Do you know if your LinkedIn profile is helping or hurting your career?
According to the creator of complete LinkedIn quiz, William Africa, whether you continually spend a lot of time on your profile or you haven’t even looked at it in years, you likely know that LinkedIn is a powerful tool for increasing your visibility, connecting with decision makers, and advancing your career. So, investing some time in your profile is probably a good idea if you want to move your career forward. But how do you know if your profile is a help or a hindrance?
Here’s a subset of questions I took from the complete LinkedIn quiz. These 15 questions will help you understand where you stand and what you need to do to amp up your profile so it gets you to where you want to go.
Start this evaluation by playing the role of a member of your target audience – the decision makers you seek to influence. Read your LinkedIn summary as if you were seeing it for the first time. Try to read it slowly, focusing on what it really says. Avoid the impulse to skim because you know what’s in it.
Then, for each of the following questions, give yourself a rating from 1 to 3, where 1 is “not so much” and 3 is “yes, absolutely, yes! ”
Headshot
- Is your photo professional (no selfies) with your face taking up between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of the space available?
Headline
- Does your headline include your job title, company, and the keywords you want to be known for?
Contact
- Did you change your vanity URL to be LinkedIn/in/your name?
- Did you include links to websites, along with your contact information, including your office work number, email address, and Twitter handle (if you have one)?
Summary
- Do the first two sentences entice you to want to read on?
- Is it authentic (consistent with who you really are) and aspirational (positioning you for what’s next)?
- Does it contain at least 20 to 30 per cent personal information (your interests, passions, values, philanthropic interests, point of view, and life experiences)?
- Do the writing style and content you included convey your personal brand attributes?
- Is it formatted beautifully – including enough white space to break up the paragraphs?
- Is it grammatically correct and perfectly proofed?
Experience
- Do you have an entry for each experience element of your career – including a description with all relevant keywords in each entry?
Education
- Did you include an entry for each of your degrees, selecting from the LinkedIn list so the school logo appears in your profile?
Skills
- Are the top three skills in your skills/endorsements section the ones for which you want to be known.
Groups
- Do you belong to relevant groups in these areas: thought-leadership, interests/passions, alumni, social causes/philanthropy?
Publications
- Did you include your publications (books, whitepapers, e-books, etc.)?
Now, total your score
If you scored a 40 or higher, bravo! Your summary will attract the attention of those who need to know you, and it positions you for success.
If you scored between 30 and 39, you need to spruce up your summary. Go back to those questions where you gave yourself a 1 or 2 and work on those elements of your profile.
If you scored below 30, it might be wise to start from scratch, building a profile that perfectly reflects who you are and positions you for your next role. This post will help with crafting a stellar summary. It’s the most important part of your profile.
In any case, it is best to make changes or re-write your profile off-line. Once you refine your profile or create a new one, get feedback from a few people and incorporate their recommended edits before you make the changes to your LinkedIn profile. Then, adjust your privacy settings for “Sharing profile edits” to “no.”
You don’t want your connections to be alerted to your many tweaks. After you’ve almost finished, change the setting back to “yes.” Then make your very last change – and your connections will know that you have updated your profile. They’ll come back to check out what’s happening with you. It’s a great way to get back in touch with people you haven’t connected with for a while.
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