How to spring clean your LinkedIn in 20 minutes

If you’ve ever been frustrated by unsolicited messages in your LinkedIn inbox, this article is for you.

LinkedIn has some amazing technology that works to make networking and job-seeking fast, easy and highly targeted – provided your profile is up-to-date.

Update your skills

You may not be actively looking for a job, but that doesn’t mean that the perfect opportunity may not come along. LinkedIn has very smart technology that recruiters use to search for candidates, so put yourself in the market.

Be real and honest with your skills and experience and the technology will do the work for you. Good recruiters will only approach those truly suitable for a role.

“Job seekers who are among the first 25 applicants are up to 3X more likely to land the job and we want to make sure you see the jobs you want the minute they are posted.” – LinkedIn

Your profile can be searched based on job title, experience level, skills and even specific software so make sure it’s all on your profile to get the best experience

Set up hashtags

LinkedIn isn’t just about jobs and having a profile - it’s a social media channel with a real focus on good content and they want to feed you information that you are interested in.

Set up hashtags and you’ll be fed this content as a priority by LinkedIn. Some of mine include #branding #digitalmarketing #medicine #bigdata.

Just search what interests you in the search bar and click content - find a hashtag and click follow. You’ll enjoy the feed a lot more, I promise.
Follow the businesses and influencers you're interested in - they are doing some creative things to entertain you on the platform. Rumour has it LinkedIn Live Video will be launching this year which will open the floodgates for lots of fun from your favourite brands and companies.
Have a spring clean too - if businesses or topics you’re no longer interested in pop up, just unfollow so you’re seeing exactly what you want to.

Be open to opportunities

You can make yourself ‘open the job opportunities’ a status only visible to recruiters, so don’t worry about your boss finding out. This will also prioritise your profile in searches for recruiters, so why not? You'll find the option in your profile settings.

Add a profile picture and a background image

You wouldn’t go to work with dirty clothes on, so why would you be sloppy with your profile? It’s not hard to update and there are lots of free resources to get interesting pictures, or better still, use your own photography. Make yourself a bit interesting and you’ll stand out.

Simply google ‘LinkedIn wallpaper’ ‘LinkedIn cover photo’ or LinkedIn background’ to find images of the correct size. Or upload your own and you can use the inbuilt image editor to crop.

Set up notifications

If you are actively looking for jobs - set up job search notifications and you'll be notified when new jobs that match your search are posted. LinkedIn will also use the information on your profile (another reason to keep it up to date) to guide you on how suitable you are for the role, how many people have already applied and reviews on the company.

Simply search for a job and then turn the job notification on at the top of the search results

Personalise your URL

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to personalise your URL, so make it easy to remember the link to your profile.

If you're still interested after 20 minutes...

Recommend others: Pay it forward and recommend your colleagues, friends and connections when you’ve had a positive interaction with them. Just head to someone’s profile and scroll down to the recommendations section

69% of professionals think verified skills are more important than college education when job-seeking and 77% of hirers agree they are investing more towards hiring based on applicants skills or competencies - LinkedIn Talent Blog

Assess your skills: Under the skills and endorsements section of your profile, you can assess, validate and showcase your skills further by taking a quick skills test. The results are private unless you publish them and they will also be used as a validation tool by recruiters and hiring managers.
LinkedIn Learning: A LinkedIn Premium feature, LinkedIn Learning provides educational videos to support your professional development. Tell LinkedIn what you want to learn about and it will find you short, informative and relevant learning tools for you. If you're not sure, LinkedIn will offer you courses based on your industry, job title or what your connections are learning. Courses are split by subject, software and learning paths. Set weekly goals and be reminded to complete them.