LinkedIn Profile Tips

Written by David Milkes

I recently came across a prolific career influencer on YouTube named Jeff Su. I’ve applied some of his LinkedIn tips in the last month. I can’t attest solidly that this action or that action has given me more leads, but following any of his information does tell the world more about what you can offer or let you engage more with your fellow LinkedIn members.

In this video, Jeff lists nine checkpoints to become a LinkedIn All-Star, but the video was posted in 2022 so I’m not sure it’s up-to-date. (My profile is currently in Intermediate status, and it claims I only need to fill out one more section (the last of 7) to be an All-Star.) However, Jeff only covers five of the checkpoints in detail.

High Quality LinkedIn Profile and “Cover” Photos
At the 1:06 timestamp of the video, Jeff describes and demonstrates how to take and edit a high-quality photo for your profile. You may have to play it at a slower speed because he sometimes moves his mouse quickly. He mentions both the small photo that appears in the upper left of your profile page and all your contributions throughout the site, and your profile banner or “cover” photo.

Jeff provides the option for a solid or graded color background and the option to blur the original background of your photo.

I skipped the Canva part of this procedure personally, because I found a suitable background on RemoveBG:

Headline = Your Title + Value
At 4:03, Jeff explains how to distinguish yourself in searches by adding a short phrase to your headline that describes what you offer. You may already have one or more job titles in your headline separated by a character such as | or /. The only addition is another separator character followed by a snappy “value” phrase. Mine is “I turn technical information into action.”

At 5:13, Jeff tells you how adding keywords in your About section also puts you in more recruiter search results. He recommends running about 10 job descriptions through a word cloud generator to find the most frequent words. He provides a template for the About section from career coach Austin Belcak.

On the downside, Jeff claims to provide proof that this works with a mock-up example of an entry-level job seeker. All he does is show the About example.

Add 5 Skills “Correctly”

At 6:42, he mentions the proper way to add skills that increases your visibility and chances to become an All-Star. Skills must have endorsements from other LinkedIn users, preferably those that also have those skills.

Custom LinkedIn URL

Finally, at timestamp 7:20, Jeff explains the usefulness of customizing your LinkedIn URL:
● If you include the URL in your resume, you have a 71% better chance of hearing back from
employers. A human-readable URL will encourage those employers even more.
● Web pages are indexed by search engines by factors including the URL, so if your name is in the URL, your profile can be more easily found in a non-LinkedIn search.

Other 4 Tips in Jeff Su Video
The other 4 things to do with your LinkedIn profile that will make you an All-Star are self-explanatory:

● Add an Up–to-Date Industry and Location: You must select an industry from their list, but to get to it you need to start typing a matching industry. LinkedIn help for industry options reports that they changed their taxonomy to align with NAICS standards, which is what you will find in public databases such as Data Axle.
● Add at Least 3 Positions to Your Work Experience Section
● Add Your Education to Your Profile
● Connect with 50+ People

About The Author:

David Milkes is a highly experienced technical writer who has worked in several industries such as lease accounting, international shipping, and debt collection. He turns technical information into action by writing user guides, online help, release notes, developer documentation and more so that business users can do their jobs better. He is targeting the self-storage and field services industries for companies like Housecall Pro, WorkWave, and StoragePug, for U.S. remote or central N.J. on-site positions.