The Essentials of a Strong LinkedIn Summary

First impressions count, even with your LinkedIn profile. When a potential employer, prospect or new connection views your profile for the first time, they’ll be met by your summary. The LinkedIn summary is the text field that sits beneath your name and profile picture. This is your opportunity to showcase what’s unique about you, your skills and experience, in a short (or lengthy) statement. It’s kind of like a summary of your CV: you want to sell yourself and entice them to find out more about you. However, we all know how tricky it can be to talk about yourself sometimes… So, what are the essentials to an impressive LinkedIn summary? 

Your LinkedIn summary can create huge opportunities, if it’s done right. 

Whether you’re a recent graduate, job seeker or a business, LinkedIn will be useful to you in some way, shape or form. When constructing your summary, there’s a few key things to keep in mind…

• You need to be authentic and tell your story
• Don’t just list your career history as dates & facts
• Show off your personality, make your tone less rigid than your CV’s
• Showcase your ambitions
• Highlight your achievements 
• Demonstrate your skills 
• Include a call to action

Although you may take inspiration from your CV, it’s important that you steer away from the formal and factual tone when writing your summary. You’re telling people about you, what you’ve achieved so far and what you aspire to achieve in the future. The aim isn’t to overload the reader with information and leave them yawning, or worse, exiting your profile before they’ve read the whole summary. Show off your endearing personality and why they should get in touch with you. 

Now that you’ve got an idea of what to write, how do you change your summary? 

In order to write your LinkedIn summary, you’ve got to know how to edit it first. This can be done in a few simple steps…

• Firstly, you need to get to your profile by clicking the “Me” button. 
• Click “View profile”. 
• Press the “Edit” button in the top right of the “About” section. 
• Fill out your information and tell your story in the “Summary” section. 
• Click “Save”!

Whatever you do, make sure your summary has something in it. If you leave it blank, you could miss out on valuable opportunities and connections. It’s also important to keep your summary “in-date” by regularly updating it with your new achievements and added skills. Everything on your profile should build a clear picture of what you have to offer, and your summary is an extremely important aspect to that. So, get writing that summary today!