If you are a job seeker using LinkedIn, there are specific ways that you can change your LinkedIn profile and your settings to help you land a job.

This post focuses on seven important profile changes. It also describes five key setting adjustments. By applying my recommendations, you will improve your chances of finding the job they seek.

 

Seven Profile Improvements

  1. Update your photo. It’s critical to have a recent professional head shot.
  2. Add credentials after your last name. These can include a degree (MA, MBA, PhD) or a professional credential (CPA, JD, PMP).
  3. Use keywords hiring authorities are looking for in your headline. You have up to 120 characters, so use them to your best advantage.
  4. Paint a compelling picture of what you offer in the Summary section. Share your strengths and successes. Reference relevant leadership roles in paid or volunteer positions.
  5. Add media. Including short PowerPoint presentations and videos makes your profile more compelling.
  6. Include each position you held in the experience section to show your career progression. LinkedIn automatically groups them when you list them under the same employer.
  7. Make sure the three featured skills in your endorsements section are the most important ones. If you don’t want to use the three ones currently displayed, click on the pencil icon. Then click on the blue push-pin icon next to the skill you want to remove. Doing that moves the skill lower in the list of skills but doesn’t delete it. Click on the white push-pin next to the skill you want to move up to the top.

 

Five Key Settings to Adjust

  1. Customize your LinkedIn profile URL to include a reference to your profession. Go to the Edit Your Public Profile in your privacy settings. While there, make sure every part of your profile is displaying for anyone who finds you via an internet search.
  2. Adjust your profile viewing options to be anonymous. The default is for your photo, name, and profile headline to display whenever you look at someone’s profile. This is not always ideal, especially if you are investigating a people at a company you’re interested in. Go into your privacy settings and change it to anonymous so you can look around without being seen. You may want to use the default setting when you are reviewing profiles of people you meet while networking.
  3. Adjust the job application setting. Allow LinkedIn to save the information you enter when applying for a job through LinkedIn. (This is also done in your privacy settings.)
  4. Enable jobs and opportunities notifications. Do this in the communications tab. Also, enable the notifications for activity that involves you, especially who has reviewed your profile.
  5. Select “daily” in the Alerts for Jobs You May Be Interested In. This is in the jobs and opportunities section of the email frequency setting in the communications tab.

How About You?

If you have been, or currently are, a job seeker, how have you changed your profile to help you land a job? What settings did you adjust? What results have you had?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those ages 45 and older, to become more effective and productive using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

She works with business owners, business development professionals, business consultants, job seekers, and more – ranging from entrepreneurs to people in large corporations. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.