It’s the perfect time of year to spring clean your LinkedIn profile. 

If you’re calling and messaging potential candidates and clients, they probably Google your name before getting back to you. For most of us, LinkedIn comes up top for our name on Google. Make sure you make the best possible impression when people click.

Here are 5 things to think about when you edit your LinkedIn profile.

Watch the playback or read a summary below

1: Search Result

Have you ever run a search on LinkedIn and seen yourself come up? This is a good exercise. Go try it. Can you understand why someone would click on your profile?

Does your profile picture look OK when it’s that small?

Does your headline communicate how you can help and who should click?

Is your location up to date?

2: Summary Box

This is the box at the top of your profile with all your vital information. This is the first thing people see when they open up your profile. There’s a lot going on there and it’s easy to miss a few key things.

You probably have a profile picture that you’re pleased with, but what about your header image? A lot of companies have a branded image that you can use, if you don’t – try creating something using Canva, a free image editing tool. This is one of the quickest ways to look on-brand and professional.

Your Contact Info section is easy to miss. I’d recommend diving in there and making good use of the 3 links you can include. You don’t have to just add your company website and be done, you can add links to other social profiles, specific jobs, useful info for job seekers – the list is endless.

Then comes your Summary itself – whether you decide to keep it short, or make the most of the 2000 character limit – your opening sentences are important. Those first couple of lines might be the only thing someone reads about you. I’d recommend using this space to make it clear who you want to connect with about what.

3: Rich Media Content

Rich media content makes your profile “sticky”. This means that people will hang around on your profile longer. The best things to add are YouTube videos or PowerPoint presentations via SlideShare.

If you have a deck that you usually send out to potential clients, or a deck with CV tips for candidates, why not add that your LinkedIn profile?

You can also add images, documents and links. Here’s a list of all the file types you can share.

You can add rich media content to your Summary section or in your Experience section.

4: Write For Your Clients & Candidates

Who are you talking to when you write your profile? Are you talking to your future clients, potential candidates, or your next employer?

It’s easy to fall into the trap of using LinkedIn like everyone else and writing it like a CV. For us as recruiters, LinkedIn is a bochure / shop window that showcases what we do and who we can help.  What you have to ask yourself is “is my shop window to the clients and candidates I want to attract?”

5: Social Proof

If someone makes it down to the bottom of your profile, where your Recommendations, Skills & Experience and Interest sections live, they are just looking for proof that what you’ve said above is true.

Make sure you have some Recommendations, with at least one from the past year for your current role.

Your Skills & Experience should reflect the things you want to be known for. You can choose which 3 skills are highlighted in this section, be sure that they communicate the right message. It’s possible to add more skills or delete those that no longer reflect what you do.

Influencers, Groups, Companies and Schools make up your Interests. It’s easy for this section to get bloated and out of date. If you’ve ever changed industry or desk, you might still be following a lot companies that are no longer relevant, or be a member of groups that no longer reflect what you do. It’s important to keep this clean as any of those “interests” can appear on your profile.

So what do you think of Katharine’s suggestions? 

What are you doing to do next?

Do nothing? or put some time aside to improve your profile? 

If you want more help with this or any other aspect of running a recruitment desk or building a recruiting team, join us for a trial in the Recruiting Gym or contact us for a free trial (alex@recruitinggym.com)