Social Business Success

Have you ever received congratulations from your LinkedIn network on your new job even though you never changed jobs?  I’ll read on my LinkedIn updates that an individual in my network landed a new position.  I’ll send my congratulations and then that person will contact me saying I don’t have a new job.  I was just updating my profile.

It seems that there are a good percentage of people who update the experience section their profile and wind up having their headline change.  When updating the employment section of the profile, you will add the name of the employer, your title, location and dates “From” and “To”.  If you choose the check box “I currently work here”, another check box appears that says “Update my headline to”.  This is referring to the new position that you just entered.

Take a look at the screen shot below.  Don’t just add the information and click OK.  If you don’t look for that check box, LinkedIn will write over your headline with its default.  The default headline is your job title at the company in which you work.

When was the last time you updated your experience headline?  Did you just fill out the information and click ok and wonder why your headline changed?  The two most important parts of the LinkedIn are your photograph and your headline.

Speaking about the LinkedIn headline, what does your does your headline say about you?  Your LinkedIn headline needs to include keywords.  Keywords are words that describe your profession and what you do as a professional.  This gives people an idea of who you are and what you do.

Do you have trouble coming up with your keywords?  Here are a couple of exercises to help.  Add some new skills to the skill section.  For example if you add the skill “accounting”, look what other skills LinkedIn adds underneath the word accounting.  A second idea is to use Wordle.net.  Wordle.net is what’s called a “word cloud”.  This is how wordle.net works.  Find job posting you like and copy and paste into wordle.net.  Words that wordle.net show as the largest and /or boldest are the words that wordle.net says have the greatest importance.

If you’re a person that makes new years resolutions, here is one you should put on your list.  When updating the experience section of your LinkedIn profile, carefully review what you wrote.  I’m hoping that by reviewing what you wrote and looking for the check box that says “Update my headline to” that your headline will read the way you want it read.