by Sally Cox 
There is an art to creating a strong LinkedIn profile. One of the most powerful assets in your LinkedIn profile is the Summary. Most people put minimal thought into it, but honestly, it's a golden opportunity to make yourself shine.
Tips to Creating a Stronger Profile
Be clear on your objective before you begin. What do you want recruiters and prospective employers to gain from reading your summary? How do you want them to feel?
Gather your content. Put everything in place so you can begin to write the summation. List your greatest accomplishments, and a sentence about each one. Try to capture not only what YOU got out of the experience but more importantly, how the company benefited. If the team cut costs by 70% under your management, that needs to be part of the sentence.
List your values and passions. If saving African wildlife is high on your priority list, make sure you notate that in some way. Aside from your professional accomplishments, people like to see snippets of the real you.
List things you can do better than anyone, things that make you stand out. If Project Management is a strength of yours, or you're a competitive swimmer, these traits can both accurately portray your dedication and look good on a profile.
Awards, accolades, achievements--gather them and include both personal and business accomplishments.
List things that make you unique. Find out what they are and include the strongest ones. For example, I worked for "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" in the 1980s, as designer. It was long ago, but that one event on my resume or LinkedIn profile is a conversation starter, more than any other. It may not even pertain to my current work, but it's a great way to start a conversation that gets me noticed--and remembered.
Writing Your Summary
Begin with a strong statement, a "bang," if you will. You could ask a question, make a statement, or just list a few of your skills for a dramatic opener. Make it memorable.
Weave your story, including snippets from the information you gathered in earlier steps. Mix up your content to make it more interesting, so it doesn't read like a list, and use correct grammar and punctuation.
End with a call-to-action, remembering your summary needs to be 2,000 characters or less. Tell your readers where they go to learn more about you, or how they can contact you. (This may not be necessary if you've listed it elsewhere on your profile, but make sure they know how to find you.)
To play devil's advocate (as everyone says right before they launch into being a bit of a jerk...) does anyone ever get any real job leads out of LinkedIn? I use it to communicate with people I already know and to keep my virtual resume (mostly for easy reference when filling out job apps), but I have never been recruited from it, nor have I known a hiring manager to consult it.
Posted by: Kaylin | March 11, 2015 at 03:34 PM