Do’s and Don’ts: LinkedIn for Developers.
LinkedIn is a professional social network really useful these days to jump into your dream job, is really important to have a good profile, with updated and valuable information about your professional profile. The purpose of this blog post is to share with you some good practices that can enhance your profile and show you examples of which things you should avoid in LinkedIn.
Let’s go!
Profile picture
The first impression that you share with your LinkedIn network is your profile picture, so you have to make sure the photo that use have these minimal requirements:
- A good quality, studio photo would be nice but if you don’t have access or time to take a professional photo, ask someone to take you a picture.
- Be the only person in the picture, a picture with your friends, colleagues, or your wife/husband, of course, is really cute for Facebook, Instagram, or other social media, but not appropriate in your LinkedIn profile picture.
- Don’t forget to smile😃🙂, this is up to you but taking this into count I recommend you to have a friendly profile picture. One study of 800 profile pictures found that people view you as more likable, competent, and influential if you smile in your pic. And smiles that show teeth were rated twice as likable as closed-mouth smiles.
Good examples of profile pictures:
Headlines
This short space can be used as a brief what are your current roles, so be concise and meaningful to people that find your profile. A good example of profile description:
Cautions:
- Avoid using ideologic, beliefs, or any propaganda on your profile headline. You have to stay true of who you are for sure, but in this context is not relevant. And could head up into discrimination.
- Avoid using title distinctions like Junior developer, Mid-developer instead use: Software engineer, QA Analyst. Let your technical background and work experience let the recruiters into the conclusion, using that kind of label limit your ratio of available opens positions that you could be a good fit.
Posting on LinkedIn
LinkedIn gave us the availability to share content to our network and abroad, is a useful tool to share with your potential recruiter your new certification or new degree. But as always, we should be aware of what could be a good idea or not to share or post on LinkedIn as the purpose of the platform.
Things that you should not post on LinkedIn:
- If you have a job that is not recommended to you to publish on your LinkedIn profile that you’re open to positions, this could give your employer the wrong idea and can lead to unfortunate results.
- Never post talking bad about any company that you’ve worked with that gives a terrible picture to your future employer, remember that all the companies work hard to have a good reputation, so a bad review in a public professional network is something they would like to avoid.
- Remember the purpose of this platform, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the internet. You can use LinkedIn to find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills you need to succeed in your career. Before you submit your post ask yourself:
- - Is this relevant for my professional network?
- - Do I look professional?
- - Will this post help me to connect and create meaningful professional relationships?
If the answer is no 🙅♀️, them probably is not a good idea to publish on LinkedIn.🧐
Direct Messages
Linkedin is a platform where you must keep the topics of conversation strictly professional, people who connect to this network have this mood. This is why it is important that you remember these points before clicking on send:
- Keep the conversational tone but never informal🤝🏻. Avoid colloquial phrases or phrases that could be considered vulgar.
- Never ask for personal data📱. Such as personal number, since without preamble it will result in mistrust for your contact.
- Check your spelling✅, it is of utmost importance because we want to give the best impression when creating our professional network.
- Write at a prudent time🕔. People usually use Linkedin during working hours, so writing late at night can be considered rude.
- 🚫DON’T FLIRT on Linkedin🚫, again this is a professional network. People are not expecting these types of messages over this network. If you want new friends this is not the right channel for that.
Conclusions
Of course, these tips are valid for any profile on LinkedIn but as I’m part of the tech community I taking some recommendations based on some good practices and bad practices that I’ve seen in the community. I’m not a LinkedIn guru 🧚🧚, but these tips are based on my research and recruiter recommendations.
Hope this is useful for you. Take care!🧡 💛 💚🧡 💛 💚
