p.s. Am I still providing personal feedback for developers? Yes.
p.s.s. All you have to do is connect with me on LinkedIn and ask.
p.s.s.s. I need...
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Thanks for the advice! Updated my LinkedIn and am now expecting even more recruiter spam :D
I need to improve my presence in Monster Slaying. It's my preferred skill on LinkedIn, yet somehow under appreciated. :D
linkedin.com/in/edaqa/
Endorsed!
Haa! Maybe you can piggy back off Capcom's success and mention "Monster Hunter" instead, lol.
I loved that game!
As a suggestion, one could use Adobe Spark ( spark.adobe.com/ ) to create a LinkedIn banner with little to no design experience. You have a number of templates to choose from and they're free :)
Do you have any advice on how to deal with the endless stream of recruiters that send me invitations and ask for my CV? Should I connect with them? Should I ignore them? I usually send to most of them a short response that I'm not looking for a full time position but consider contracts. From most I never hear anything back. Some offer to connect. I connected with a few and now I have all these connections that I find meaningless and I get lots of updates on people's careers, people that I've never heard of and honestly don't care about. What would be your suggestion? Thanks.
The more I filled out my profile and now that people understand my background as a CTO I get fewer recruiters because there are less CTO jobs out there for them to try and sell me on.
I don't know if there is a correct answer. For me, I leverage recruiters to grow my network but that's because I am looking to influence instead of finding a job.
I think it might be possible to unfollow their content but be connected but I have never thought of trying this.
I don't think it matters how you treat most recruiters, they'll just keep persisting no matter what.
I would just leave their invitations pending. The day you feel you might want to leverage them go ahead and add them but honestly, it's not hard to get recruiters attention if you pay for LinkedIn Premium.
I can tell you what I get spammed the most for is outsourcing web-dev, dev-ops shops from eastern europe (poland, ukrakine, russia) and india.
I am very wary of adding people from India if I don't know where the connection is coming from because the spam starts to snowball. If I think they came through a DEV.to article I add them otherwise I'll outright it ingore and dismiss the connection.
Thanks for your reply. I actually sent you an invitation on LI, since you said let's connect. Even though I'm originally from Russia (I live in Germany now), I didn't mean to offer you any web-dev or dev-ops services =)
Hey Dmitry,
I saw your connection and did not consider your intention to spam as your profile history did not indicate as such as well you did write your reason for connecting.
These web-dev dev ops spammers are really easy to spot because they have so much content geared towards their service and that great effort into grooming their profile. Since your photo is not a representation of yourself this was the quick indicator to me you are not spam.
The reason I have yet to accept your connection is that I enter every connection into a spreadsheet for later engagement where I then send out personal messages to everyone. So it's just a matter of time when I find the time to do so.
No worries =) And just so it's clear, I'm not connecting with the intention of getting feedback on my profile. I know it's beyond bad. I've been neglecting it for way too long. I never treated LI as a valuable social network or a job market. Reading your post, though, made rethink that. I'm now trying to decide if putting any effort into making my profile better is worth it.
Principle Engineer + Scala + AWS and a recognized company such as Nokia. This explains the recruiter spam. You're a big ticket.
Scala and AWS alone are so in-demand you can neglect LinkedIn and get jobs without résumés just by proving your knowledge through demonstration and even conversation.
I was quite adverse to LinkedIn as I really hate social media but I went all in.
The way I see it is developers are being commoditized which will drive down larger salaries and so you'll have to keep jumping to new technologies and so I wanted to stop having to hop to feel secure in case I had to go back to the market and that's why I pivoted to education.
Though with your skill set you're going to stay in demand for another decade so you have the luxury of not-participating in the social platform.
I know a guy here in Toronto that retired at 30 because he was a high paid Scala developer getting paid $300K / per year. I think he now spends his time building and perfecting his own mini putt golf course in his backyard.
I see. I had no idea the AWS keyword in my description would be bringing so much spam/traffic to my profile. Unfortunately, there are no such salaries in Berlin, where I live at the moment.
Thanks for the tips.On your suggestions modified few sections in my profile,making it more meaningful.Adding one more on your backlog and wondering if you POP rather DEQUEUE the list. :-P
Got a minute to review (linkedin.com/in/goelvarun88/) ?
Cheers.!!!
Interesting tips. A lot of people have different versions of what they think works best for LinkedIn.
My tip regarding the list of keywords: don't delete it. LinkedIn is essentially a search engine. If you remove keywords, you will cut yourself out of search results. So as a compromise, I'd say keep the list, but don't put it at the top.
You don't delete it you move it to the appropriate place.
You place it under skills.
You place it under the appropriate job experience.
But if you're trying to game the search by having everything keyword under the sun this will not work as you hope.
Like I said, a lot of people have different versions of what they think works best for LinkedIn. Ultimately, it's a search engine so different strategies will work for different people. (But really if no one is reading your profile summary, no one is reading your job experience either.)
It's also entirely possible to write 2 descriptive lines that show up in a profile summary...and also more. I think you get like 350 words in this area. If you only write 2 lines, you really cut out the opportunity to describe yourself in more detail.
Anyway, interesting tips. I hope they work for someone.
I just want to state that its less of "thinking what works best" and what I'm doing is creating hypotheses, experimenting and capturing the results. So I like to think I'm closer to the truth than just writing nonsense:
I plan on showing more of this information if people keep showing interest.
Great, I'm glad you can back up your post with your own data. There are different approaches to LinkedIn and it's good that people can try out what works for them.
Another suggestion for your post: in your first comment to me you said your advice was to move that keyword list to different areas of your profile. In your post, you don't make that suggestion or any suggestion at all. If your advice is to move the list to different areas, you might want to update your post to include that extra detail. Right now it reads as though your advice is simply to delete those keywords.
Great article Andrew, thanks so much! I would love if you could review mine as well:
linkedin.com/in/michaeljamiejohnston/
Another thing to note with the header image is to also check the mobile view. Some of these examples with the custom header you shared will unfortunately have text and graphics partially covered up on the mobile view, so that's something to keep in mind. I believe over 60% of users on LinkedIn are on mobile devices (app and the website) and I thought that would be something worth mentioning. 👍
Michael is right here where the profile photo covers part of your banner.
This is the case for my banner where it's obscuring my messaging.
I have yet to optimize a banner for both. You can, of course, click on the banner in mobile to see all of it but I doubt this is what users do.
I was planning to do another post just on mobile because the experience is different and when I talk about using concise text it makes even more sense in mobile view.
Sounds great, thanks Andrew! Looking forward to your next post.
I've gotten mixed comments about the Profile Summary... Will definitely take your point about it being the Elevator Pitch into consideration. Otherwise I think I'm doing alright with mine.
linkedin.com/in/sunfireweb
Great article with some interesting points! Hope to see more stuffs like this.
You mentioned limiting the profile summary such that the 'Show more' link does not appear. What are your opinions of writing summaries in such way that the key important stuff is there on first glance, before the 'Show more' link, but also if someone actually wants to read more, he can click on 'Show more' and read more?
💯 Yes
The reason I discouraged to put more is that most people will use that Show More as dumping grounds for content. So you can take advantage of this space but I think most people will not have the writing skills based on what I've seen so far.
So what you're saying is, if I want to reduce the number of recruiters bothering me all the damn time, I should do everything exactly the opposite of these recommendations?
Damn, too late!
:)
Hey Andrey,
Re: LinkedIn banner
I have found a lazy way to easily generate a LinkedIn banner for devs
On my profile linkedin.com/in/jmfayard/ it gives this
What do you think?
How I did it? => carbon.now.sh/
I can't say I'm a fan
It's too much text and it's hard to read.
I think the Fiverr artist you mention might have died...? I was impressed with his work but in the comments, there is some bad news, followed by cancellations.
(Thanks for the rest of the article.)
That is upsetting to hear to happen to such a great talent, I did not know.
I just swapped it out for another artist.
Great article with alot of useful . I've been job searching recently and making full use of LinkedIn has really helped.
I'll definitely be updating my Headline and Profile Summary to follow your suggestions.
Thanks!
Good stuff.
👍 More bookmarks than likes (best compliment).
Great article! I've updated my Profile :D
I would love if you could review mine: linkedin.com/in/andrea-hernandez-m...
Thank you!
Great advice Andrew, thanks for writing up your experiences ... and good luck getting through that backlog :O
😭
"Black and White remind me of an Obituary from a newspaper." - Agree.
A lot of helpful information, thank you for sharing.
Damn! Better add 'Update LinkedIn profile' to my to-do list. This is some great advice.
Still wondering where conference speaking fits in LinkedIn. The best I’ve come up with is publications, which feels off.
I'm still wondering how to find all the CFPs.
I think that the best way to showcase Conferences is by uploading the slide deck, embedding the video into the second slide and attaching it as media to your profile.
Its been on my todo list.
I have all the tips but never the time to fill things myself.
Ooh, that's an interesting idea! And you want cfpland.com/ !
Great tips, thanks.
Canva is another free way to easily create a LI banner image. It has the dimension built in when you select LI banner. Works for Twitter, FB etc too.
These are great tips, thanks!
And for social media banners, Canva is a great, free tool for assembling them.
Thanks for the tips , you hit the Bullseye.
Great article, I also need to improve my LinkedIn can have a look at it please linkedin.com/in/davidkathoh/
And ofcourse put a smile on your DP. Atleast to let them know you are cool.
Thanks for awesome tips
Got a minute to review
linkedin.com/in/abdullahabdelrhim/
Thanks
add me to LinkedIn and write it in the note.
making small changes to mine now from your advice. Thanks
Very good advice
Great tips.
It would be a good exercise to have my profile reviewed.
Thanks,
Kritul Rathod
Am I doing this right?
Very creative.
Thank you for your valuable advice! I had never considered how valuable the banner image can be. Its prime attention grabbing real estate that almost no one uses. I'll be making some changes.
Thanks for the tips!! linkedin.com/in/jordhan-carvalho
Great article and very helpful. Adding you on LinkedIn. :)
did not know about the customized header. awesome!!
thanx for the tips
Thanks for the awesome article. Trying your tips out once I get off work.
Great article. I hope It will work.
I definitely went and touched up my Linkedin profile as I read through this. Thanks for the good advice.
Thanks for the wonderful tips Andrew. I would love if you could review mine as well:
linkedin.com/in/yashwanthguntur/
I need this 🙂
Great article, ty for all the advice. If anyone would like to connect, here's my link:
linkedin.com/in/andreadenisestewart/
Andrew is awesome! Very helpful! These tips saved my life:)