4 tips to level up your LinkedIn profile as a software developer

Whether you are changing jobs or career transitioning, LinkedIn is the platform that can help make the move a lot easier. It is a great platform to connect with people with similar job profiles, interests or working in the same industry and thereby broaden your professional network.

The LinkedIn profile is essential for developers as the software development industry relies significantly on the platform to search for talent. While companies can leverage social media platforms to find talent, more than 94% of recruiters use only LinkedIn to find candidates to fill requirements much faster. Your presence on LinkedIn can help you quickly find opportunities that match your talent and skills, as only 36% of active job seekers are on LinkedIn. This disparity between the recruiters and job seekers on the platform offers a massive advantage to developers who maintain a professional LinkedIn profile.

Here we share some essential LinkedIn tips to facilitate your developer job search.

1. Get your LinkedIn profile score to 100%

You will notice that there is a profile completion score displayed on your profile dashboard on LinkedIn. You must attempt to complete your developer profile and achieve a score of 100%.

Why? 

Because a complete LinkedIn profile is 40 times more likely to be discovered and contacted by recruiters through the platform. This multifold increase in discoverability is because a full LinkedIn profile is ranked higher by the internal algorithm. It boosts your presence in search results for the work profile matching your skills and experience.

To make your LinkedIn profile complete, you must have the following:

• A professional profile picture
• Completed location and industry fields 
• Experience-your current position with a brief description of the responsibilities in the role and two previous positions
• Skills-while you can include as many skills as you have, ensure that you at least mention three skills
• Education
• At least 50 connections

It won’t be a lot of hard work to reach a 100% complete profile, as LinkedIn recommends ways to complete your profile along the way.

2. Optimize profile with keywords 

Like ranking in search engines, keywords also matter much on LinkedIn. As we mentioned before, the professional social media platform uses an internal search algorithm to help recruiters and hiring managers find the talent easily; the algorithm uses keywords within the profile and description to rank profiles.

One of the most valuable LinkedIn tips we can share is to make sure you use the appropriate keywords that emphasize your specific skills and experience. For example, if you work with or want to work with a particular language or framework, mention it in your profile, such as Python, PHP, JavaScript, Angular, WordPress, etc. 

Using the appropriate technical keywords will help the algorithm to send the right recruiters to your profile. 

Along the same lines, remove any skills or technologies you are not interested in. Simply put, your profile should deemphasize keywords you are not interested in working with. For instance, if you are looking for a profile as a back-end developer, mentioning front-end technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, or frameworks like bootstrap, React, and Vue will confuse recruiters. It might result in you getting more front-end offers rather than back-end.

3. Include a call-to-action

You should always include a call-to-action (CTA) in your profile to prompt people to find out more about you than your LinkedIn profile. The best place to put a CTA is in the summary section. Here are some examples of CTA for more offers:

Feel free to know more about me through mail at name@example.com.

Learn more about my skills and work via my Github repositories at mygithubrep.com.

4. Mention relevant side projects 

Arguably, no other industry expects professionals to be on a path of continuous learning and practicing like IT. As a developer, you must keep learning and upskilling to be employable. By taking a side project, you can practice your craft in technologies that you might not get to work on within the office. LinkedIn profiles with side projects, particularly in developer job search, allow recruiters and managers to see your leadership and engineering skills that might not be seen in your current job profile.

If you are hustling on the side, include relevant projects in your profile or through the link to your GitHub, Stack Overflow, or CodePen profile. This is important as it conveys to recruiters that you are a candidate who proactively invests in learning and upskilling.

Conclusion

The LinkedIn tips we have shared above can amplify the presence of your profile within a matter of minutes. While some optimizations, like creating keyword-centric descriptions and making connections, may take a while, you can level up your LinkedIn profile as a software developer with a few minor adjustments.

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