Are you missing this in your LinkedIn profile?

Summarize your success!

Recruiters can’t afford to spend prolonged periods of time reviewing individual candidates.

Just like you don’t read every little word or examine every little detail when browsing the internet — or reading advice articles 😉 — recruiters are trained to scan for the most important and overarching information about candidates as quickly as possible.

And to help them do this, LinkedIn lets you create a short summary and professional headline about yourself. These two sections let anyone get an idea about who you are from just a glance.

Your headline is limited to only 120 characters, and your summary to only 2,000. But in that short space you need to convince the reader to spend more time looking through your profile, or connecting with you online.

Because of the small space to work within, most people say as little as possible, like “graphic designer” or “architect”. But while they are letting you know what field they work in, they aren’t doing anything to let you know why they are outstanding in their field.

In order to build your personal brand through LinkedIn, you need to add some colour to your headlines and summary. Try saying something like “graphic designer with a flair for fun, approachable designs” that starts to give them a clearer idea of your style. Or, add in a specific achievement, such as “architect of the world’s first skyscraper for cats”.

Think about what you could say to another graphic designer, or architect, or someone in YOUR field, that would impress them. That’s what sets you apart, and that’s the selling point you should be summarizing in your profile.

Use numbers, not just words!

When we’ve accomplished something great, we know that the numbers speak for themselves.

The only problem is, numbers can’t actually speak. You need to speak up about them yourself in your online interactions so that other people can be as impressed by them as you are!

There are lots of ways you can quantify the quality of your work. For example, you could be an author — or you could be the author of 17 books, 3 scholarly texts, and 127 journalistic articles.

You could be a Quality Assurance agent — or you could be a QA with a 99.99% accuracy record.

You could be a mobile app developer — or you could be a mobile app developer whose apps have been downloaded over 10 million times!

Numbers are the #1 way to let your work speak for itself. Just make sure you put them somewhere where people can hear them speak — like your LinkedIn profile!

Inform them about your initiative!

Doing well at a task that employers or clients have asked you to do is one thing.

But doing well at a task that you initiated yourself proves that you have the motivation to be a self-starter!

Be sure to highlight the projects you’ve started of your volition. Recruiters are always looking for professionals who can see what needs to be done without being told what they need to do.

Did you start a new committee at a past job? Have you spearheaded any charitable campaigns? What about side projects, or any personal time you spent figuring out a way to save your whole team time at work?

Be sure to qualify what was achieved because of your initiative, and quantify your success with supporting numbers wherever possible.

ACCESSIBILITY