LinkedIn Tips: How to Capitalize on Your LinkedIn Tech Profile
It’s not important to have just the right tools, but how do you make the best advantage of the tools available to you, even at the times when you do not need it. This article will share some simple but handy tips for you to take great advantage of your LinkedIn tech profile.
LinkedIn has become one of the most important tools for both, the employers and the recruitment agencies. It’s a paid service for employers to find candidates efficiently, and companies spend a good amount of money on LinkedIn for those services. However, it is a completely free tool for the candidate.
LinkedIn was slow to grow in the Japanese market, but the focus LinkedIn has been giving to Japan has seen continuous growth in Japan. According to NapoleanCat.com, as of January 2022, there were 3.085 million LinkedIn users in Japan, and this user base is continuously growing.
Out of a total of 3.085 million users in Japan, 61.6% are in the age group of 25 to 34 years.
Note: Our own analysis says that in October 2022 the LinkedIn user base in Japan was 2.59 million
It is difficult to find how many tech people are on LinkedIn but it is logical to assume that being more tech savvy, higher percentage of technical people would have LinkedIn profiles. And, this makes LinkedIn a powerful tool for tech people for job change.
You may be looking for a career change today, or you may not be, but it always helps to be prepared for tomorrow. And these LinkedIn tech profile tips are meant to help you in that.
Unfortunately, many of us do not treat LinkedIn professionally and fail to take full advantage of it. Here are some tips for using it not just to help you get better career options when you need it but to make an impression as a professional.
First of all, let us look at the various sections in a LinkedIn Profile and then see what mistakes people make with their LinkedIn profiles.
Tips for LinkedIn Profile Picture
Do not be shy; put your picture in the profile. A picture on the profile makes it look more credible and shows self-confidence, and establishes a connection. Unlike social media like Facebook, LinkedIn is a professional network and hence put a professional-looking picture. Most importantly, completely avoid a picture with your spouse or girl-friend/boy-friend or your pet. For such things, the Facebooks and Twitters of the world are there.
The Headline Just Under the Name
The headline is significant to let people know who you are”, in a few words. Do write crisp few words to introduce yourself effectively.
Do check the self-explanatory few examples:
Example 1 (don’t):
What does the above headline tell a person? Actually, close to nothing.
Example 2 (don’t):
The above is again a wasted headline, which does not only tell anything much but also wastes available important space and your chance to introduce what you are. Do not write very generic things like “Software engineer”, “Software Developer”, “Project Manager” etc.
Example 3 (good):
Example 4 (good):
The above examples 3 and 4 tells a person viewing the profile a short and sweet introduction of the person and hence are good examples.
In fact, it is always better to list your important technical skills in this heading section. A good example of the same can be seen in the following picture:
“About” section (Summary)
This is the heart of your profile. Don’t let it get a heart attack. The “About” section makes the first impression before someone takes the time to read through your profile.
- Do not leave this section blank
- Do not make it too small
- Do not make it too big by mentioning all your experiences and technical skill-set. There are other sections for that. Mention the most relevant experiences and tech skills.
The ideal size of this section would be 5 to 10 sentences. In those sentences, summarize your traits, experiences, and achievements very crisply to make it stand out.
If you see most of the Information Technology and other professionals’ profile, you may get an impression of the copy and paste work.
Some examples of ineffective “About” section
You know what we meant? When you see these two or three liners, each says “an Experienced Professional with a demonstrated history with a strong background” time, and again, after some time, you would start having a headache. Look at other tech profiles for creative ideas but do not copy it. Avoid mentioning your skills in Microsoft word, etc., every kid has those nowadays. Instead focus on your nich technical skills.
Another mistake is making the summary confusing with a very diverse skill-sets. Do have a look at the following:
Such a summary will show a lack of focus and indicate that the person does not know what he or she wants to do and how he/she wants the career to grow. Even if you have diverse experiences, highlight where your real strengths lie and in which direction you wish to see your career go.
As mentioned above, make it crisp and not too long. It is the same as the resume. When someone receives 8 pages, or 14 pages resume, do you think they read it?
As mentioned, LinkedIn provides various sections for all the details, and it’s better to use the specific experiences and skill-sets section and not to cramp everything in the summary section.
Example of a good “About” section
Be creative and see what you should write to stand out from the crowd. It should be engaging, professional, may have a bit of sense of humor, and should capture key achievements, certifications, and key skills. An example is as follows:
If you see, this example is neither too short nor too long and captures everything in summary. It mentions that the experience is short, the personal traits/interests, achievements, and technical skill-set.
Tip for “Activities” Section of Your Tech Profile
The activities section on your LinkedIn profile shows the comments you made on other people’s posts, posts you made yourself, and the articles you shared or posted. Sharing some good things or making some professional posts not only help others in your 1st and 2nd-degree network, but these activities also create an impression about you.
Take time once or twice a week or month to share something good – it certainly pays.
Experiences/Career History section
Use this section to highlight key roles & responsibilities, what technical skill-sets you used, and major achievements. Here again, please do not make it too short or too long. Make it focused on letting the reader know the areas of your strengths out of the experiences.
Some of the mistakes people make here and which should be avoided are as follows:
- Not updating the end dates of previous jobs and hence showing multiple jobs from a past date to present
- Not changing the past roles & responsibilities to past-tense
- Not updating the past roles in the light of the current career focus. It is possible that the past job was completely irrelevant for your career goals and hence you may not need to give all the details but just a summary
Like the heading and summary section, please do not mention just some generic titles without any details about your role and responsibilities. Just check the following classical example of a profile’s experiences section:
Would anyone understand anything about you if the experience section on LinkedIn looks like in the above example? You may be losing an opportunity to look for a career change if your profile looks like this.
Education section
You do not have to mention your high schools and all – though there are no disadvantages of doing that bit, do mention all your degrees and institutions where you went for those degrees. Do not leave this section blank.
Licenses & Certifications
It is important to showcase all your licenses and certifications.
Example of licenses and certifications
Skills & Endorsements
Mention all your technical skills, which are important for the career direction you have decided. It is important not to include the skills which are not going to help you. For example, you may be maybe bilingual, and in the past, you might have done some translation work. Now, if you are a technical project manager but still mentioning translation as a skill, it will only dilute the impression of your technical expertise. Only mention the skill set which is going to help you in your career aspirations.
Another important point is to ask your network, people you know personally, i.e., your present or past colleagues, to endorse your relevant skills. Endorsements help you in coming up in the searches for those skills. You may have great JAVA skills but no endorsements; then you will not be placed weel when someone is trying to search for JAVA candidates.
Accomplishments
Mention all your accomplishments. If you have accomplished something by putting dedicated efforts, then why to hide. Life is all about selling. However, sell ethically, do not lie.
Example of Accomplishments
Do not be shy to repeat some points which you might have mentioned under Licenses and Certifications. If a viewer misses the point under one section, chances are less that he misses it in both sections. In the above example, the last two points are for certifications also.
Apart from these, if you have won any awards from your employers or won and contests/competitions, including extracurricular activities, do mention those as well.
Recommendations
Recommendations are important – they create an impression about you. Do not be shy to ask for recommendations from people who know you personally, i.e., your past or current colleagues.
However, a couple of important points when you ask for recommendations.
- Do not ask for tons of endorsements when trying for a change of job. If you have got 15 recommendations just before a new job, it will tell people that the recommendations were not natural, but you got them by asking just for a job change
- Do not ask people in your network who do not know you personally
- You can always suggest what kind of recommendations you want but do not push people to write what to write. Let it be natural and let it be mixed – some great recommendations and some not so great. It looks natural. Sometimes even a recommendation showing some great strengths of yours with some weakness is good because it sounds natural.
How to add optional sections on your LinkedIn profile
You can add various optional sections in your LinkedIn profile. It is advisable to add as many sections as possible so that your profile viewer can understand you more.
To add a section, click on the “Add Profile Section” button on the top right-hand side of your profile, as shown in the picture below:
The drop-down menu will show you all the sections which you can add, as shown in the following picture:
As mentioned above, the simple tips will make your LinkedIn tech profile strong and bring you newer opportunities when you need those and still create a better impression even when you are not looking out for a career change. Go, use the full power of LinkedIn by using these tips.
Coming from an IT background of SAP consulting, IT Business development, and then running the country operations of an IT consulting multinational, Himanshu is co-founder and Managing Director of ReachExt K.K., and EmploymentJapan.com. He is also an Advisory Board Member of a Silicon Valley AI/IoT startup.