How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Job Search by Mantasha Anwar (30k+ Followers) (April 19, 2024)

A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for job search and freelancing!

LinkedIn has been a vital tool for professionals. LinkedIn is the key to real business. With the advent of technology, the business has been taken to a different level. Linkedin is one such platform that has been instrumental in the growth of the business. We will discuss how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for maximum exposure.

With LinkedIn being the most used social network for professionals, it is imperative to have an optimized Linkedin profile. With the constant flow of new users, an individual, company, or business needs a strong profile to stay ahead of the competition.

It was officially launched on May 5, 2003, even before the launch of Facebook at Harvard. So it is the oldest social network that is still effectively in use today.

The one with the best, the most optimized LinkedIn profile tends to get the most eyeballs. This blog will help users understand how to optimize Linkedin profiles for job searches.

Also link to check my followers is at the end of this blog. Keep scrolling!

Table of Contents

What are you missing, if you don’t have an optimized LinkedIn profile?

Now you may think, what is the importance of LinkedIn and why is it so necessary to have a LinkedIn profile in 2021?

Since its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has continued to be the most preferred social networking site for business professionals. Right from hiring to career advancement, LinkedIn continues to play a crucial role in the professional lives of workers.

Now, it’s 2021, and there are more than 722+ million members on LinkedIn. It’s not as large as Instagram and Facebook but its audience is with a specific business focus to get you opportunities to work and explore.

When the whole world was hit by deadly coronavirus at the end of 2019 and people became helpless and jobless when the whole country went into sudden lockdown on March 25, 2020, that restricted 501 million people from their work. And this became the point for the rise of remote works from home to online platforms such as LinkedIn.

If you are still thinking twice about having a LinkedIn profile then you can have a look at these stats which will definitely make you want to have one.

10 LinkedIn stats that will blow your mind-

It has been reported that the availability of remote jobs on LinkedIn increased 2.5x from March 2020 to October 2020. The stats given by LinkedIn captured the fact that how the way of work has been changed after the pandemic. And now that there are more chances to get work from home opportunities in any part of the world.
Linkedin has the most privacy-protected social network as compared to Facebook and Instagram.
Linkedin has more than 722 million users.
LinkedIn users are from more than 200 countries.
Almost 59.9% of LinkedIn users are between 25 to 34 years. It’s a platform for people who are either youth looking for opportunities or the ones who are growing their businesses by hiring youths.
About 40 million people use LinkedIn for job search and this number is continuously increasing.
LinkedIn has gained 60% more content creation in 2020.
There are about 61 million senior-level influencers on LinkedIn that makes decisions
2021 is the first year that LinkedIn will reach its first 50% milestone in terms of users.
3 out of 4 people are hired every minute on LinkedIn.

If you are not getting any opportunities from LinkedIn, then it’s absolutely because of your unoptimized LinkedIn profile. Here are different steps which you can follow to get a LinkedIn profile optimized for your next job search and freelance opportunities.

Also Check: Land More Clients – Create a Perfect Freelance Writer LinkedIn Profile!

Steps on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for maximum exposure-

Step by step guide-

1. Fill in your details completely

When talking about an optimized LinkedIn profile, this itself means that every part of your personal profile is filled out completely. Anyone looking at your profile should get to know every detail about your professional life including what you do, who you are, and what you are an expert in.

A completely filled account is more likely to show up in LinkedIn searches and thus increases your search appearances. You can also see the weekly stats for search appearance in LinkedIn.

2. Choose a charming profile picture

Your profile picture is the first impression that you create in your viewer’s mind. It’s absolutely necessary to upload a clear and charming picture that shows your face. It can be a perfect headshot picture that ensures your networks and recruiters trust you.

While setting up your profile picture you get a setting option for who can view your profile picture. I recommend you to select the option of “All Linkedin members” or “public” to allow search engines to find you more easily.

3. A proper and on-point headline

If you are to build a strong personal brand on LinkedIn to get opportunities from there, it’s necessary to be creative and descriptive with your headline. Your headline should be catchy and clearly define your expertise including relevant keywords.

Also don’t just stick with one headline all the time, keep switching between various interesting headlines to be creative and get the eyes of all the recruiters.

4. A precise About section

Your ‘about section’ is a small summary of you. This section gives you a limit of 2000 characters to tell your story to your audience. You have to hook your reader in the first 265-275 characters that show before the “see more” option.

This section must contain every necessary information about you in a very concise manner that tells who you are, what you do, what you care about, what you are looking for, and how you can help and whom.

5. Mention experiences

In the section, you should focus on adding your best achievements related to your career. This is a great way to show your expertise in your field or the other as you can add your previous job details, current jobs, and even the new goals or projects on which you are working. Make sure to update it consistently to maintain your profile.

6. Point out your skills

LinkedIn is a platform where people are there to hire people based on their skills. It is the only motive of LinkedIn to promote skills via employment.

It is much that you focus on mentioning your hard skills rather than soft skills. By hard skills, I mean those skills which you are an expert in and it’s like your unique selling proposition. You should add at least 5 skills to be on the list of an optimized LinkedIn profile.

7. Show your achievements

LinkedIn gives you a section called “featured” where you can pin your most overrated post that did extremely well or any achievements and success that you would like to show to your recruiters. This section appears just at the top of your profile and so ensures that no one can miss it while having a look at your profile.

8. Receive recommendations and endorsements

Recommendations and endorsements are a great way to build trust in the eyes of your audience. It’s human nature that we believe in what we see, so getting recommendations and endorsements from the top leaders or workers of your industry helps a lot in increasing your credibility.

LinkedIn provides a separate place for getting recommendations and giving recommendations to others as well. And you can get endorsed for your top skills by your connections and followers too.

9. Proper use of keywords to increase your search appearance

Keywords play a major role in the optimization of LinkedIn profiles. No matter how much you have worked on every section of your profile, it’s not going to work if you don’t put relevant keywords matching your interest and industry.

The LinkedIn algorithm searches for keywords and displays profiles on the search result according to it. If you put the exact keywords that you want to rank for it becomes quite easy for LinkedIn to find you and increase your search appearances.

Also Read: 12 Best Starter Jobs for Someone with Social Anxiety!

10. Be active and consistent

Being active on LinkedIn is one of the important steps to optimizing a LinkedIn profile for better lead generation. You need to be consistent and patient at the same time. Consistent in terms of creating content, engaging with other people, and interacting with people in your industry and the decision-makers.

11. Start networking

Networking with other people can help you in many ways and not in just getting jobs and opportunities. To turn your LinkedIn profile into a profitable lead generation machine all you need to do is focus on making genuine relations and not just increasing the number of connections in your profile list.

Don’t think twice before connecting with top leaders of your industry for recruiters and HRs you want to work with. It’s high time to realize that-

“Building a strong personal brand on LinkedIn is worth it! “

To leverage the power of LinkedIn to bring out opportunities from it, all you need to do is follow these above-mentioned steps to get maximum exposure to your LinkedIn profile.

Once you have done all these steps, your LinkedIn profile is optimized and ready to get you tons of opportunities. You can check my LinkedIn connection here (updated).

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