5 Ways to Be Found with your LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn Profile is your presence on LinkedIn. You can't do anything in LinkedIn until your Profile is up. It's like your resume and your own personal Web page in addition to the Web sites you may have.

People do searches in LinkedIn when they're looking for products and services, for top talent to fill positions, for jobs, and for answers to questions they have. You'll look for these same things when you search LinkedIn. And search engines search your Profile when it's completed.

When someone looks at your Profile, they'll decide whether to connect with you, hire you as an employee or for your services based on what they see there. Make it a good first impression, and make it compelling so that they contact you.

Here are some tips for creating your Profile so that you're found on LinkedIn, and your Profile shows them that you're the best person to connect with.

1. Before you go to LinkedIn to create your Profile, think about your Big Picture Vision of your career and life. Write down the answers to these key questions: 1) What is your expertise and what are you known for? 2) What do you want people to ask you for now? What do you want to be known as the Expert in? 3) When people think of Tiger Woods, they immediately think of "golf". What do you want them to think of when they think of you?

2. Have your resume handy as you write your LinkedIn Profile. You want to be complete, especially about your responsibilities and results you've achieved. Be sure your resume is results-oriented, and update it to include your current position and work.

A big mistake people make with their LinkedIn Profile is making it exactly like their resume - backwards-oriented. That is, only showing what you've done in the past. With your LinkedIn Profile, be sure it also reflects what you're doing now and what you want to do. For example, if you're a start-up business looking for funding or investors, be sure everything that a potential investor looks for in a company is in your Profile. It's the same if you're looking for a new position. There are people in LinkedIn who can help you with anything you want to do.

3. Think of keywords that people might search on to find you. For example, if you're looking for a job, some relevant key words might be: 1) Your current job title and the title of the position you're looking for. For example, if you're now a Director and you're looking for a Vice President position. 2) Your functional responsibilities. This describes what you do and is more descriptive than your job title. When I sold an accurate database of executives that companies used for their marketing, the database could be searched by "Job Function" as well as title. For example, the job title was Vice President, and Job Functions were Financial, Sales, Marketing and Human Resources. 3) Or if you want to find more clients, some keywords you'd use to find the person you're looking for would be their current job title or industry, or the services they'd be searching for such as "sales training".

4. Be sure the photo you put up on LinkedIn is a good one, and shows you as the executive and professional that you are. If you don't have a photo that's a good representation of you as you are now, it's worth to get a new one. Remember, your Profile is the first impression people will get of who you are. When you're networking online, the face-to-face visual clues are not there, so your photo is even more important.

5. Add your personality to your LinkedIn Profile. When someone sees your LinkedIn Profile, make it stand out so you stand out from the crowd. Make your Profile a representation of you - not simply an electronic resume. Rather than simply listing your job responsibilities and short descriptions, describe in story form how you solved challenges and approached the corporate or client situation. Create a picture in the reader's mind that shows who you are, how you approach situations, how you stand out from others who do similar things, and that you're accessible and personable.

© 2008-2009 Jan B. Wallen. All rights reserved.