Achieve LinkedIn Expert Status: Complete Profile Guide

Before you answer back if your Linkedin profile is completed or not and up to what you are looking for, continue reading first and keep the answer till the end .

First of all LinkedIn have always encouraged its users to complete as many sections of the LinkedIn Profile as possible. “Users with complete Profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn”.

Even though two people per second are joining LinkedIn and it now has over 300 million members, the number of people who are using it to its fullest potential is low, but did you know? Only 50% of LinkedIn users have properly completed their profiles up to 100 %?

Although LinkedIn do the encouragement bit pretty well to the users to complete their profile, but what Linkedin don’t do well is explain WHY having a complete Profile is a good thing for the users professionally. Perhaps that’s the reason for the message not getting through?. This is problematic not just for users but also for the platform as a whole. LinkedIn thrives on data and specifically the ability to ‘link’ that data. If only half of LinkedIn participants are providing complete data, half the network is in a permanent data shadow.

Here are the Profile Sections you need to complete to get to ‘All-Star’ (100%) profile completion:

■ Your Industry and Location

■ An up-to-date Current Position (with a description)

■ Two past Positions

■ Your Education

■ Your Skills (minimum of 3)

■ A Profile Photo

■ At least 50 Connections

I Complete my LinkedIn Profile, Now what??!!

Once you take the time to fill out your LinkedIn profile completely, You STILL Need to Optimize It and validate if it is conveying the right message. This is called “personal branding,” and it has a major impact on your ability to get people to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Here are some great organic ways to improve your visibility on LinkedIn:

• Join Groups, start and engage in great Discussions, be helpful to those communities.
• Focus on timely and relevant status updates.
• Create original content and share it with your connections.
• Make use of the Updates stream
• Get Endorsements
• Share relevant content and thank others when they do the same.
• Recommend and Endorse your Connections.
• Build your network by commonality and community.

Remember, If you want to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile, you need to spend some time contemplating the best way to position yourself. You are a business-of-one and your LinkedIn profile is the website for that business. The more effort you put into LinkedIn (i.e. complete your profile, post updates regularly, etc.), the more you’ll be rewarded in the form of profile reviews and connection requests. Even if you aren’t looking for a job right now, or in need of some career guidance, it’s vital that you keep your LinkedIn profile current and active.

Now everything seemed to be set correctly for your profile , so you start to approach others to connect you , but before you do so, do you know ? Studies show people only spend between 6-13 seconds reviewing a LinkedIn profile before they decide if they will accept an invitation to connect. They don’t read your profile, they skim it. Thus, you must optimize what you put on the profile to ensure a reader is taking away the right first impression.

Offline Crowdsourcing Your LinkedIn Profile

The easiest way to determine what your profile is saying about you is to use crowdsourcing (obtain (information or input into a particular task or project) by enlisting the services of a number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet). You do this by getting a bunch of people you might start with your close connection to do the following four steps, as a tip make sure you have enough connections to do so, at least 10-15 to give you some consistent feedback, :

Step 1: Make self evaluation for your profile for 10 seconds. Open your profile and review it for only 10 seconds. Have a quick look from the moment your eye see the profile screen, within those 10 seconds scroll dawn and up, look what might be missing or looks good in your profile .

Step 2: Your connection evaluation for your profile for 10 seconds. Ask your connects to open your profile and review it as you do for yourself for only 10 seconds. As recommended they should keep a stopwatch. Then, they need to close the screen.

Step 2. Immediately write down everything you and they remember. Next, have them jot or scribble down everything you / they can remember and saw on your profile. It should be a brain dump of whatever they can recall.

Step 3: List the most impressive thing they can recall about the profile. Lastly, have them evaluate all they saw and choose the one thing that, in their opinion, are the most impressive about your experience.

From your connects notes you will get a sense of what is your profile is standing out If it’s what you wanted people to be impressed by when they visit it , then you know your profile is in good shape. BUT, if it isn’t, then you need to go back and revamp what you and your contacts had listed about your profile .

Online Crowdsource Your LinkedIn Profile

If you don’t feel comfortable asking your colleagues and friends to crowdsource your profile, or your feel you need to have more reviews, you can always attend a Mingle event. It’s a free online networking session every Tuesday night at 7pm EST. [Sign-up here.] Attendees review each other’s profiles and share what they see. Within an hour, you can easily get profile first impressions from more than a few participants. Not only will you be able to use the results to improve your effectiveness on LinkedIn, you’ll make some new career friends online in the process – helping you to expand your network. [Here’s a video explain how a Mingle Peer Profile Review works and why it’s so important to do.

Having came to the end, go back and check your profile if it is 100 % completed or not.