Write an OUTSTANDING LinkedIn Summary (with Examples)!

Key Takeaways

so recently a career coach i admire a lot austin belsack wrote an amazing article on how to write a crazy effective linkedin summary and includes real-life examples and templates the only problem it's 28 683 words so being the helpful little elf that i am in this video i'm going to first share the key takeaways from this comprehensive article break down the best linkedin summary template for job seekers and working professionals then end with five practical tips you can apply today to your own linkedin bio let's get started hi friends welcome back to channel if you're new here my name is jeff and quick disclaimer up front austin did not ask me to make this video he still doesn't know who i am so if one of you could please let him know i'm one of the cool kids as well that'd be awesome key takeaway number one on how to get your linkedin about section to stand out there is no one-size-fits-all linkedin summary because they're different best practices depending on how you want to position yourself and the article talks about four in particular job seekers working professionals entrepreneurs and thought leaders key takeaway number two addresses a common question asked by new and experienced linkedin users alike what is the linkedin bios supposed to achieve anyways answer a well-crafted linkedin summary compels your target audience whoever they may be to reach out to you instead of the other way around key takeaway number three after coaching thousands of job seekers and analyzing their linkedin summaries austin has found common themes in the success cases and incorporates those best practices into his linkedin summary templates diving to the template for job seekers we start off strong with an intro line that tells the reader what field you're in how many years of experience you have and the specific value you have brought to other companies applying this formula to myself i might write something like innovative product marketing manager with seven plus years of experience in b2b marketing i help companies identify high potential leads and i'm responsible for 121 million us dollars in acquisition revenue representing a 78 growth year on year two quick things number one if you're a student focus on your internships and extracurriculars and make sure to include metrics to give an extreme example it's better to write my presentation score 24 higher than the class average than to simply write i led a team presentation number two i would usually stay away from fluffy buzzwords such as innovative but austin cleverly addresses this issue by giving you a chance to provide proof in the next section of your linkedin summary case study bullet points in this part i will cherry pick three specific examples that best showcase how your existing skill set will be a great match for the role that you're hoping to land broadly speaking the structure here will be similar to the bullet point structure found in your resume in the interest of time i'm just going to link my resume video down below so make sure to check that out after this one finally the last section of your summary should speak directly to the opportunities you're looking for but without specifically saying you're looking for new opportunities austin gives a great tip here by pinning a picture of you and your boss at a bar along with a recruiter at your dream company and in order to tip off the recruiter without your manager getting suspicious you simply mention the type of work that gets you excited for example i love applying my b2b legion experience to help tech companies reach high growth smbs to further scale their businesses and any recruiter looking at your profile will know exactly what you want without you actually saying it in case my manager is watching this video that was clearly a hypothetical example let me know down in the comment section below whether you're already following a similar structure for your linkedin summary or you're doing something different i would love to see what other best practices are out there now that you're familiar with three sections that make up an outstanding linkedin summary and have also seen a few examples let's quickly go over the five practical tips you can apply immediately tip number one linkedin recently expanded the limit for the summary section to 2000 characters so first write out your draft then paste it into a tool like word counter to make sure you're within linkedin's limits i personally don't think there is a perfect range but in austin's examples these summaries are between 880 to 1120 characters tip number two since linkedin is a search engine just like google amazon and youtube keywords play a pretty big role recruiters are constantly searching for candidates and when they run a search linkedin looks at the keywords and filters in their search and they match them up with the keywords on thousands of profiles to embed the right keywords in your linkedin summary first find a role you're interested in and paste the entire linkedin job description in a word document do this 19 more times until you have 20 total then paste those 20 job descriptions in a word cloud generator like monkey learn workload generator i'll link that down below and do your best to weave the top 5 keywords into your linkedin summary of course this works best if you're very targeted in the type of role you're searching for for example marketing for consumer hardware electronics if you copy paste job descriptions from 10 completely different unrelated industries and roles you're going to end up with keywords that are all over the place tip number three and this something i did not know before reading austin's article is that you can use a free tool called unicode text converter to bold or italicize words in linkedin simply go to this link i'll link it down below as well and type in a sentence or two you'd like to emphasize in your linkedin summary and copy paste a bold or italicized version of it you can also add emojis for mac users a shortcut is control command space and for window users is the windows plus period shortcut but for both the unicode text converter and the emojis i'd use those pretty sparingly remember if everything is highlighted nothing is highlighted tip number four austin recommends bringing up one or two personal interests to create an instant connection with the reader safe topics include food travel family sports hobbies and learning the trick here is to make sure to include a specific detail after the general interest this could be something as simple as including a specific team name after mentioning you're a huge basketball fan last but not least tip number five is to use a hemingway app to check your grammar and spelling once you've followed all the steps in this video paste your linkedin summary into the app i'll link it down below and hemingway will show you misspelled words which sentences you could improve and how to improve them and even give you a readability score of course other than your summary a few other factors also contribute to a strong linkedin profile and i address each one of those in my linkedin playlist here for example i show you how to create a professional linkedin headshot using only free tools see you on the next video in the meantime have a great one