developments happening within your domains of focus.
- Conference / Event Recaps: Share takeaways, key quotes, cool demos, pivotal announcements, and memorable moments from conferences or other events you attend related to your space.
- Behind the Scenes: Offer insider perspective by highlighting major projects and initiatives you or your company recently launched or completed.
- Thought Leadership: Showcase unique intellectual property you have produced through white papers, guides, frameworks, analysis, and more.
Pro Tip: Post consistently over the long run, not just here and there. Set a cadence for publishing on LinkedIn, such as 2-3 posts weekly.
Also read – How to Find Saved Posts on LinkedIn
10. Groups
Joining relevant professional groups layers in a community context and enables targeted exposure to niche audiences by interest area:
- Industry Specific: Follow key groups focused specifically on your core career field and specialty areas within it.
- Location-Based: Consider local chapters within your geographic region.
- Company Pages: If current or past employers have dedicated pages, it is a good form to join those.
- Business Function: Participate in broad communities dedicated to your underlying functional focus like Marketing, Design, Engineering, etc.
Pro Tip: Once you have joined groups, actively participate by commenting on others’ posts, sharing updates, and establishing your expertise over time.
Putting It All Together
And that completes our comprehensive start-to-finish LinkedIn profile checklist!
By investing dedicated focus on consistently implementing all of these portfolio enhancement tips over time, you will position yourself as a true standout talent leader within your professional domain.
The high visibility and discoverability paired with social proof of expertise this strong brand presence generates will serve your career aspirations and ascent for years to come.
So dive right in and start actively upgrading your LinkedIn profile today! The investment made will undoubtedly reward you many times over down the road.
