More and more, people are forming their first impression of you from the
results of a web search on your name. When people are evaluating you in
a professional capacity, they often go directly to your LinkedIn
profile. But even if their research starts with Google, they’ll end up
at LinkedIn because your profile will most likely be one of the top
results.
 |
| Shutterstock |
So you need to be concerned about what you put in your LinkedIn profile — making sure it’s authentic, compelling to your audience and aspirational —
positioning you for the future. You need to be equally focused on
removing things from your profile that will get in the way of your
success. You want all of the content to “wow” those who are making
decisions about you.
Here are four things you should remove from your profile in order to make a positive impact on readers.
1. Wrong or irrelevant endorsements.
Delete
endorsements for the skills that you don’t want to be known for; they
just muddy the waters. Personal branding is about being known for
SOMEthing, not 10,000 things. That means you need to make your skills
pure — positioning you for what’s next, not creating
confusion among readers. “Is this person a marketing exec or a
real-estate agent?” Make a list of all skills that are relevant to who
you are and where you're going without looking at your LinkedIn profile.
Then, take a look at the skills for which you have been endorsed. Is
there a strong correlation? And make sure your top three skills
perfectly reflect how you want to be known. Those are the ones that show
up prominently when someone is looking at your profile. Viewers need to
click “view more” to see the rest of your skills. And don’t worry about
offending anyone. LinkedIn will not send a note to those who endorsed
you when you remove their endorsements.
2. Experience that distracts from your brand aspirations.
If you started your career in retail and now you’re all about
pharmaceutical research, you want to diminish the past (unless you have a
really good story about how it supports what you’re doing and what you
want to be doing). Of course, it’s important to show progression in your
career, so you may want to group roles from the past under one category
like My Proving Ground or Internships and Early Career Experience.
3. Low-quality images. I’m not just talking about
your headshot. Any images you added to your profile in the summary or
experience sections need to be high-quality and appropriately cropped.
Nothing says “lack of attention to detail” like blurry, badly cropped,
trite, or unflattering images. Of course, this is most important when it
comes to your headshot. If you use a selfie, a photo where you crop out
others, or a photo your mother took of you at last year’s family
outing, it’s time to remove and replace. Invest in a professionally
photographed headshot that projects you in the most positive and
powerful light. And avoid full body shots. Let viewers see your face.
4. Third-person writing. Let’s face it, everyone
knows you wrote your own LinkedIn summary and experience sections. It’s
much more transparent and direct to write in the first person than to
pretend that your publicist wrote your content. When you write in the
first person, you create a conversation between you and the reader, and
that helps you establish a more authentic relationship with them. I am
seeing more and more profiles using the first person (even from CEOs –
who probably do have someone writing it for them) but not everyone is
there yet. It’s time for you take the third person out of your profile
and get comfortable with me, myself, and I.
By
,
William Arruda is the cofounder of CareerBlast and creator of the LinkedIn quiz that helps you evaluate your profile and networking strategy.
No comments:
Post a Comment