LinkedIn can seem confusing and scary, even more so when we decide to optimize it to find a better job as a programmer. Here you will find a practical and quick guide with the key aspects you should adjust to have the best professional LinkedIn profile and attract employers. Simple tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile as a programmer
Write a tagline as attractive as a newspaper headline.
The headline on LinkedIn has the newspaper headline effect. The more engaging it sounds, the more we want to read the news. And the news, in this case, is the rest of the content of your profile. It is important to take the time to elaborate it since it will be the first paragraph that the recruiter will read in your profile. It has to be specific, complete and memorable. You can create an effective formula for writing a headline that will encourage the recruiter to continue getting to know you by applying these
small tips: Include emotional attributes to your headline: Doing so is also a powerful hack. It’s an emotion that you feel attached to your job: passionate, motivated, obsessed, etc. It helps you connect on a deeper level with the recruiter, as well as stand out from the rest.
Keyword presence: LinkedIn is a search engine, so it also works with keywords to filter results. In order to find you, the recruiter will make searches related to the professional profile he/she wants to recruit. Therefore, your tagline must contain keywords related to your profession: “Android Developer” “Machine Learning Engineer”, etc.
Include the languages in which you are an expert: With 120 characters of space for your headline, leaving it only with your job title would be a lost opportunity. There is still room in the room for you to include additional details to stand out and appear in more LinkedIn search results. Example: Web Developer | Full Stack Engineer | Front End Specialist | HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, JQuery, PHP
Think of your cover page as a billboard
Header check: If we visit your professional Linkedin profile, what cover page would we find?
A natural landscape that you thought was inspirational, stock image of some computers with code inside them Kittens?
Along with your headline and profile picture, the cover page occupies a large percentage of attention. The ideal is to take advantage of the space LinkedIn gives us to show exactly what we do for a living. Change and design a header that graphically shows what you do. Use this visual area to show your experience and specialization at a glance. You can include logos and certifications of the languages you master and write a link to your website or portfolio.
If you do not know how to design well, don’t panic, there are many apps and platforms that will allow you to design easily in a matter of seconds with default templates such as Canva. Working on your banner will help you enhance your personal brand as a tech professional and make the recruiter take you seriously.
Summarize your experience in the Summary section.
Explaining in a few lines what you do and what motivates you, besides saving the recruiter time, demonstrates strong communication skills, something highly valued for technology companies that must constantly communicate among diverse teams and demanding clients. Ideally, keep your summary section short and no longer than two lines. We know you have a lot to say, but the recruiter must analyze the profile of many other applicants. So it’s best to save them the trouble of reading and let them take away the most important things from us. Treat your summary section like your elevator pitch: short, concise and brief.
Turn the Summary section into your own story.
Okay, this may sound contradictory.
We mentioned that it is advisable to keep this section to 2 lines.
But what we mean is that your first few paragraphs of this section summarize what you do so that the recruiter absorbs the most relevant information quickly. And then want to read more. Once you get their attention with your brief description, you will be able to take the recruiter by the hand into your unique professional history and get to know your experience from a more personal approach and connect better.
Some tips to achieve the best LinkedIn professional profile by adjusting your summary section:
Speak in first person: Make it sound natural! Write your story with your usual language, always sounding like yourself. This section helps to start dialogues with the recruiter and bring him/her closer to you.
Show off your accomplishments: Providing the recruiter with your most notable achievements will incredibly strengthen your summary section. It sounds more convincing to be told about your achievements rather than listing skills, as it helps to check if everything listed there is true. Proudly boast about your accomplishments in your previous positions and give them credibility by adding tangible data, percentages, or a compliment from your boss or client.
Show concrete examples of what motivates you: What made you become a programmer? Tell a quick anecdote about your beginnings and what you did once you discovered that passion. Example: After discovering my passion for web development, I needed to fulfil it. So I made websites for friends, family and local businesses. I also became a freelancer. I want to take my passion to a full-time position.
Reveal your personality: Select stories that show who you are as a person, not just as a programmer. Good summaries carry traits like gratitude, humour and humility. Be authentic and honest with yourself. The recruiter will notice it right away. Write down the trait that most characterizes you and make it part of your summary.
No cliché words: Eliminate those words used ad nauseam in your summary! That means you should look for synonyms or new ways of saying what everyone else is saying. Avoid including worn-out words like motivated, creative or strategic. Also, instead of saying it, you can show that you really have those characteristics with a concrete example and specific accomplishments.
Do not coldly list your skills or job titles: Many people see the summary section as a serious space to list skills or job titles without adding context to bring the list to life. If you want to highlight what you are good at, generate a story around that competency or past work experience.
Create white space: Recruiters will scan your summary, so help them break up the text and digest the content better by leaving spaces between each paragraph. This will make the reading more fluid and without visual weight. It also counts to use bullet points and numbered lists, if you use them, make sure there is a connecting thread between them.
Humor is allowed: Put a smile on employers’ faces by writing content that is hilarious but professional at the same time. If your personality is naturally funny, add that dose of humor throughout your summary. Adopt a cheeky and fun tone, but keep it professional. It will make you look approachable, as well as a memorable read.We’ve long been taught that to land a job, we must communicate in a cool, serious, robotic way. But the era of sounding too formal to get a job is long gone, especially in an environment as innovative and fresh as the tech industry.
Be specific in your work experience
Mentioning your role and the time you served at your former company is not enough. Take advantage of the work experience zone to give the recruiter a rich and specific view of your responsibilities. Describe what your tasks and objectives were in detail and the technologies used in each position. An innovative strategy to enchant with your work experience content is to tell what you did and what you accomplished. Don’t be afraid to include percentages, data or results of your work. Prioritize the most relevant skills for the given job position.
Another way to have the best professional profile on LinkedIn is to prioritize your skills according to the position you aspire to.
This platform only gives visibility to 3 skills in its skills section. The remaining ones are hidden by the “see more” button. Therefore, you have to modify the order of your skills according to what the position you are applying for requires.
For example, if you are applying for a position that requires team leadership skills, and luckily for you, you took a course on effective teamwork, you should place that skill in the first three places, and so on with the rest of the competencies requested.
Edit your LinkedIn profile link
Something as simple as shortening and customizing your LinkedIn page link goes a long way in improving your online image. Try to keep it readable, clean and short. A good option is to simply put your name. This way it will be more pleasing to the eye and easy to share in your networks or include it in your CV.
Create your profile in another language and enter global markets.
If you would like to be visible in international technology markets, it will be helpful to include a version of your profile in different languages such as English. Just go to the Add profile section and create it in another language. If you are a Latin programmer and you are looking for recruiters from the USA to read your profile, offer them a translated version of your page so that when they search for English terms related to your profession, your profile will appear without any problems.
Actively network
Connect with your colleagues! A tip to rank and have a better LinkedIn professional profile is to expand your networking. So take some time to send out invitations to inspiring professionals to learn from them, as well as search your colleagues’ or former coworkers’ profiles.
Is your LinkedIn not attracting the programmer job proposals you deserve?
To hack something, you must first understand how it works. For example, if you want your LinkedIn to be memorable and attractive to get hired in the tech industry, you need to know the selection processes in tech positions.