10 Crucial Mistakes Professionals Make on LinkedIn

Oct 29, 2013

LinkedIn is the leading professional social network in the world, with most recruiters going through a candidate’s LinkedIn profile before recruiting them. In spite of the importance of their LinkedIn profiles, it is absurd how most of the professionals make glaring mistakes in their profiles which obviously puts off the recruiter even before one has given the interview.

Let’s look at some of the common mistakes professionals make on LinkedIn:

1. Your Degree is not your Experience

The most common mistake is to write your educational qualification in the experience section or vice versa like in this snapshot. Your “Experience” section should include only your job details and the “education” section should include only your education details.

2. Unprofessional Photo

Let us understand one thing; nobody is going to “like” your picture on LinkedIn, so no glamorous pics and strictly NO GROUP PICS. Yes, I have seen group pictures being put up as a LinkedIn pic. By now, you all must have at least one picture in professional attire to put up on LinkedIn.

3. Blank/Irrelevant Activities and Societies

If you’ve got it, flaunt it. But be very careful of what you flaunt. Activities and Societies are an excellent opportunity to put forward your leadership, decision making, event management skills. Also one needs to be careful not to confuse them with interests. It’s not what you like to do, but what you have done.

4. Incomplete profile

Make your profile 100% complete; the parameters there state how it should be complete. Don’t put it off till tomorrow because that tomorrow won’t come. It’s very important when somebody is searching for a particular role or a particular trait. The chances of your profile appearing in search results increases with how complete your profile is.

5. Outdated profile

Another common mistake I have observed is that profiles with the heading “Working at“ refers to the company they have previously worked at. Make sure that you keep updating your profile, to what you are doing currently.

6. No Recommendations/Endorsements

Getting Recommendations is a tough task, and there is a tendency to say “yaar kaun likhe”, or “baad main likh dunga yaar”. If one can get good recommendations written specially in your previous work experience, or internship, then it’s very good, otherwise LinkedIn has introduced skills and endorsements especially for lazy people like us. One must make sure to update their skills and get endorsed for them, which compared to recommendations is very easy.

7. No Groups Joined

There are many professional groups around; join them, because it serves three purposes, One, it shows on your profile, and shows a person’s interested in that sector. Secondly, there are plenty of good discussions and job opportunities that go on within those groups, so you should leverage them. Thirdly, you can connect with somebody even if you are not his/her 2nd or 3rd connection, if you are part of the same group.

8. No companies followed

Have you got a dream company? Follow it, see what it is doing, what kind of people are there, and most importantly connect with their HRs. See if they have any requirement. Don’t shrink from sending out requests to connect with people. LinkedIn is not Facebook, so the more you connect, the more people get added to your network through your 2nd or 3rd connections.

9. Stagnated Profile

Along with having a perfect profile on LinkedIn, one should stay active in terms of posting updates or how you see things changing in your areas of interest. Let the world know that you exist by engaging in conversations and actively participating in discussions.

10. Summary written in wrong tense

If your profile is written in first person, make sure you write your summary in the first tense as well, but if your profile is in the form of third person, your summary also needs to be in the same tense.

Are you making any of the above mistakes? Well, it’s never too late to make amends.