Exactly What To Put In Your LinkedIn Profile To Get A Promotion
Looking to move up to a management role? Here’s how to showcase your
potential in your LinkedIn profile and catch the eye of your boss or a
recruiter.
You’re smart, talented, and a hard worker, so you’ve been rewarded
with stretch assignments that helped you build new management-level skills. But
despite that growth, no one has yet tapped you for that first management role.
Now you’ve got a conundrum–you want to update your LinkedIn profile to show
your management ability, but you don’t have the title to go with it.
That’s okay, says LinkedIn expert Viveka von Rosen,
author of LinkedIn Marketing in an Hour a
Day. The social media platform still offers a
number of ways for you to point out why you’re management material and catch
the eye of your supervisor, prospective new boss, or recruiter.
“Don’t worry right now about what your past job description said.
Get in the mind-set of, ‘How did I get to where I am now?’ Never lie, but you
can rewrite those sections of your profile to reflect the strengths that brought
you to where you are right now,” she says.
So pull up your profile and make these tweaks and additions to
help you get to the next level in your career.
WHAT TO SAY IN YOUR SUMMARY
The summary section gives you 2,000 characters of prime LinkedIn
real estate to tell people about yourself and what you
can do, says LinkedIn consultant Dan Sherman, author
of Maximum Success with LinkedIn. Within that space, create a heading that highlights your
accomplishments and create a list of bullet points that summarize key skills
and successes.
“People hate to read blocks of text. Under ‘accomplishments,’ you
might put something like, ‘Led a cross-functional team that increased
productivity in our company’,” he says. If you managed a vendor or an intern,
be sure to include that as well.
Hiring managers are looking for people who are effective in what
they do, so the more you can quantify your impact with numbers, the better.
It’s okay to blend accomplishments from different employers in this section.
List your top successes across your career so far.
ADD SOME MEDIA
Here is where you can show off your industry knowledge,
creativity, writing ability, and thought leadership, von Rosen says. Create
content that shows prospective hiring managers or your own boss that you
understand your industry and are thinking about its future. Perhaps you did a
successful presentation that you can share publicly. Upload it here. Wrote an
article? Post it. Spoke at an event? Share the video.
“Any kind of media is proof of your management and leadership
skills and proof of your knowledge,” she says.
If you don’t have much media yet, curate what’s out there. Look
for thoughtful pieces by other professionals and post them with your thoughts
on the piece. Make your profile a small information hub while you begin to
develop your own media to share, von Rosen says.
HIGHLIGHT YOUR EXPERIENCE
Under each job you have listed, you can post a brief description
of your duties and accomplishments. Again, use this space carefully to showcase
your wins in brief, bulleted points, von Rosen says. If you’ve worked closely
with a manager on a high-impact or high-profile project, that may be worth
calling out, too.
ADD IN NONTRADITIONAL EDUCATION
While most people include their college and graduate school work
in the education section, this can also be a great way to showcase additional
seminars or workshops you’ve taken to improve your skills, Sherman says. Don’t
list every half-day workshop you’ve attended, but if you have completed a
certificate or well-known training in leadership, or which was related to your
industry, list it to show you’re motivated to keep learning.
ASK FOR SOME RECOMMENDATIONS THAT HIGHLIGHT THE RIGHT
THINGS
The people who appreciate your work are also in a position to help
you showcase your leadership skills, von Rosen says. When asking for an
endorsement or recommendation, she usually gives her colleague some tips on
which skills she would like them to highlight.
“Give them bullet points, and speak to things that as a manager
are important. ‘Could you speak to my team-building skills? Could you speak to
my timeliness and ability to keep things on track? Can you speak to how my team
helped you generate this much revenue? Can you speak to my success when I came
in and worked with your company in a leadership position?’ You ask for those
specifics,” she says.
EDIT YOUR INTERESTS
Look over the interests section of your profile and make sure it
looks professional, von Rosen suggests. If there are leadership-focused
industry groups or particularly active groups in your industry, be sure to join
them and read what people are sharing. This can also help you make connections
and gain greater exposure in your field.
Of course, read over your profile carefully and ensure that it’s
clean and free of typos and grammatical errors. And set it to “public” so
prospective hiring managers can see your content when they click on it, von
Rosen says
BY GWEN MORAN
https://www.fastcompany.com/40419873/exactly-what-to-put-in-your-linkedin-profile-to-get-a-promotion?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fcdaily-bottom&position=8&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=05162017
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