Article by Wendy McCance
One of the most important ways to get noticed professionally is to have a completely filled out LinkedIn Profile. A LinkedIn profile needs to be regarded as your online business card. When a company is interested in working with you or hiring you in-house, they will most likely check out your LinkedIn profile to get a quick view of who you are, your experience and how other professionals view you.
When I work with clients, the first thing I do is have them fill out a questionnaire. Here is what they receive:
LinkedIn Questionnaire (abbreviated example)
Please print out a copy for each employee who will be getting a new profile.
- Name:
- Your title:
- Summary: Please write out what you would like mentioned about yourself.
- Experience: Please put together a list of your background, experience, strengths etc…
- Do you belong to any organizations? If so, which ones?
- Education: Schools and certifications.
- Projects: Any projects you would like to mention.
- Foreign languages: Any languages other than English you speak.
- Publications: If you have had anything published.
- Honors or Awards: Title, issuer, date and a description of what the honor/award was for.
- Volunteering or Causes:
- Interests: If you would like to add this please fill it out.
- Contact: Email and phone number
Additional suggestions:
- Join some groups on LinkedIn that you would like displayed on your profile. You can also follow people or companies.
- You might want to endorse other worthy employees under the skills and endorsements. Hopefully, they will do the same. People are more likely to endorse you if they see you have received some endorsements already. Without some endorsements in place, it might not occur to someone visiting your profile to also endorse you. It also improves your profile to have some endorsements.
Having seen this list, understand the goal is to get your profile completely filled out in each section. You should also make sure you have a professional photo of yourself, a link to the company website and links to your Twitter or other social media platform that is kept up in a professional manner.
Wendy McCance 