Rookie Mistakes You Make on Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn has been increasingly popular as the largest professional network where everyone can share their personal and company profile for both hiring talents and searching jobs. If you are college student looking for an internship, a fresh graduate seeking job opportunities, or a professional with some relevant experience looking for a stable career choice, it is required to make an attractive complete LinkedIn profile page to get noticed.

With more than 467 million registered users and 4 million company pages, LinkedIn offers the comfort for both talent and employers to find each other with ease. If you conduct search the right way, your LinkedIn page could prove to be one of the valuable tools for various business purposes.

However, many still do rookie mistakes that minimise their LinkedIn prominence. Here are some of the common mistakes you should avoid.

• Wrong or no profile photo

Profile picture is the first thing people consider before clicking on a page. No one will bother clicking on a page with grey silhouette image, as they think the profile could be partially real. Thus, adding a photo to your LinkedIn profile could be more appealing to the recruiter.

Make sure that you use individual professional photo, rather than displaying those in groups or a photograph with your significant other. If you want to show off your wedding photos, you can choose Facebook or Instagram instead.

• Grammatical errors or typos

If you think that one or two typos in your profile cannot dampen chances and is no big deal, then perhaps you are wrong. Even little unnoticed errors such as change in quotation marks, for example, a mark between 'Your dog' and 'You're dog' could change the meaning of the sentence. People do care about such errors more than you think. Before posting a resume, adding summary, or filling additional information, make sure that you have proofread the content thoroughly and double check to avoid looking over any mistakes.

• Negative statements

Even if you have been fired from a company, you should never talk negatively about it or post negative reviews on their page. Nobody wants to hire someone who publicly posts their failure and blames the company for the outcome.

• Wrong keywords

Employers and talent mostly use ‘search’ function to look for someone or a company profile page. To make the best of it, you need to use the right keywords in your profile and candidature, such that employers can find you easily. Use existing job listings, skills, expertise, or tags to make sure that you have been on the right track.

• Blank summary

LinkedIn provides up to 2,000 characters for summary space. Before reading the whole information on your page, people look at the summary first. Only they find the summary interesting, they will continue to check the whole profile. Considering the importance of summary on your LinkedIn profile, do not leave this space blank. Fill the space with relevant details about your skills, technical proficiencies and experience to draw recruiter's attention to your profile.

• Random personal posts

First thing, you should note before signing up for a LinkedIn account is that LinkedIn is much different from Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms. On Facebook, you can post anything about your personal life such as uploading your birthday surprise video or updates on what you will be having for dinner tonight. On LinkedIn, you should never do such a thing. Your LinkedIn profile should be filled with only professional-related matters.

• No activity or interactions

Radio silence is bad for your profile. At least once a week, update your professional activities or interact with people in your connection to show that you are actively engaged in the community. Whether sharing articles you have written or posting about recent achievements at work, put on something new to keep it fresh.

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