Revitalize Your LinkedIn Profile: Checklist

Stand out to employers & recruiters with these LinkedIn tips:

1. Your headline is your personal brand statement – choose it carefully since this is where people find out who you are and what you can do for them. You will be asked about it in the interviews.

2. Complete your profile 100% (education, 2 previous positions, company websites, your blog URL, personal photo, specialties, summary, contact email and phone number)

3. Format your profile nicely. Check out the profile of Don Cooper as an example of good formatting

4. Write a detailed summary (this is indexed by search engines): Include the types of opportunities you are seeking, key career accomplishments and conclude by emphasizing how you are different from the crowd. Include keywords relating to your unique skills and experience

5. Create a personal ‘vanity’ URL – use your name or easy to remember words.The default random public profile url that LinkedIn gives you is ugly. Edit it to create a url with your name (or an easy to remember word combination) and share it on your business cards and email signature. Avoid using your DOB.

6. Provide a phone number on your profile. Get a Google Voice account (free) instead of putting your cellphone number on LinkedIn. This way if you change your cellphone number, your Google Voice account can be remapped to the new cellphone and your contacts do not need to update their address book. Also it provides a layer of safety.

7. Get Gmail – google’s mail. Gmail integrates well with Google Voice.

8. Move your personal contact information to the top of your profile so people can contact you easily.

9. Don’t list your home address – or any other sensitive information – city, state are enough. Be cautious – be safe.

10. Aim for at least three different recommendations. When requesting endorsements, let people know the kind of job you are targeting. Request that they review your work with them from the perspective of your target job.

11. Update your status periodically with links to your blog posts about new projects or industry updates. However do not update very frequently unless you want to share an important news/status change. Linkedin professionals do not want to be spammed.

12. Make your linkedin presence interesting – Embed a video of your presentation or slide show, publish your events, add your blog feed, learn how to post directly from twitter by using the key word “#in’, engage your connections by creating a poll, collaborate on projects by creating a team space/huddle. Write your profile and summary so they make an interesting read. Consider a first person, friendly narrative.

13. Participate in Answers. Answering questions, shows people that you are an active person and have the knowledge and a willingness to share that knoweldge.

14. Check out other top people in your industry and borrow elements from their profile.

15. Avoid a paid linkedin account unless you are a recruiter.

16. Join in appropriate groups: Find relevant groups on topjobgroups or LinkedIn Groups Directory

17. Send contact invitations to senior high profile people in management that can shine some of their light your way.

18. Consider including a collection of words & phrases (which describe you) at the end of your profile and label them as “Search Tags” Or “Specialties”. This would ensure that your profile shows up even when recruiters search by different terms.

19. Use the same principles of copywriting – keywords, action words & phrases etc – as you would in your resume.

20. Include common misspellings of your name. Check out the profile of Bryan C. Webb (Ontario, Canada) as an example.

21. Search for your profile on google and linkedin not using your name but keywords by which recruiters are likely to search you. eg sales rep in Austin, Nurse in Ottawa. Does your profile show up in top 20?