Before you know it you’ll be surfing the professional networks, establishing connections and creating exciting opportunities for yourself and your business.

But there’s a slight problem. You don’t have a profile.

Building a profile is the first step towards starting your LinkedIn use, however for many it can be a tripping point. A good profile can say a lot about you, give people a snapshot of your professional credentials, and encourage them to engage with you on a professional level. A bad profile can leave people wondering who you are, what you do, and why you’re trying to connect. This guide will take you step by step through the main points from building your first profile.

Get a picture!

Frequently this can be a tricky topic for users. Either they don’t have a suitable picture or they’re not sure they want a picture of themselves up on the internet. A profile picture is typically a necessity, as not being able to put a face to the name can be quite disconcerting. The type of picture is important but not difficult, it should simply be a nice respectable picture of you, smiling if possible.

What’s a Summary?

A summary is a basic rundown of your current status, previous experience, and areas of speciality. LinkedIn has tonnes of examples of these, and if you’re not sure just start randomly checking pages to get a feel for it. Always write in the 3^rd person and be as economic with your phrasing as possible. People will usually not read a long summary so keep it to a few sentences at absolute maximum.

Work Experience

This can be a tough area to fill out (despite seeming relatively straightforward) as most are unsure of stating too much or too little information. Generally the key to this is moderation. Include the major working points of your career, the major duties in each job (the important ones, not the one where you were on tea rotation) and then leave it at that. If you’re job was more than a few years ago you don’t need to go in to massive detail about it.

Keywords

This may seem to be a minor part of the profile, but may well in fact be the most important (or at least, the most critical not to have) aspect of the process. The “Skills & Expertise” section allows you to list the areas you’re particularly good or interested in. This is not just for your profile, this will also allow keyword searches to rank your profile higher. Essentially, when people are looking for someone with, say, social media marketing skills, you can rise higher in that ranking by having it as one of your skills. This will ensure that when you want to be found, you will be.

There are a number of other elements involved in creating an online profile, however these are best discovered yourself, as you scan other profiles to see what you think works and what doesn’t and become more familiar with LinkedIn. Typically you should only place as much information online as you’d be happy to discuss with a complete stranger, however in this case you will most likely find that if you give a little, you’ll get a lot back.

The post How to Build your LinkedIn Profile appeared first on Career Consultants.

So basically, yours had better be to the point.

Cramming your life’s experience into 2 sheets of A4 paper can seem like an incredibly difficult task, and siphoning out the unnecessary from the important is even harder. In my own experience I had initially tried to cram everything I possibly could to persuade, nay, force a hiring manager to pick up the phone.

The truth is that in today’s market 30 seconds to view a CV is more than you’re likely to get. The reality is that you are probably dealing with someone who has a few dozen CV’s to get through and not a lot of time to do it. If yours is lucky enough to get 20 seconds you can consider yourself extremely competitive in an increasingly difficult marketplace.

This may seem daunting however it’s an opportunity for you to gain an edge over other competing candidates.

Knowing that you have only 20 seconds (probably a quick scan over your 2-3 most recent roles) allows you to be brutal in cutting unnecessary terms. Most CV’s contain some form of clutter or focus on insignificant details that don’t sell what you can bring to the company to a prospective employer. Keep it focussed on this job, not you in general.

Remember that a CV is not a summary of your life, just your career. Any details which are not relevant to selling your experiences to an employer should be examined carefully and you should consider whether or not they should be there at all.

Using the right keywords can allow your CV to be picked up during searches, and a well organised CV can be the difference in you making a shortlist, or being passed over.

The post CV- 30 Seconds to Impress (actually it’s closer to 20) appeared first on Career Consultants.

The basics are quite simple, a professional network for establishing and maintaining contacts in a business context. Similar to other social media sites you “add” people, and if they approve the connection, you have access to their profile. If you don’t they may keep their profile visible anyway, or they may have a restricted viewing that is only open to some. Unlike Facebook the content is not your daily comings and goings, but rather a summary of you as a professional, and perhaps any relevant industry news or events you’d like to pass on (though this is not required).

Getting more complicated

This is where things begin to get a little more difficult, however. What should you put on your profile? How much information should you give? Who can see it? The questions become more difficult from there, who to connect with, should you know them beforehand?

Fortunately, the answers to these questions are easier than they appear, and with some simple pointers they are very quickly resolved.

Getting Started

Your LinkedIn profile is essentially a snapshot of your professional history and current occupation. It is not quite as detailed as your CV, however will convey similar information in terms of your career and a basic overview of your achievements.

The summary section will be a brief profile (who you are, some key qualities) and a brief list of your major skill sets. This is important for both describing yourself and SEO processes, which we’ll discuss a little later.

LinkedIn will provide examples at every stage on exactly how much information to give, how to phrase etc. Importantly you will need to use your own judgement in how much information to give and what exactly is/was relevant. Privacy and access are issues that you can alter yourself in your account settings, but a good rule of thumb is to leave out anything that you wouldn’t be happy for the general public to see.

The post Building your LinkedIn Profile appeared first on Career Consultants.