It’s important to have a professional profile that allows you to network among others in your field, as well as provide employers with a good reflection of yourself alongside your resume. LinkedIn is a great site that you can use to create and manage this professional profile and it has slowly become a crucial part of the networking world. However, it can be tricky knowing the ins and outs of this site, and how to make your profile stand out among the many others already using it. Fortunately, at the October 16th PRSSA meeting, PRSSA President Brittany Leuth, conducted a presentation which discussed some helpful ways to build your profile and tips to keep in mind when using it. There are four main categories to include when building your profile. These include, your photo, headline, summary, and experience. Your photo should be clean, clear, and professional. A proper headshot is preferred and you should steer clear of selfies or casual photos of you with friends, as it’s hard for employers to assume which one is you. Next, your headline should include important introductory information about yourself such as, your major, where you are from, and what you are studying. For your summary, you should essentially include your elevator pitch. This would be what you feel that employers should know about you, such as what motivates you and what exactly you are looking for. In your summary section, you want to be clear, detailed, and specific. It’s also important to keep in mind that keywords matter. Lastly, as far as experience goes, you want to make sure you highlight what you have accomplished. This is a good place to include the organizations you are a part of, your education level (GPA is voluntary-but if it’s good it can help to include that), volunteer experiences, honors and awards you have received, skills and expertise, and coursework (if you haven’t had a lot of internships, coursework can show you still have relevant experience). It’s also a good idea to include recommendations on your profile so you should consider asking former bosses or managers to write you a recommendation for your LinkedIn profile to make it stronger. When it comes to connecting with others and growing your network, make sure to make meaningful connections. You may want to start with current contacts as your foundational network and then you can write personalized connection requests when connecting with someone you don’t really know, such as an HR person for a company you are looking to work at. Some final tips that Brittany’s presentation was able to provide include, making sure you completely fill out your profile, update it regularly, diversify your contacts, and always proofread. This presentation really provided me with some helpful tips for building a stronger profile, so hopefully this can help you and other members as well! - Noelle Rutolo, PRSSA member
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