LinkedIn is a worldwide home for employees, employers and career-minded individuals. The platform houses over 700 million members in over 200 countries. LinkedIn profiles affords people the ability to connect, recruit, and share ideas and leadership tips in a particular industry or area of expertise.
Your LinkedIn profile can serve as the first and possibly last impression that a potential client, investor, employer, mentor or friend could have of your work experience and achievements. This is why you have to optimize your LinkedIn profile in a way that will leave a lasting impression on your recruiter and will open you to more opportunities, especially as a software developer.
Your profile represents your work image and everything a recruiter needs to know about your professional experience. So, one of the questions you need to ask yourself while creating or updating your LinkedIn profile is; Will my LinkedIn profile be just another profile or will it be a gateway for more opportunities? With just one link, you can be putting your image at risk if you are not optimizing all of the features the platform provides and updating your content to make your professional experience stand out.
Here are five ways to optimize your LinkedIn as a software developer.
1. Update your Profile
This is the first and most crucial step in optimizing your LinkedIn as a software developer. Your profile is the first point of contact for your recruiter on LinkedIn. It is where they get to meet you and make a decision to either dive further by checking your resume or not. This is why your profile has to be impeccable. And to do this, you have to update the existing content on your page as it should be an accurate representation of your professional experience today, and not three years ago. Here are a few ways to update your profile;
- Your profile picture should look like the person you are today. This means that if you have your old picture up, you should take it down and replace it with a more recent picture. You can opt for a professional headshot with a clean background.
- Another fun way to spice up your profile is to have a background picture made of all the stacks you’re proficient in.
- Update your headline statement. Do not just include your job title, tell people what you do, how do you do it and for whom.
2. Create a captivating headline
Your LinkedIn headline is the short statement that appears below your name. The headline needs to say what you do or what you want to do. A keyword should also stand out in your headline. This is because it helps a person or recruiter to get a feel about your personality and learn about what to expect on your page.
The headline is the section where your recruiter would want to know what kind of an engineer you are. So, are you a full stack engineer or a Dev0ps engineer? Your headline has to reflect which of these categories you fall into.
3. More Keywords
Keywords appear in a few places on your LinkedIn profile. The most important place they appear is in your headline. The second most important place is in Skills & Endorsements.
The Skills & Endorsements area is nothing more than a list of keywords. When recruiters are hunting for candidates on LinkedIn, they enter these requirements to fish out the most suitable candidate, and these lists of profiles that are presented by LinkedIn to them are those who have this listed skill on their profiles. The requirements are usually a list of skills. So, as a software developer or engineer, you have to list out all your proficient skills and stacks. You never know which one of these stacks is going to single you out for an opportunity. Also, be sure to list even the most obvious ones. Machines are reading them more than humans.
4. Maximize your experience
Another important feature you should have on your LinkedIn as a software engineer or developer is a link to your website or GitHub. This is like giving a recruiter a license to check out your work or achievements which can increase your chances of getting hired. LinkedIn allows you to add supporting files to your experience, so you can showcase your projects that are relevant to your job title, or just add anything that can provide social proof of the work that you have done during your experience. This helps to showcase how you add value and how you help your ideal audience.
5. Open up your Location
On LinkedIn, you have to name your location, so, at a minimum, you have to name a country. Asides from this, how much information you enter about your location is entirely up to you.
As a software developer, your location really matters, because it helps your recruiter match you with jobs close to you or a time zone that matches yours. You should also indicate if you are open to relocation as it would help to open you to more opportunities outside your location. So, putting in a specific or detailed location is another means of optimizing your LinkedIn as a software developer.
With these five steps, you can start to feel more confident about your online presence on LinkedIn. But more importantly, you will know that an online search will now produce updated and accurate information about you and start attracting the right individuals, recruiters and companies to your profile.
