“What determines your success is your personal branding and communication skills” ~ JoAnne Funch
Engineers and tech workers will experience difficulty in their careers. Despite being excellent goal-setters, planners, and innovators, they nonetheless suffer from getting stuck on their careers, struggling to pursue their passions, trying new things, feeling unfulfilled, and not knowing what to do next.
Let me share some key strategic actions you need to be taking so you can create a great career development strategy. Specifically, we’ll focus on how you can leverage the power of LinkedIn on your career journey.
Why LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is one of the best places you can be online if you want to be successful in your career. It’s the world’s largest professional network which can allow you to connect with coworkers, hiring managers, recruiters, decision makers, mentors, and more.
One way to utilize LinkedIn is to showcase your personal brand through a strong profile and content creation.
Share Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
Let’s have a quick review of what a personal brand is. Your personal brand is this intersection of who you are, the skills, the experience, the ways you can add value, and what people know about you. This calls for the ability to properly communicate each of these, and one of the best places to do that is on LinkedIn.
Your LinkedIn profile should make it easy for others to get to know your professional brand. Quickly explain through your profile who you are, what type of work do you do, what skills do you have, etc.
Building The Top Portion of Your LinkedIn Profile
If you’re going to spend any time optimizing your profile on LinkedIn, start at the top. Your photos and your headline are the most important areas to change, because they get seen the most!
Photos – there are two photos you need to share. One is your profile picture. Make sure you are dressed professionally and wear one of your biggest smiles. No cutouts of you with your arms around someone back in your college days – make the photo just you!
The other photo you need to share is the background photo. A lot of people on LinkedIn do not even have a background photo, and this is a missed opportunity. This photo must be related to you in some way. It can help share your interests, your career focus, or connect to your industry. Furthermore, avoid blurry photos and make sure to look professional at all times.
Headline – the default headline of people who are on LinkedIn is their current role and their current company. But you should write more than this, as you can customize it! Write some of your skills, put in there what makes you stand out from others, and write keywords (like the job roles you are looking for) so that people can easily search for you. Utilize those 220 characters to best describe you!
If you have neglected LinkedIn thus far, start small by updating the top of your profile. If you want to go further and get serious about building your personal brand, please reach out and connect!
Watch more in the video below:
Accelerate Your Career
If you’re ready to accelerate your career and leadership further and want some help doing it, here are a few ways I can help when you’re ready:
- Watch a FREE Engineering Career Masterclass – the 4 Keys to Intentional Engineering Career Transitions
- Enroll in the Engineering Career Accelerator – the exact system that hundreds of engineers have used to go from confused to thriving in their careers.
- Schedule a free call with me to talk about getting personalized 1:1 and group support on your goals.
