“Don’t second guess your professional first impression.” ~ Mitch Miles
In many cases, your LinkedIn Profile is where you make a first impression for people who are considering you for jobs. For engineers, this is critical, and having a great profile can even bring recruiters to you in abundance, fighting for your services. That’s a game changer for your engineering career growth!
Yet, LinkedIn is an often-underutilized tool for showing accomplishments and sharing personalities. Just a few tweaks can take you from a sub-par profile to one in the top 10% on the platform.
Engineers – don’t neglect your LinkedIn Profile! It may be even more important than your personal website, blog, or online portfolio for helping you take your next career step.
Here are the top areas to optimize:
- Your profile photo. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a photo taken by a professional, but dress well and smile. Additionally, if you’ve significantly changed your look, it’s good to be updated.
- Your background photo – change it to something that is somewhat personalized rather than using the default LinkedIn background.
- Your title – LinkedIn will default to using your current job role, but you can utilize this space to show multiple passions or keywords that can strike more interest in people who check out your profile.
- Your About section – start strong here, as the first few lines are the most important. Think of it as your written elevator pitch. Then write 1-2 paragraphs that tell your story a bit more, and finish off with a list of your skills (software, programming languages, soft skills, etc). This can be helpful as the about section is a powerful place for keywords in your profile.
There are so many other elements to great profiles, but these are often most neglected, yet they are most important.
If you’re wanting more tips/tricks on optimizing your LinkedIn profile, go grab my FREE Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Guide!
