The Art Of The LinkedIn Profile: Student Edition

LinkedIn profiles can be complicated for students. Often, we don’t have much other than our university and our summer job at Walmart, which can lead to a sad, empty webpage. But LinkedIn can be used to your advantage, even if you don’t have a lot to show.

Summary

The Summary section is a great way to demonstrate your personality and writing skills. If you can make the Summary ‘pop’, then half the battle is won.

In this section, give a summary of your experiences, your education, and your skills. Let your personality shine through. Try to weave a narrative through your summary. Have you built your work and volunteer experiences through a central interest? I met someone who had been fascinated by blood since their brother cut himself on a rock when she was seven. Through the next 12 years, she volunteered at a blood bank, took advanced first aid classes, and is now at medical school. Her LinkedIn summary spells out this story, and is a really compelling example of using narrative to sell your resume.

Make sure your profile photo represents how you want employers to see you. It should be just you — not you cropped out of a group photo, you with a friend, you with a sibling, and especially not you with a pet! Make sure the background is clear, and that you’re smiling.

Think of the Summary as the intro paragraph for every job you’ve ever wanted. Sell yourself hard.

Work Experience

In this section, you should list all the part-time jobs, internships and other work experiences you’ve had. I recommend writing a short paragraph detailing your role, responsibilities, successful projects, and any promotions or awards you received.

Make sure to list your work experiences in reverse chronological order, with your most recent post at the top.

Rise to the top with a great LinkedIn profile (skyword.com).

Education

Here’s where your high school and college information goes. If you go to a relatively unknown university, you can use this space to describe the school. Make sure to list your major, minor, and any really important electives. There’s no point in saying that you took an introduction to academic writing class, but if you took Russian, you should probably mention it.

You can also list your extra-curricular activities here. Debate team in high school? Drama club at university?  Football team? Make sure to list anything relevant or interesting. If you’ve done projects surrounding these activities — like fundraising — you should mention these too.

Projects, Certificates, Courses and Test Scores

If you’ve done a big project, you can give it its own section on LinkedIn. For me, this section includes a Data Science project I did for South By South West edu, a piece of work which shows my passion for education, analytics, and writing. I recommend including anything large that you’ve done in school, for an organization, or by yourself. This is where you can put that blog, the go-cart you built over summer, and the photo book you made. Only include projects that are at least vaguely relevant and impressive. No one wants to hear about the two hours you spent doing your grandma’s garden!

If you’ve taken online courses, and you’ve gained certificates from them, feel free to include them in the Courses section on your profile. The Certifications section is specifically for qualifications like ‘Marketing Professional,’ ‘First Aid’ and ‘Teaching English as a Second Language.’

It’s not generally considered good practice to put your SAT or ACT scores on your LinkedIn profile, but if you performed unusually well, it might be worth putting them in the Test Scores section at the bottom. If you’ve taken the TOEFL test (English proficiency), then you should put that either at the top of your profile, or even in your summary if your score was great.

Media

My LinkedIn profile is covered in media — animated videos detailing my strengths, links to my projects, introductory videos to my unusual university, and more. Media makes your profile interesting and appealing. Only use relevant things, but try to liven up your profile using links, pictures and videos.

If you follow this advice for each section of your profile, and write concise and detailed descriptions, you’ll be well on your way to creating a LinkedIn profile which will blow other candidates out of the water!