Turn your summary into your story
- Giedrius Naruševičius
The first thing to say about your LinkedIn summary ( the so-called “About” section) is – make sure you have one! It’s incredible how many people still leave this field blank when creating their LinkedIn profiles. The summary is your most personal piece of content marketing – and it’s worth the effort.
Right now, we have to be on the same page - personal summary, work/education descriptions, and recommendations are the most time & energy-consuming tasks. Still, they are also the most rewarding because, based on these descriptions, recruiters and team leads will decide to invite you to join their team or not.
Your summary should include the industry-related skills and your experience, give information about your personality, and the reader should spend around 30 seconds reading it.
Yet, what to mention is the summary? Well, there are many great paths to creating one. We recommend considering the following questions and angles for your summary:
What drives you most professionally?
Have you ever caught yourself losing track of time? Are there any work responsibilities that you think about first?
What’s your present job?
What would you say are your key responsibilities and strengths if you put the job title aside? What impact do you create with your work?
What’s essential in your job history?
How do you use your skills developed and knowledge gained from your previous track records? What are the key takeaways from your previous experiences?
What achievements of yours could you mention?
Any key results that you achieved in your previous work? What are you best known for amongst your colleagues and peers? Maybe it’s a soft or hard skill that you could mention here?
What do you do outside of work?
Is there anything you do as your hobby that makes you even stronger at what you do at work? Any volunteering, sports, or other interests that you could share?
Last but not least, how you write your summary matters. The summary and the first words or first sentence especially matter. Our advice? Cut right to the hook in order not to lose your reader.
Once you get their attention from the first sentence, you can keep their focus on your profile by including the keywords in your summary. Facing the lack of keywords? Job descriptions can become a great source of them.
You close your summary writing stage with one last rule - if you wouldn’t say it, don’t write it. Once you complete your summary, we recommend reading it aloud to double-check if that sounds like you.