How important is your LinkedIn profile? It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a powerful tool for business professionals. In less than a second your target audience, a recruiter, a hiring executive, or a board member forms an impression of you from your profile. They are asking themselves questions like “Can this person effectively lead our organization” and “Am I comfortable having this person present to the Board of Directors?” If you want to make the most of this opportunity, it’s important to create a profile that stands out from the rest. Here are five keys areas to optimize to create your best Executive LinkedIn Profile:
High-quality headline
Let’s face it – recruiters, executives, and board members are busy people. Your headline is directly under your profile photo and is the first thing they see. In order to stand out, it should also be clear and concise – telling them what you do and providing clear evidence that you are good at what you do. This is also an opportunity to round out your image with some soft skills to give a better idea of who you are as a person. This post explains in detail how to write a great LinkedIn profile headline.
It’s important to find a way to give your viewer a sense of scale in your LinkedIn headline, as well as a sense that you are good at what you do. If you think about it, running the operations for a deli counter in a corporate cafeteria is quite different from running the operations for General Motors or BMW.
There is a bit of an art to this. You can look at things like career numbers, the size of your team, or whether your clients are Fortune 50, 100, or 500 companies – to give a sense of the scale of your role and how good you are at your job. Add a metric in your LinkedIn headline can help drive home the fact that you’re good at what you do and demonstrate the scale at which you operate.
Profile Photo & Background Photo
Your profile photo is LinkedIn’s equivalent to a Facebook profile picture. At the executive level, it needs to be a high-quality, professional headshot. If you don’t have one, now is the time to invest in getting one taken. LinkedIn users are much more likely to engage with someone who has a professional profile photo. Here are a few basic guidelines:
- Smile but don’t smile too much – In one study, men with a big toothy smile were perceived to be less intelligent!
- Don’t let your photographer crop your head – Cropping the top of your head is a popular headshot style but LinkedIn also crops your profile photo by putting a circle around it. If the top of your head is already cropped and LinkedIn crops it again, it often doesn’t look right.
- Take fashion queues from the executives at your target companies or comparable companies. In some New York City organizations, no one will take you seriously if you aren’t wearing a tie. In many Silicon Valley organizations, no one will take you seriously if you do wear a tie.
The background photo appears behind your profile photo. The default gray box definitely does not convey the right level of professionalism. In most cases using a background photo with your current organization’s logo is the best choice. Even if you are looking for a new position elsewhere a background photo with a logo gives the impression that you are engaged with your organization’s mission. This obviously looks good to your current organization but it also makes you look more professional to people outside your organization. As a backup, you can use a photo of the skyline of your city or an iconic landmark. This is better than the gray box but does nothing to convey that you are a leader.
Here is a link to the specifications for your images on your LinkedIn profile.
Quantifiable Measures of Success
Including quantifiable measures of success or scope of responsibility in your LinkedIn profile gives the reader an understanding of what you’re capable of doing. Not just what you did, but also that you’re good at it. If you’ve doubled revenue, include that and be specific if possible.
If you think that there are no quantifiable measures of success for your role or in your industry, think outside the box and look at what accomplishments could be turned into a quantifiable metric. Even if it’s not appropriate to state revenue, perhaps you can state that revenue “increased more than 50%” during your tenure.
Other ways of measuring success are, perhaps, the size of your budget, the number of people you oversee, the number of clients or accounts you manage, or the names of some of your biggest and best clients. Saying that you’re a highly successful salesperson and that your clients are Apple, Tesla, and IBM – that’s impressive!
These quantifiable measures of success will be more visible and memorable if shared as short bullet points.
Turn On “Open to Work”
LinkedIn has a feature that allows you to indicate that you’re open to new opportunities. This one step could be the most important key to success on LinkedIn. It allows recruiters and hiring executives to easily see that you’re looking for a new opportunity, without having to reach out to you directly. This blog post discusses exactly how to turn this feature on, and some of the confidentiality implications that you should be aware of.
Keywords/SEO
LinkedIn, like all search engines, uses keywords to bring up the content. As you write your LinkedIn profile, think about your current job title.
- You may need to change your non-standard title to match the executive positions you are looking for. For example, Co-Founder might become Co-Founder and CTO.
- You are allowed to use 50 allotted skills. Use all 50 to maximize your visibility.
- Make sure the most sought-after skills for the top 3 positions you are interested in are embedded in your profile.
Still not sure what to write? I’d love to speak with you. Schedule a conversation with me to discuss how we can help you create the best profile that will get you noticed!