Click Edit Profile and inspect the large white box that begins with your Current job positions. If you completed the previous information described in my blogs, Past jobs, Education, and Websites should be listed. If you have a Twitter account, you can add that next.
Public Profile. At the bottom of the box, Public Profile permits you to set up your own personal LinkedIn URL link. Why? you ask. Colleagues can click directly to your profile. Just add it to your signature line. After your title, institution, e-mail, phone, and URLs for your Websites and blog, tack on the LinkedIn URL. You want to make it easy for colleagues and clients to see your credentials and contact you. If they can’t find you, they’ll pick someone else.
Update box. While you’re at the top of your profile, you will notice a white box under your name and location box. In the bottom right, it says Post an Update. When you click that Post, you can announce your professional activities to your network. For example, you can post blog titles (as I do regularly), research activities, attendance at a conference, a new article or book, recent surgeries, dental appointments, and any other info you want your connections to know. When you post your “tweet-size” message, it will be sent automatically to your connections, if you pick that option. In fact, you can have your actual (Twitter) tweets appear regularly in this update. It is recommended that you post updates a few times a week to raise your LinkedIn rank in Google, which is most everyone’s goal in life.
What’s Next? What’s missing in your profile? A PhD from Harvard? A thousand connections? You’re getting close. It’s Recommendations by employers and colleagues who praise your performance and production. You need 3 to complete your profile. How do you get these recommendations? That’s next.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
So far, you should have completed Snapshot and Photo. Under Profile, click you know what: Edit Profile mode.
Brief Profile: The next white box is a brief profile of your current and past job titles, education, recommendations and connections when you start accumulating them, your business, blog, and other Website links, Twitter link, and personal LinkedIn URL.
Current. For now, just click Edit to the right of Current and plug in your Company Name (Institution), Website, Industry from dropdown, current job Title, Time Period, and a Description of your job responsibilities. Spend time drafting a clear and succinct portrait of your job tasks and accomplishments in the description box. When you’re done, click Save Settings.
If you have a 2nd job, for example, you’re a professor Mon.–Fri. and an NFL quarterback on Sun., repeat the entry for that position so both will be listed.
All of this information will appear below under Experience, but your Title(s) will appear in this profile box. Ignore everything else in the box for the time being.
What’s Next? Let’s move on to one of the most critical parts of your profile: Summary box. If you want to start drafting that material, do it. I’ll give you some pointers in my next blog.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
PROFILE MOTTO
It’s profile time in the big city! My MOTTO for this profile: “Do it right or don’t do it at all.” If you do not complete your profile, it’s like sending a colleague or employer half of your CV. It says, “I don’t care.” You want your BEST possible image to be presented to the people who may matter most in your profession and to those who you haven’t even met yet. Your professional reputation is on the line. What you display can be a career maker or breaker. You decide.
Make sure every entry is accurate and spelling, mechanics, grammar, and word choice are impeccable. If possible, type everything in Word first because LinkedIn doesn’t have spelchek. Dig out your CV. You’re going to be copying and pasting a lot.
Snapshot & Photo
Are you ready? Let the games begin. At the top of the LinkedIn page, under Profile, click Edit Profile. You will always start in “Edit Profile” mode to enter new information or change your profile. “View Profile” is what people will see.
Directly below is a blue box. Click Edit.
Snapshot (light blue box): This is your electronic business card. Provide basic information, including Name, Professional Headline (current job title or tagline), Country from dropdown list, Zip Code, and Industry from dropdown list. When you type your zip, LinkedIn translates that into a geographic area under your name. If you don’t enter the zip, the area will just say United States or your country name, which, to other LinkedInners, may convey, “I can’t be bothered to complete this or I don’t care.” When you’re done, click Save Changes.
Photo: On the right side of the box, click Edit. Upload a professional, flattering picture (headshot) so people can easily remember you. [NOTE: Photo must be no larger than 80 X 80 pixels.] When you receive business cards from new colleagues at a conference and invite them to connect, it will be easier for them to match your name to a picture than nothing. Please DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT post a frog, ugly baby, barnyard animal, stuffed toy, or your book cover that you might find on Facebook. This is a professional network. What image do you want to convey to professionals who may not know you or a prospective employer? They want to know you’re for real. Click Upload Photo.
Click your choice for who you want to see your photo. I chose “Everyone.” Then click Save Settings.
Status Update: Ignore the white box below your snapshot and photo. I’ll come back to that later.
My next blog will cover the next white box below to begin your brief profile. I will focus only on your Current job title and description. You can start working on that if you like.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
WHY AM I WRITING THIS BLOG SERIES?
Available Resources. Great question! If you Google LinkedIn, you will find barrels of resources that provide tips and tricks for preparing your “profile” and how to do a job search. You can even go to LinkedIn and use their resources to learn how to do everything on the site, as you may already have tried. Having read most of this material to prepare myself for this blog series, I will tell you that those materials are excellent, especially the LinkedIn User Guides.
Why Moi? I have nothing vested in LinkedIn. They don’t know me. All of the Google sources are written by and for the business community, not professors. LinkedIn’s guide is probably prepared by an IT specialist.
Academic Spin. My purpose is not to replicate the available resources, because I couldn’t begin to do that, nor is there any need to reinvent the LinkedIn wheel. My intention is to address the needs of academicians and put an academic spin on certain critical aspects of the site. The profile headings have always been slanted toward business and industry. For example, one of my complaints has been “no place to list my publications” that are central to my credibility.
Guess what, academicians? Faculty crying and yelping paid off. LinkedIn just added sections on Publications, Patents, Certifications, Skills, Languages, and other areas you present in your CV. Do those headings address an academic gap in LinkedIn? You bet. How many of you knew that? Oh, you did. Sorry. I haven’t seen a pub listing by anyone in my network yet. I will be covering those sections in an upcoming blog.
Business Spin for Academicians. Further, I have dealt with the pain of starting a formal speaking business. Some of the wounds related to writing copy for business brochures and to developing and executing marketing strategies are healing, but they may be of value to you before they become infected.
We’re All Consultants. Since my first year at Johns Hopkins, I was told that one of the criteria to determine my value and worth as a professor is the number of requests I receive outside my institution to consult and speak. I was in business and didn’t even know it. Outsiders affirm your expertise; they build your credibility. The number and type of invitations to the White House and Capitol Hill to advise the President and testify before Congress really count when you come up for promotion.
Had I known then what I know now about running a business, my consulting life might have been more productive. If you’re a newbie, some of my tips may be helpful.
My next blog will begin with the Public Profile you display. How different is it from your CV and what you present on your institution’s Website? What professional information is critical for your colleagues, clients, and students to know about you? You have total control over what is presented and who sees it. We will work through the profile step-by-step with an occasional hop or 2.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
