Moving on, let's create some career highlights that will emphasize your best contributions without seeming like bragging.
Your career highlights will be a bullet point section that's included in the "Summary" section of your LinkedIn profile. Most likely, a user will have to click to "See more" to read these highlights, but again, our objective here is to demonstrate your value while using highly searchable keywords.
Let me ask you a question.
Ever been at a cocktail party with an ego case who can't stop talking about their own accomplishments? It's the worst.
Bragging is all about context, however. Your Linkedin Profile is the equivalent of your virtual resume. It's the perfect place to make like the 96 Bulls and post up some numbers.
Think back through your career. What are your biggest accomplishments? Potential employers want to see results. So if you can, tie your accomplishments to a number, it makes your accomplishments more concrete.
This is not bragging. This is a numerical fact based on how you increased your organization's bottom line.
Money talks, so if you can point to where you increased sales or revenue, that's best. But maybe you work in a digital industry where users or followers matter. Overall, think about how you turned duties into accomplishments. If you have it, you may even want to go back and pull up the job description from the original job posting of your position.
Think about the challenges you faced and how you overcame them. Think to yourself: What problem is the company trying to solve? Position yourself as the solution to that problem and how it impacted the company's bottom line.
Here are some examples of professional highlights.
On my profile, I have:
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Oversaw testing applications that received more than 200,000 downloads.
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Increased overall company revenue by 20%.
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Grew email contact list from 80,000 to 400,000.
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Managed websites are regularly receiving traffic of 60,000 users per day.
Feel free to pause the lesson here while you brainstorm some highlights. Think about how these highlights can be quantifiable.
Think of key performance metrics, or KPI's, for your industry. Showing growth in sales or dollar amounts is always impressive. Showcase how you moved the needle.
Normally, name dropping is extremely unseemly, but again, we are doing this in context. If you worked with any notable clients in your industry or fortune 500 companies, this is a good place to mention them. Just make sure you had a good relationship with these companies in case the recruiter or hiring manager makes a call over there.
In addition, you can list pure skills or program competencies. Again, think about the keywords recruiters may be looking for.
Here's an example of a list of core competencies for someone with a design background:
Skills: logo design, web design, branding and identity, typography, UI design, packaging, CSS, HTML, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator.
One recommendation I have, unless you are applying for an administrative role, is to NOT emphasize that you have competencies with Microsoft Office Suite or how many words per minute you can type. This is pretty much a given nowadays.
However, if you use Excel for advanced functions, such as writing and running macros, that would be an exception, but generally, everyone in an office setting knows how to use Microsoft Office. It's a given.
If you have just graduated high school or college and are starting out (hi there, welcome to the real world. It's… interesting), you may want to include where you graduated from and if you graduated with any honors or specialties.
Now that we have your headline and summary section looking snatched, in the next lesson, we will focus on how to collect recommendations that set you up for the work you want.
