filter when someone views your profile; your Summary is the basis upon which people will form opinions about you and your brand. The content you include here will be intrinsically tied to what you want to accomplish with LinkedIn and your LinkedIn Brand.
Notice that there is also a “Specialties” section that appears at the bottom of the Summary. My advice here is to fill this space with keywords you want associated with your profile. I have personally broken up these keywords into industry-specific and skill-specific paragraphs.
Remember the rule of thumb for data entry here: if there is a keyword that you want to be associated with when it is searched upon, make sure you have included it in your Summary, as this is the most suitable place for it.
Applications
If you have any Applications running, they will appear here below your “Summary” section and above your “Experience” section. Chapter 8 is devoted entirely to all of the Applications that exist on LinkedIn, so if you have not installed any Applications yet, please wait until after we cover these later in this book. So as not to overload you with too much at this point, I’m going to skip over Applications now. Applications are icing on the cake and are not mandatory to brand yourself on LinkedIn, but, depending on your objective, they could be very valuable tools.
Experience
All of the positions you entered under work experience will appear here in descending time order, with your most recent or “current” job listed first. At the bottom of each section, your Recommendations, if you have any, will appear.
Education
Just as all of the work experience details will be listed in the “Experience” section, all of the schools that you attended, together with their details, will be listed here in the “Education” section.
Recommendations
Chapter 5 of this book is solely devoted to Recommendations. If you have received any and decide to display them, they will be shown in full detail, including the name and title of those who recommended you. They will be displayed in the same order that your Experience is shown.
“Additional Information”
There is a host of other information that is displayed at the bottom of your profile. While this section may look dismissible, every inch of space you have in your profile should be utilized to mention anything the standard template does not allow you to communicate. All of these areas are searchable. Once you get more familiar with LinkedIn you will find a lot of people put a lot of different things in these sections. There is no golden rule except that you want to make sure that 1) you are found when searched upon and 2) your profile showcases your brand!
Websites
The same three websites that appear in your “Profile Synopsis” will be displayed here as well. Not clear as to what LinkedIn’s intent is in having the same information display twice, but this gives your URLs double the marketing power!
Interests
Objectively speaking, you could put your actual interests in this section. If letting everyone know that you enjoy rock climbing will help you achieve your objective, then go for it. Just be careful not to dilute your LinkedIn Brand. But if you are using LinkedIn for a professional objective, why not put interests here that are related to your job? Maybe you can go into some detail as to why you are interested in some aspects of your career. I cannot tell you to put anything under “Interests” that is not objectively related to your interests, but the choice is yours. You will see many profiles where people are putting completely unrelated things here to better advertise themselves and to make sure that search engines pick them up. In my own experience, I have not heard of anyone being notified by LinkedIn that they need to change their wording here to be more aligned with actual interests. What you enter here is at your own risk, but be forewarned that if you go off the topic of actual Interests you may be at risk of violating the LinkedIn User’s Agreement. Make sure you check it (the link is on the bottom navigation bar) before doing something that may not be viewed by LinkedIn in a positive light.
Groups and Associations
This section is slightly different than the “Interests” section in that any LinkedIn Group you join will be listed here if you choose to display their logos. When viewing your own profile, all of your Groups will appear on the right-hand side as LinkedIn will understand that those are shared Groups. We will discuss LinkedIn Groups in Chapter 6, but if there is a professional association that you are a member of that does not have a corresponding LinkedIn Group, you absolutely should make sure to include it here.
Honors and Awards
Same as “Interests.” I have seen people brag about career achievements and awards here, but I personally think this is the type of material that should really be in the relevant section as part of your “Experience.” Include any information that you want at your own risk.
Personal Information
This is a relatively new feature that allows you to input your phone number, address, IM username, birthday, and marital status to your profile. I personally have a problem with this and find it interesting that where LinkedIn is concerned about your privacy, they are asking for some very private information from a professional demographic. I really don’t see any advantage to filling out this area at all, unless LinkedIn rolls out some unique feature (other than targeted advertising, which I presume this information is used for) that uses it to your advantage.
Contact Settings
There are two sections here, with the top section being text that you can directly enter, and the bottom section showing what you are “Interested In.” This information is culled from what you entered when asked how you would like to use your network. This information can be edited in the “Using Your Network” section in “Account & Settings,” located at the top right-hand side of the screen. It is important to check all of the boxes next to the options so you are seen as open to anyone who may want to contact you.
I believe that the “Contact Settings,” as opposed to the “Additional Information” section, is the area where you can and should share your LinkedIn Objective and guidelines for being contacted. If you are currently employed but looking for work, you don’t want to mention that here. But if you are open to being contacted by certain types of people, or you actively want to create certain types of relationships, why not say so here? If you want to keep your network closed and don’t want to receive invitations from virtual networkers, this is the place to say so.
If you believe in Windmill Networking, this is where you should tell the world you are a Windmill Networker and are looking to connect with similar-minded people.
One note is that you will often see email addresses and phone numbers included here as well as in other sections on LinkedIn. It is LinkedIn’s policy that these should not be included in your profile; doing so may be violating the LinkedIn User’s Agreement. I was afraid of what type of spam might come my way should I enter my own email address. But, since I was in transition, I thought if a recruiter wanted to contact me and another candidate, and the other candidate was easily accessible (had his or her email and or phone details in their profile), the recruiter would probably contact the candidate who supplied his or her contact information. So I listed my email address in potential violation of the User Agreement. They have yet to strictly enforce this, but if they do contact me, I will gladly remove it from my profile.
I was even more hesitant to include my phone number but I have since changed my mind. One day, after I joined a certain LinkedIn Group, I received a call on my cell phone the very next day from someone trying to sell me a service related to that Group. I was shocked that someone who didn’t know me had found out my cell number, and when I asked, he simply replied that he had called the company listed as my current employer and asked for me ;-) The point is this: Anyone who wants to contact me will find a way to do so, so why not list my phone number on my profile so people