How to Create Professional

Profile For:
 Checklist
The following action steps are needed to create Professional Profile:

Start With A Nod To

Basics Education

Choose Summarize It All

Account Type

Add A Photo Create A

Personalized URL

Talk About Update Regularly

Experience

Time For Post Content

Skills

LinkedIn: How To Create Professional Profile 

Start With Basics
When creating a profile, make sure the email address is one you often check;
this is vital to ensure receipt of connection requests, messages and more.
Basic demographic information, such as location, is self-explanatory.

Be sure to add a phone number—the more ways a connection or potential

employer has to get in touch, the better! It’s also possible to begin adding
contacts at this early stage of the game by allowing LinkedIn to access your
email contact list.

Choose Account Type

This is where you must make a choice between the Basic LinkedIn
experience, which is free, or the Premium option, which provides many more
features but costs a fee.

Add A Photo
When it comes to photos on LinkedIn, professional is the name of the game.
Add a professional head-shot or one that simply looks that way—sometimes
even a photograph taken with a smartphone is professional enough to use.

However, there is reason to look toward professional head-shots first; those

with a photo taken by a pro get 14 times more views than those with a ho-
hum pic.Use a photo that is at least 200x200 pixels; anything less and it will
appear distorted and blurry. 

Remember that those who add a high-quality photo to their profile get 21
times more profile views and up to 36 times more messages than those who
keep the boilerplate look.

LinkedIn: How To Create Professional Profile 

Talk About Experience
For job-seekers, this is where the juice is—so make sure the experience
listed reflects everything you can do.
You can import a resume, or you can choose to add each position
manually. Many will begin by importing a resume and then tweaking
each position to add more content, optimize with keywords and make it
all more readable than the typical dry, bare bones resume might be.
Always list the employment experience starting with the most current.

Time For Skills

Shoot for a bare minimum of five skills; the more listed, the better. You
can currently add up to 50 skills. Those who have at least five skills on
their profile are contacted 33 times more often by recruiters and other
LinkedIn members, and receive 17 times more profile views. Make a
point of listing skills in the order of proficiency and expertise; those
skills are used to connect job-seekers with recruiters and other
connections, so it’s important to keep the most highly-honed skills front
and center.

A Nod To Education
When including education, be sure to include all schools attended; this
will allow for easier connections with old classmates, alumni groups
and the like. In addition, include any education that wasn’t necessarily
through a university or college, such as a corporate training, seminar or
a certification earned through an organization or association related to
your field.

LinkedIn: How To Create Professional Profile 

Summarize It All
Writing a summary can be tricky. Here are a few points to keep in mind
when writing the best possible summary to get the most attention:
Don’t be afraid to show personality! A whopping 40 percent of
recruiters will love a peek into your attitude.Make sure it’s at least 40
words; this makes it more likely to show up in searches. Drop a note
about specialties in there, as those keywords will show up in searches
too.Talk about experience, but talk about your goals as well.

Create A Personalized URL

A personalized URL makes it much easier for others to find you. Those
with a common name might discover that their particular URL is already
taken; however, adding a location or numbers behind the name can be
a good alternative. To do this, click the “gear” next to the public profile
link, then click the pencil message next to the URL. The personalized
URL must be between five and 30 characters.

Update Regularly
Using LinkedIn on a regular basis is recommended, as this helps keep
you in the loop with colleagues and happenings in the field. Go back
once a week or so to check out messages, respond to requests for
recommendations, make endorsements, comment on articles, send a
congratulatory note or update your profile if new things have been
happening.

Post Content
Finally, don’t forget to start posting content. Keep the content to things
that are pertinent to your field, such as interesting articles, fun statistics
or compelling new innovations. Start a blog if you feel you can keep up
with it on a regular basis. Just make sure any content posted is as
professional as possible.

LinkedIn: How To Create Professional Profile 

How To Make Your Profile Stand Out ?

By following all these tips, you’ve already got a great profile. Now add that
little something extra to push it over the top. Here are a few ways to do so:

Add a video to your profile

Create a video that showcases who you are and what you do,
then upload it to a sharing site and post the URL to LinkedIn.
Make note that it’s a place where connections can learn more
about you and encourage them to click!

Add publications
Written anything good lately? Professional writings, especially
those that wind up in journals dedicated to your field or those
that make it into high profile publications should be showcased
on LinkedIn. There’s even a section for exactly that.

Create a portfolio
If you have a broad body of work that doesn’t easily lend itself
to explanation—such as a code depository—a link to a
professional site where you have mentioned your projects like
GitHub, can allow connections to learn more about what you
can do.

LinkedIn: How To Create Professional Profile 

 How To Avoid Pitfalls that could
Damage Your Profile?
Lastly, It’s important to know what to do to make the profile stand out, but it’s
equally important to know what NOT to do. Here are some common pitfalls to
avoid.

Treating LinkedIn like other Social Media

LinkedIn is for professionals—period. Blasting out a million
connection requests to people you don’t know, joining a group
and immediately asking for help, trolling on posts like this is
Facebook or Twitter—these are all the hallmarks of someone
who doesn’t know or want to know how to use LinkedIn for
professional development,
source:https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/career-resource-center/how-to-create-linkedin-profile

Not following up
When someone provides an introduction, helps you get a job
interview, answers your request for advice or otherwise takes
an interest in how things are going for you, circle back and let
them know how the situation turned out. Thank them for
opening the door to that great job, let them know how their
advice helped you, or simply tell them you appreciate the time
they took to make introductions on your behalf.

Not Spending Enough Time on the Site

Getting the most out of LinkedIn is a process. If you think that
you can join and it will magically change your life or your
prospects, you are likely mistaken.  It is part of your
professional development and, just like anything, will take
some work to get something out of it.  What I have found is
that the more I use it, the more useful it becomes to me.

LinkedIn: How To Create Professional Profile