So, we all kinda know that having a nice LinkedIn profile is useful for job search, but you might not know, All-Star profiles are 40 times more likely to be contacted by recruiters, and 18 times more likely to show up in hiring managers’ search results. To hit All-Star, there are nine items to watch out for. And in this video we’ll cover the five that most people think take a lot of effort, but are surprisingly easy to get right.
So, let’s get started. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the channel. If you’re new here, my name is Jeff. Come for the career tips, and stay for the unfair advantage you will have with a Allstar LinkedIn profile.
Diving right into a sneaky bonus tip for job seekers, you wanna click on settings and privacy, navigate to visibility, visibility of your LinkedIn activity. Share profile updates with the network and turn this option off. This way, you can follow along and make changes today without alerting your nosy colleagues. I’m not looking for a new job right now. I love my job. I love my manager, so I really have nothing to hide. So I guess I’ll just leave this option on.
Alright, first tip. Add a high-quality LinkedIn profile picture and cover photo. First, pick a photo where you’re smiling at the camera and your chest is in the frame. Don’t worry if the background is a bit messy and disorganized. We’ll sort that out later. Then you wanna head on over to Remove BG, a free online tool, and confirm this is a photo you wanna use because you only get one chance to download the high-resolution version. Then make a free account on canva.com. I’ll link it down below. Then click, create a design, custom size, 1600 by 1600 pixels, and click, create new design. Now, on your empty page, you wanna first duplicate this page, so you have two empty pages. And on your first empty page, drag and drop your photo without the background over. And on the second empty page, drag and drop the original photo with the background over. You’ll see why in a little bit.
Now, you have two options. If you want a nice, clean background, you can simply search for a gradient square under the elements tab. Select this option. Pick two colors that you like, like so. Make this expand and fill the entire square like that. Position backward. If you wanna get fancy, you can also rotate this, and then drag the corners again to fill the entire frame.
Option two is for the photo with the background. You wanna first click edit image, adjust, see all. Move the brightness down by around 10, saturation by around 15. Blur, let’s add 10 clicks of blur and boost the vignette up to 50. And then you wanna click the lock icon here. Then you wanna actually copy, and then paste the photo without the background, then move it down to your second page, so it overlays and is on top of the blurred image, like so.
Finally, for this top layer, click “edit image” again, adjust, see all, add 10 to the brightness, another 10 to contrast, 15 to saturation, and another 15 to warmth. And this really helps you pop out from the background.
For your LinkedIn cover photo, it’s even simpler. On your Canva homepage, create a design, search for LinkedIn banner, and make sure you select the 1500 pixel option, because that’s the most updated size. And once you’re in, on the left-hand side under the templates tab, again, search for LinkedIn banner. And you can add a filter for the language that you want. English US for me. Apply filters. And you can select from one of these pre-populated templates. I like to keep mine simple. So after selecting one, I can literally just double-click and start editing. Once you’re done, click, share, download, and download again. And now, you’re ready to upload your new, sexy, improved profile picture and cover photo.
LinkedIn profile tip number two for job seekers, your headline should equal your title, plus the value you bring. This is what I currently have, product marketing at Google. And if I perform a search for product marketing managers, we literally all have the exact same headline, which is just our title. A trick I learned from Austin Belcak, a thought leader in this area, is to add one sentence that shows the value you bring to future employers. For me, an oversimplification of what I do is that I explain complex features within Google Ads in a way that small and medium business owners understand. Sexy, right? I know, I get all the ladies. Cutting that down, I might be left with something like, I bring boring ad products to life. And you’ll be surprised at how hard it is to summarize your entire job in one coherent sentence. But when you do, you get to stand out among your peers. By the way, an amazing point Austin makes is that although different types of people use LinkedIn for different purposes, the objective of your profile stays the same, to drive relevant traffic to you, even when you’re sleeping. And for job seekers, this traffic is messages and connection requests from recruiters and hiring managers. I’ll link his full article down below.
Best practice number three for job seekers, include relevant keywords in your LinkedIn about section. I’ve made an entire video about this, so check that out afterwards, but essentially, three things you need to know. First, LinkedIn search works just like Google search. Keywords play a big role in how often you show up in recruiters’ and hiring managers’ search results. And your LinkedIn about section is a great place to add relevant keywords. Second, where do you find these keywords? Well, go to at least 10 job descriptions, and copy and paste all of them into a Google Doc, like so. Then select all the text within the Doc and paste it into a word cloud generator. I’ll link a free one down below. And click, generate cloud. Now, you can easily see which of these keywords show up the most. In this example, if I sort by frequency, I can immediately see they want someone who is customer centric, focused on growth, and has to work well with sellers, which is a shorthand for the sales team. So you have to work well cross-functionally.
And third, follow this LinkedIn about section structure from Austin Belcak, and include your keywords.
An intro line with your years of experience and specific value you bring, followed by three specific examples with quantifiable metrics, and close with the types of opportunities you’re looking for. To prove this works for anyone, I’ve added an example here for a student looking for their first full-time job. Note that I’ve intentionally sprinkled in keywords throughout this summary.
LinkedIn profile tip number four for job seekers, add five skills correctly to your profile. “But Jeff,” you might say, “Skills are so easy to add. “I can probably add 50 in two minutes.” Well, yes, but actually, no, because according to LinkedIn, only skills with at least one endorsement will count, and you need five of those skills to satisfy the All-Star requirement. So go back to your word cloud, pick five skills, and add them to your LinkedIn profile. Then get endorsements from friends, families, and colleagues. Pro tip, according to Austin, endorsements from people with those same skills carry more weight.
Tip number five, use a custom LinkedIn URL. Two reasons for this. First, if you watch my resume video, you know that resumes that include a link to your LinkedIn profile have a 71% better chance of hearing back from employers. So you want that URL to make sense. Second, your URL actually plays a role in the SEO, or search engine optimization, of your profile, helping it rank better when someone Googles your name. And small bonus, your email signature is a great place to add the URL as well. Changing this is super easy. On your profile, click, edit public profile and URL, and click the pencil icon here.
Now that you have an All-Star LinkedIn profile optimized for job search, make sure to check out this video next on best practices for messaging recruiters on LinkedIn. See you on the next video. In the meantime, have a great one.
The text above was derived (in part or whole) from the video transcript and formatted for your reading enjoyment.
We do not claim the text to be an accurate representation of the video. You are encouraged to watch and listen to the video for a complete and accurate representation.
Video url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4OhuzwLc9o
Channel url: https://www.youtube.com/@JeffSu
Channel name: Jeff Su