Speaker 1: Hi everyone and welcome to Apna College. Today we are going to talk about how we can make our LinkedIn profile more impressive. For those students who don't know, LinkedIn is our professional networking platform. If we want to stay connected with our friends, we create an account on Instagram. Similarly, if we want to stay connected with people in our field, we create an account on LinkedIn. There are two major benefits of using LinkedIn. First, it is like our online resume. If we have set up our LinkedIn profile well, it helps us to get better job and internship opportunities. Second, it sets up a personal branding for us. Personal branding means what the people in the room talk about us. Basically, what the people in our field think about us. If we have set up our LinkedIn profile well, our positive image goes to our industry. That's why it is important to set up your LinkedIn profile in an impressive way. Along with this, LinkedIn says that 87% of recruiters will see your LinkedIn profile before hiring you. That's why it is important to be impressive. In today's session, we have opened two profiles. First of all, this is my own LinkedIn profile. In which you can see a lot of things. There is an activity section, experience section, education section and skills section. This is a profile which is already set up. Secondly, we have created another profile which is created from scratch. So, whether you are a student who has made his LinkedIn profile for the first time today. Or you are a student who has already made his LinkedIn profile. You just want to improve it. So, we will be talking about both categories. Today, we will cover 10 points. Those who have already made a profile can think of these 10 points as a checklist. You can think that all the things are ticked for you. If there is a scope for improvement in the next point, then we will improve it. Now, the first thing that we have to take special care of. The first thing that anyone will see on LinkedIn profile is our profile picture. When we talk about profile picture, Our profile picture should be professional looking. If you have a fresh LinkedIn account, You can click here to upload your profile picture. LinkedIn shows us some sample profile pictures. So, basically, our profile picture should be like this. There are some key points in the profile picture that we need to take care of. The professional photo that we are using in the profile picture should be a solo photo. It should not be put in a group. It should be our solo photo. It should not be a recent photo. It should not be a childhood photo. Along with that, if we keep a front-facing photo, In which our entire face will be visible, then it will be a good thing. And we have to try to fill up at least 60-70% of our circle with our face. That is, our face should be clearly visible. LinkedIn itself says that if you have put a profile picture on your account, The chances of clicking on that account improve drastically. So, putting a profile picture is not an option. We have to put it compulsorily. The second thing that we can pay attention to is our banner. To upload our banner, we can simply click on this camera icon. And from here, we can set up our professional background. Our banner represents our area of interest or our field for people. So, here it is trying to set a context for our profile. So, basically, you can put a banner related to whatever you are interested in. For example, in this banner, things related to education are written. So, it is clear that whoever has a profile, may be in education. Or they have some work related to that. If you want to go into software engineering, Then you can put a banner related to coding. Or if you want to go into the field of digital marketing, Then you can create a banner related to that. Like a profile picture, a banner is also a compulsory piece of information that we have to put. Now, the third thing that we have to pay attention to is our headline. Like here, I have written in my headline, Co-founder of my college x Microsoft. Similarly, I have written a few more things. So, we also have to make our headline impressive and catchy. If I take my personal example, If I get any recommendation for a post or any connection request, Generally, I read the headline before the profile picture or anything else. And there must be a lot of people like this. That's why it is important to have a catchy and impressive headline. Now, if we are a working professional in the headline, For example, when I was working in Microsoft, My headline was Software Engineer at Microsoft. Similarly, if you work in HR, Then you can write HR Executive at XYZ company. So, for working professionals, the headline can be sorted and simple. The tricky part comes in the case of students. So, in the case of students, I have given you 3-4 options. You can pick the one that you like the most. The first case will be among students, Those students who have either done an internship somewhere or are doing an internship now. If we have already done an internship, Then you can write Ex-intern at ABC company. And if we are doing an internship now, Then we can write Intern at ABC company. So, in this way, the starting part of our headline will be done. And after that, generally the starting part is seen. After that, we can write more things about ourselves. Or we can mention 2-4 skills. Or if we want, we can write the name of our college later. The second thing that we can do as a student is to mention the name of our college. We can simply write Student at NSIT, Student at IIT, Student at NIT. And we can do this thing specially when our college name is such that people in our field recognize it. So, it will give us benefit. It will be very easy for people to notice that thing. The third option we have is that we can write about our field. We can write Pursuing Software Engineering. Or Pursuing Computer Science Engineering at this college. Or we can write Undergraduate Mechanical Engineer at this college. So, in this way, the field in which we are doing engineering, Or the field in which we are doing B.Sc or B.Com, We can write about that field. Now, this is the starting part from which we can start. Along with that, we can also mention some skills in our headline. For example, if we are making a profile for coding, Or we are making a profile for software engineering, And we know Java. So, in that case, we can put a slash here. For example, I have used these pipes here. Which is a single stick. After that, you can mention Java, C++, whatever skills you know. But generally, the starting part of our headline is the most visible. And that is what maximum people are studying. Now, one special point for those students who are pursuing their Masters or PhD. So, the Masters they are pursuing, they can write Pursuing Masters at this university. PhD students can write PhD at this university. So, that is a good thing in itself. Because your current thing comes first. Along with that, I would like to say one special thing to everyone. Many times, we students write buzzwords in the headline. We write creative, we write motivated. We write good communicator, leader. We write such random words which don't make any sense. So, in such cases, the buzzwords, Meaning, heavy words which as such are not getting any addition in our profile. Stay away from those words. Don't use buzzwords. We have to point out the specific things about us in our headline. Now, the next thing that comes in our profile is our About section. About section comes here in our profile. If we want to edit this section, we can simply click on Add Profile section. And here we have three sections. Core, Recommended, Additional. So, LinkedIn says that Core is the most important. Recommended means you can do this too. Additional means you can do this if you want to add more things. Now, we would have set our profile photo inside the core. If we go inside About, Here, saying About means what are our goals, what are our skills, what are our projects, what are our experiences. Basically, we are writing a summary of all the professional information about us. Now, this is the section which you need to make good and impressive. And maybe this will be the section on which you will invest the most time to write it. Now, there are two styles of writing which people use for the About section. There is one style of writing in which we are writing things in first person. First person means like we have used I, we have used Me. So, in this way, everyone knows that I have written this. Second style of writing, some students write in which they write that Shraddha Khapra has done this. She is a motivated person or things like this. Now, you can choose anything from both the styles of writing. My personal favorite which I prefer is the first person style of writing. Basically, I have tried to write some things about my goals. And we try to present it in a creative way. From where I have done my engineering, where I have done internships, what research projects I have worked on, what are the skills in terms of technology. And about myself, I have tried to tell a few extra things like about my hobbies or something else which is of interest to me. So, in our About section, we have to highlight the professional the most. Along with that, we can write a few personal things which people may find interesting about us. So, this is our About section. The next section which we will talk about is our Skills section. To add skills, we can go here and click on add skills. There will be some skills which are already suggested. Otherwise, we can go and search the skills by ourselves. For example, if there are coding skills in skills, for example, if I know Java, I can select Java and add it as a skill. In the same way, if you are from any other field, you can add your field-related skills. We can add MS Excel, we can add MS Office, whatever your skills are. Now, we have to try to add at least 5 skills in skills. If we have made a profile today and we don't have 5 skills today, then it's okay, we have to build the skills with time and then we have to add them. Skills section is shown below in our profile. I think I have added almost 15 skills here. In this way, as you have time in your field, you will be able to add more skills. Now, skills can look like a very small part of our profile, but it is a very important part of the profile. It is important because whenever a recruiter or HR has to hire people, they first look for them on the basis of their skills. For example, if I want to hire a web developer who knows how to work on Node.js, then I will simply search for Node.js developer. LinkedIn will try to match the keywords in your profile on the basis of your skills. So, the profile that matches the most keywords of any job description or recruiter will be at the top. That's why skills section is also important. Along with this, we have to mention such keywords in our about section for which recruiters generally search. Another important thing is that if you are a student who is actively looking for opportunities and you want recruiters to contact you, then you must add your email id in your contact info and ensure that recruiters can see your profile so that people can contact you directly on email regarding suitable opportunities. Now, the next section we will talk about is our education section. If you are a working professional in the education section, then it is okay if you only tell your college education. If you are studying in a college, then you can tell your 10th and 12th marks. Now, to fill up the education section, we go to the core of the ad profile section and go to education. Here, we can fill up different things. The most important thing in education that we need to tell is first of all, the name of your college and university. Now, it doesn't matter whether people know your college name or not. No matter how your college is, fill up its name and also fill up the domain in which you are pursuing your degree. In which year did you start your degree? When will you graduate? We can fill up those dates. And we can also add a few lines about our college experience. Now, if you have any achievements in your college, for example, you have topped your batch in academics, or you are very good in sports, or you are very good in extracurriculars, then you can mention such positive things about yourself here. Secondly, we can also mention about the school. I have only mentioned the percentage here, but if you are a first-year or second-year student, then you can mention more details there regarding your achievements in school. The next section and a very important section for us is our experience section. Now, in the experience section, the first thing that we can mention is about a full-time job or if you are in a start-up, we can mention about that. If you are doing a business, we can mention about that. As a student, we also mention about our internships in the experience section. Along with that, if we have any experience of freelancing, or if the students coming from a coding background have any experience of open source, we can also mention that in our experience section. To mention the experience, we can go to this option and from here, we can fill out things related to our current position. So, if we come to add current position, first of all, we have to write the title. For example, I pick up this thing. So, here my title was software engineering intern. And after that, what was our employment type, whether it was an internship, freelancing, part-time or full-time, we can write things about that. We can mention the name of our company. I mentioned internship here. From which month to which month was the internship? At which location was the internship? And after that, you can mention some things about your internship. Now, whenever you are mentioning things about internship here, you have to write one important thing in it, which is what skills you used in the internship. Because keywords are very important in our profile. That's why you should never miss the opportunity to sprinkle those important keywords in your profile. So, our experience section is a very important section. For example, if you see here, I have also mentioned my skills in software engineering intern. I have also mentioned my skills in the previous internship. And in the same way, I have also mentioned my skills in the extra programs. So, wherever you get the opportunity, mention your skills there, so that the most relevant keywords are present in your profile. Now, there are four things in the 8th point that we can add in our profile depending upon which category you are in. First of all, publication. Publication means you have worked on a research article or a research paper and published it. So, to mention about it, we can go to the add profile section. In addition, we can add publications. The second thing that we can add are our projects. Now, as a college student, we work on many different projects. So, to add projects, we can go to recommended and click on add projects. We have to mention their skills along with the projects. We have to write 2-3 lines about the project and which domain it was related to. And we have to try to go to any domain we want. For example, if I want to go to the domain of software engineering, then I will try that my projects are coding, tech related. Similarly, we have to mention the projects related to the domain you want to go to. Along with this, many students also mention certificates. If you have done a course and you were in a batch, and you have a certificate, then you can mention that certificate here. I will tell you one more thing. Many times, as a beginner student, we have a misconception that just by looking at the certificate, we will get an internship or a job. In fact, this does not happen at all. If you are doing a batch or a course, never do it just for the certificate. The actual genuine skills that you will learn and the projects you will work on, that is the most important, not the certifications. But yes, if you have certifications, you can add them here. Along with this, in additionals, we also have test scores that we can add. For example, you have had a very good achievement. You had a good achievement in the JEE exam. Or you have scored well in exams like CAT, GATE, GMAT, JSTS, NTSC. You can mention those test scores here. It is a very good thing. If you score well in any competitive exam, it makes your profile better and more noticeable for any recruiter who is hiring out there. Now the next point is to actually build a good network on LinkedIn. That is, nothing happens by just putting information in the profile on LinkedIn. We will actually have to go and do networking. We will have to connect with people. The first way to do that is we can start with our college and school alumni, whom we know who are doing well professionally. They have graduated from our college. They work in good companies. We are trying to connect with them. The rest of the people in our field whose work we like, we can go and follow them. And one more recommendation will be mine if we are trying to build a network. Let's suppose we have successfully completed a project. Or if we have learned a good skill. Or if we have participated in a hackathon. We have won a contest. So it is very important to post about the small achievements in our career. So that all the people you are connected with, in your professional network, people notice that yes, this is a person who is taking his career seriously. He is working hard to move forward. So you can post about all your achievements. You can share it with your network. So that they also remember from time to time that yes, you are in this field. And you are interested in doing work in this field. And you are working hard towards it. Now the last point will be to add some finishing touches. That is, there are some extra things that we can do with our profile. One of these important things is recommendation. Try to take some recommendations from your 2-3 seniors Take some recommendations. That is, you can write some positive things about yourself through them on your profile. And we don't have to pick up these random seniors. We have to pick up such seniors who have a little reputation in the industry. That is, they must already be working in a company related to your field. So it will have a very positive impact. Now in the recommendation, it is not that we take 10-20 recommendations. 2-3 good recommendations are enough for a profile. Along with that, we can add some languages. For example, if we know more languages other than English and Hindi. Then we can also add them in our profile. Along with this, if we are a fresh college student. Then we can mention more details about our courses. What courses are running in our college? How are our marks coming in those courses? If we are scoring well academically. So there is extra information like this. If you explore the LinkedIn profile a little bit. Then you will get more extra things to write. So these were my top 10 points that we can take care of. If we want to make an impressive LinkedIn profile for ourselves. And before going, one thing must be taken care of. Our LinkedIn profile is our professional journey. And journey means the journey that is going on. It will never happen that we make a profile in one day. And in one day, we will make the best LinkedIn profile. Obviously, we need to take care of some basic things. But our LinkedIn profile will eventually be good. When we will be doing some things on our career. If we want to go into software engineering. Then we will have to make projects and participate in hackathons. We will have to gain new skills in tech. We will have to do internships related to that. So there are a lot of things related to our field. The experience that we will gain. Only then we will be able to write something on LinkedIn. So that's why whenever we are making a resume or LinkedIn profile. There are some basic things that need to be taken care of. Rest, it has to be seen as a journey. Which will gradually improve with our experiences over time. So I hope that in your professional journey. Today's session will be helping you. Apart from this, if you have any doubt related to LinkedIn or coding. You can tell me by commenting below. That's all for today. See you in the next video. Till then keep learning and keep exploring.