I am asked to review LinkedIn Profiles on a regular basis – I really don’t have the time to do many, but every once in a while I like to do a healthy assessment of a LinkedIn Profile. Normally I’d do this on my LinkedIn blog but today I’ll share it with you.
If you have any LinkedIn questions, consider getting my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD. This is not just for job seekers… it’s a great tutorial to get up to speed on getting value out of LinkedIn (I spend the first 3 sections on Profiles).
Clint Goudie-Nice is the lucky one today… let’s start:
- THANK YOU for not putting anything in the name field except your name. Drives me nuts to see email addresses, LION, etc. (which are all against the terms of service).
- Great picture – I love it. One thing I like about this picture is how close your head is… I’ve seen a few recently where the person is like 10 or 20 feet away from the camera and I can’t make out enough details.
- The LinkedIn professional headline is … okay. You are missing an opportunity, however, to put a marketing pitch there (think 30 second commercial condensed down to a 5 second commercial). The professional headline is a great place to communicate your value-add, and will be seen in various places in the LinkedIn experience.
- You need more LinkedIn Recommendations. I know Clint personally (he bought me a burrito yesterday!), and know that Clint is an awesome systems architect… why doesn’t he have more LinkedIn Recommendations? I’d expect him to have at least 10 really awesome Recommendations. Get to work on that!
- You should have more connections. I know Clint networks a lot, and is a nice, likable (sp?) person. I talk about how to grow a relevant network in my LinkedIn DVD.
- Do you sell candles… is that your “Company?” Or is this a link to your current employer? Is your “Website” your family blog? Don’t make me guess – instead of choosing the default labels for this, choose “Other” and then type something descriptive in.
- I highlighted the things that stuck out to me as errors in grammar or spelling or formatting… I could be wrong on some, but they just looked wrong. Clint should have cleaned this up by now (I haven’t looked), but you don’t want your Summary to detract from your message and capabilities. Some people won’t care and won’t catch them … others will let errors like this become an issue. Proof your Summary, and then have about 10 others proof it and provide feedback.
- I like how Clint has a lot more than two paragraphs here… I think he’s still shy of the limit (2,000 characters), which I’d recommend he works towards.
- I like the voice, and the message, in general. Would like to see some “for example” stories.
- I think the ending could be stronger… it’s okay as-is, but I wonder how it could make more of an impression.
- I’ve never seen this before but I really like it – it solves the issue of “how do I talk about different jobs I had at the same company?” … he has done this a number of times in his profile.
- My question to Clint was, which of these add value to your branding and overall message, and which of these do not? Those that do not are distractions, or noise, and you should not show them on your Profile.
This is kind of a quick-and-dirty LinkedIn Profile review… check out the LinkedIn DVD, were I go over five other professionals’ Profiles… and much more!
How is YOUR Profile?
Hi,
I am editing my LinkedIn profile now.. 🙂
Hi Jason. Can you expand on recommendations? It still seems counterintuitive – of course you’re only going to have recommendations from people who say good things about you. What is it really adding? Thanks, the LinkedIn review is helpful!
Thanks for the tips. I have an improved headline thanks to you!
Great post Jason! I’m editing my profile right now!
Great suggestions, Jason! Utilizing the professional headline as a 5-second commercial is very valuable advice. It’s such a visible piece of LinkedIn “real estate” – esp. for job seekers.
Thanks for doing the review. Jason did a great job of helping me dial in some of the goodies on my profile, and there was a breakfast burrtio in it for him.
Some of my responses:
->Great picture – I love it.
Thanks! I was concerned that this might not be businessy enough.
-> The LinkedIn professional headline is … okay.
Yup changed. — I solve complex IT problems as an architect of information and systems. (Largely at Jason’s suggestion)
-> You need more LinkedIn Recommendations.
Yup. I’m currently soliciting some from people I know well. I may or may not be bribing them with a breakfast burritos as well.
-> You should have more connections.
Well I’m always working on that. It’s hard to compete with Jason’s 500+ connections though.
-> I highlighted the things that stuck out to me as errors in grammar or spelling or formatting…
What Jason isn’t mentioning is what my profile section looked like before he made a suggestion to me. I used to have the top chunk of my resume in this section.. Jason told me this which was extremely helpful:
Jason Alba: i would try and not make a LI profile look like a resume hardly at all.
Jason Alba: imo, the profile is where you tell stories – compelling, 2 – 3 sentence stories about what you bring to the table… not the dry, third person talk you read in a resume.
Thanks for the proofread. Some of this I’ve fixed and some I need to think about. As an entertaining story, having your browser think you’re in British English instead of US English makes for some interesting spellings (colour and centered). I did one one my last rounds of editing in my browser and didn’t pay attention to the corrections.
-> I think he’s still shy of the limit (2,000 characters), which I’d recommend he works towards.
Looks like I’m at around 1,500. I’ll have to brew up one or two more more informative paragraphs.
-> I’ve never seen this before but I really like it – it solves the issue of “how do I talk about different jobs I had at the same company?”
Glad you liked the @see idea. I’ve been wondering for a while if this is helpful or harmful to my linked in.
->I think the ending could be stronger… it’s okay as-is, but I wonder how it could make more of an impression.
I think Jason is soliciting me for another free burrito to help me improve this.
->which of these add value to your branding and overall message
Some unnamed groups have been removed from my list of visible groups
One other thing Jason suggested I add to my profile was a code snippit about contacting me. Here’s what I brewed up:
if(youWantToContactMe())
{
…if(youLikeEmail())
……mailer.email(“linkedin@magicalspirits.net”);
…else if(youLikePhoneCalls())
……phoneDialer.dial(“+18019150629”);
…else
……linkedIn.linkToClint();
}
Again, thanks for the review and tips Jason! This was super helpful. I hope my learning experience can help everyone advance their linkedin as well.
Clint
Thanks for this, Jason! I need to do some work on my LinkedIn profile (ahem, starting with making my inadvertent two profiles into one), and this will help greatly. If I FTP you a burrito, will you recommend me? 🙂
Thanks for the review Jason! Good reminders of how to get the most from your profile. And, thanks to Clint for sharing his profile. I think I’ll review my profile today – and a few of my clients too.
Thanks
Kris
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the post and a great LinikedIn 101 webinar this morning. Can you point me in the direction of more info about why add a powerpoint about yourself to your LinkedIn profile? I love the idea but am having trouble now explaining exactly why to colleagues!
Cheers from Australia.