This “Current” position will also appear within the expanded search results, so be sure you put your present or most recent position details here. What you enter here will be the same as what you will input for every other work position that you choose to enter into LinkedIn. LinkedIn will help you narrow down your company name, using an assisted search functionality to draw from the member profiles that contain the same company’s name. If it is the first time entering that company name (like for a sole proprietorship) you will have the option to enter the company’s URL as well as the industry. You will then need to put in your title, dates worked, as well as a description of the position. Since your description will be seen by potential recruiters, don’t be shy when listing your achievements, especially if you are currently unemployed. To effectively brand yourself, you will need to include the details that support the information in your Profile Headline. I recommend including resume-like content, but leave the full details for your resume. Include enough detail to entice someone to contact you. If you are employed, you will probably want to be a bit more diplomatic about what you enter in the description so it doesn’t appear that you are looking for a job. Note that the most recent position that you enter here will only appear if you check the “I currently work here” option. If you are unemployed and you already updated your most recent position with the final date of employment, this section will have nothing displayed.
Past (Positions)
LinkedIn gives you the option to add more positions here. I have seen people list more than ten positions, so there may not even be a limit as to how many you can add. I recommend that you list as many positions as you are comfortable with; at minimum, list the same positions included on your resume. Guidelines regarding what to enter here are the same as for the “Current Position” listed above.
Education
Just as you enter your professional experience as if it were your resume, you can also enter your educational background. Most people stop at their university or masters/PHD program. This is a shame. If LinkedIn is about finding and being found, it makes sense to also list your high school as well as any other foreign institutions you may have attended during your college years. The process for completing your education profile is to enter the country and state (if applicable). A drop down of potential colleges and universities will appear. If your college is not listed here, or you want to enter your high school, you simply choose “Other” and then manually enter the name. There are also fields to enter your degree, field(s) of study, dates attended, activities and societies, and extra notes. I believe for most professionals there may not be a need to enter activities and societies as well as additional notes, but if you are one of the growing numbers of college students utilizing LinkedIn, you will definitely want to use this space to brand yourself with these details.
Connections
This will show an accumulated tally of the total number of connections you have acquired. If you have not yet sent or accepted any invitations, it should display “0 connections.” Note that the maximum number of connections that will be displayed is 500 connections, and anything above that will show up as “500+ connections.”
Websites
You have the opportunity to list three websites to appear in your profile. They could be your personal website (if you have one), your blog, your company website, or even your profile on other social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace. It all comes down to what you want to advertise here, which depends on your objective, and on how you want to brand yourself. Note that you can also customize the text label description of each URL site that you enter. You should take advantage of this and use it as part of making your profile more search engine optimized.
Public Profile
This will be the default URL, which is automatically assigned to you, that will lead non-LinkedIn members to your profile. Do yourself a favor: edit this and claim your personalized URL now. If you are the first one to claim your name, your public profile URL will be easy to remember— www.linkedin.com/in/your name. You can then include this as part of your email signature or business card (if you are in transition) to drive more traffic to your profile. Since LinkedIn is a site for professionals, I do not recommend that you include a URL name that is different from your real name, i.e. branding your URL. It could sound tacky and take away from your brand.
“Your Summary”
This is your chance to tell the world who you are. It is the most brandable part of your profile, as you are given the largest amount of text area. You could attach your bio from your corporate website if you are an executive, or if you are looking for a job, this could be a synopsis of the highlights of your resume. Your Professional Headline acts as an initial filter when someone views your profile; your Summary is the basis upon which people will form opinions about you and your brand. The content you include here will be intrinsically tied to what you want to accomplish with LinkedIn and your LinkedIn Brand.
Notice that there is also a “Specialties” section that appears at the bottom of the Summary. My advice here is to fill this space with keywords you want associated with your profile. I have personally broken up these keywords into industry-specific and skill-specific paragraphs.
Remember the rule of thumb for data entry here: if there is a keyword that you want to be associated with when it is searched upon, make sure you have included it in your Summary, as this is the most suitable place for it.
Applications
If you have any Applications running, they will appear here below your “Summary” section and above your “Experience” section. Chapter 8 is devoted entirely to all of the Applications that exist on LinkedIn, so if you have not installed any Applications yet, please wait until after we cover these later in this book. So as not to overload you with too much at this point, I’m going to skip over Applications now. Applications are icing on the cake and are not mandatory to brand yourself on LinkedIn, but, depending on your objective, they could be very valuable tools.
Experience
All of the positions you entered under work experience will appear here in descending time order, with your most recent or “current” job listed first. At the bottom of each section, your Recommendations, if you have any, will appear.
Education
Just as all of the work experience details will be listed in the “Experience” section, all of the schools that you attended, together with their details, will be listed here in the “Education” section.
Recommendations
Chapter 5 of this book is solely devoted to Recommendations. If you have received any and decide to display them, they will be shown in full detail, including the name and title of those who recommended you. They will be displayed in the same order that your Experience is shown.
“Additional Information”
There is a host of other information that is displayed at the bottom of your profile. While this section may look dismissible, every inch of space you have in your profile should be utilized to mention anything the standard template does not allow you to communicate. All of these areas are searchable. Once you get more familiar with LinkedIn you will find a lot of people put a lot of different things in these sections. There is no golden rule except that you want to make sure that 1) you are found when searched upon and 2) your profile showcases your brand!
Websites
The same three websites that appear in your “Profile
