8 Tips to Maximize Your Profile on LinkedIn
1. Fill out your profile completely.
Completed LinkedIn profiles attract more attention from past colleagues, recruiters and
potential employers, business partners and other connections. Once your profile is
complete, the profile platform will prompt you with suggested methods to strengthen it.
Be sure to use discretion when including information on your profile. Your profile is not
an overview of your entire career. It should only include the professional experiences that
will help you reach your goals.
2. Add a photo.
A complete profile includes a photo. This helps people that you’ve met in person to
recognize you and it provides a sense of security and humanity to new connections made
virtually. Keep in mind that if you fail to upload a photo, LinkedIn will automatically
display a gray box with a question mark. This may give others the impression that your
account is inactive or that you are not technologically savvy.
3. Craft a professional heading and summary that gives you a competitive edge.
Keep in mind that viewers will not read your profile thoroughly or in entirety. They will
only scan for the highlights; paying the most attention to the experiences listed first. Your
heading and summary are the two sections you can be sure that everyone who visits your
profile will see. The content of your LinkedIn profile does not have to be as rigid as your
resume. For example, your professional heading is not limited to your job title. Also, your
summary not only highlights the positions you’ve held, but tells a story of how all your
experiences have shaped you as a healthcare leader, and have prepared you to achieve
your goals.
4. Create an unique URL for your profile
LinkedIn automatically provides all accounts with a generic URL address. Having a
unique URL for your profile is key for personal branding. It will also help your profile to
show up in search engines, such as Google. You can easily change your URL by
navigating to the Contact and Personal Info field in the top right hand column of your
profile. Suggested URL: www. linkedin.com/in/yourname.
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4. Add content profile to build your value proposition.
Gone are the days where your entire professional career is summarized in a single page.
Now, you can showcase the full breadth of your experience using media such as
presentations, videos, or blog posts to make your LinkedIn profile come to life.
5. Showcase professional accomplishments.
Your past performance is one of the best indicators of your future performance. Your
connections are not only interested in your accomplishments at your current employer,
but within the industry. Use this section of your profile to highlight certifications,
honors/rewards, involvement in professional organizations and more.
6. Request recommendations and endorsements
Having connections who can vouch for your professionalism and expertise complete a
LinkedIn recommendation on your profile takes your credibility to the next level. When it
comes to recommendations, use the strategy of quality of quantity. Having three strong
recommendations give a 360 prospective of you as a healthcare leader (employer,
colleague and direct report) is better than having 100 generic recommendations. When
you request recommendations, save your contacts time and protect your brand by giving
them guidelines of what you would like highlighted in your profile. For connections you
work with from a distance, request endorsements for the skills that will help market your
professional brand. Endorsements allow your connections to validate the strengths found
on your own profile with a simple click.
7. Now, Search!
LinkedIn is built around specific algorithms. Maximizing the tool is all about thinking
like a search engine. Think about the types of searches that you would like your profile to
populate in, and test them out. Do this within LinkedIn and other search engines, such as
Google. If your profile fails to populate in your desired searches, try increasing the
number of times the appropriate keywords appear in the content of your profile and
repeat the search again.