LinkedIn is the primary social media site for job seekers, recruiters, and people who want to expand their professional networks. More than 1 billion people are members, according to LinkedIn, and members live in more than 200 countries.

Every month, tens of thousands of companies use LinkedIn to recruit talent. In fact, according to this Zippia survey:

  • 87% of recruiters say LinkedIn is the most effective platform for discovering talent.
  • 94% of recruiters use the platform to actively vet and evaluate a candidate's background before making a hiring decision.

“As a former recruiter myself, I can tell you that LinkedIn is one of the first places many recruiters go when searching for candidates for their open positions,” says Jennifer Katz, director of the Center for Career Advancement at Purdue Global. “Using LinkedIn effectively can help job seekers make valuable connections, increase knowledge and visibility in their field, and open doors to new career opportunities.”

The power of LinkedIn comes from its ability to match individuals with companies, groups, and other individuals who share interests, experience, knowledge, and education. For anyone looking to hire or get hired, an optimized LinkedIn profile is vital.

How to Create a LinkedIn Profile

Let’s start with your headline. It’s the first thing recruiters see, and it’s searchable. Not only do you need to include keywords that hiring managers search for, but you also want to use a click-worthy headline. (If you don’t customize your headline, it defaults to your current job title.)

A screenshot of Joe Pulizzi's LinkedIn headline

You have 220 characters to tell prospective employers who you are, what you’ve done, and what you can do for them. In the example above, the LinkedIn member (Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi) managed to pack three facts about himself into his headline.

Maximize what you add to your headline, so you can increase the likelihood of your profile coming up in search results for relevant positions.

Tips for Writing Your LinkedIn Headline

  • Think of it as your short elevator pitch — you have only seconds to tell the reader what you do and why they should keep reading your profile.
  • Avoid jargon and cutesy terms such as “chief happiness manager.”
  • Use titles and job descriptions that are familiar to your industry (“client relations manager” might fit better than “chief happiness manager”).
  • Include measurable facts if you can: “Manage a portfolio of $5 million.”
  • Include accolades your employers, coworkers, and clients have shared with you in the past, such as, “I deliver results ahead of time.”
  • Read your headline out loud. How does it sound? Does it roll off the tongue, or do you stumble with some phrases? Massage the message until it sounds smooth as you read it aloud.

Katz says it’s important to optimize your LinkedIn profile to make sure it gets noticed by the right people.

She adds that your profile should be as complete as possible and tailored to the type of position you seek. Using relevant keywords and transferable skills will help your profile show up when recruiters search for candidates with similar experience.

This is also a great opportunity to highlight special projects, certifications, involvement with student or professional organizations, volunteer work, and other accomplishments that speak to your commitment to your field.

Your LinkedIn Profile Photo Tips

A LinkedIn profile photo can help you get noticed. The platform reports that having a profile photo results in up to 21 times more profile views and 9 times more connection requests.

Your LinkedIn profile photo should be current, professional, and show you in a positive light.

  • Do appear approachable in your photo.
  • Don’t take a selfie.
  • Do touch up the photo if it needs to be lightened, darkened, or sharpened.
  • Don’t distort or over-stylize your photo using Photoshop or filters. Keep your photo real.

You should have a high-resolution square image, about 400 x 400 pixels (less than 8 MB in file size). When you upload, it will automatically be cropped to a circle.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Banner

What about the large image in the background of your LinkedIn profile? LinkedIn calls it your cover image, but it’s commonly referred to as your banner or background photo. Use this area to show other LinkedIn members who you are as a professional. Unless you’re a photographer, save the sunsets, family photos, and vacation pictures for your other social media accounts.

Your background image should represent who you are and what you do. Look at the profiles of other people in your profession — what do they do that catches your attention (in a good way)?

  • Find a stock image that relates to your field, such as an image of a computer for an IT professional or medical supplies for a health care provider. The banner photo size is 1584 x 396 pixels. If necessary, use a free photo editing site, such as Photopea or Fotor, to edit your photo.
  • However, be sure to skip the highly staged, cliché stock photos — such as a group of models in identical gray suits aggressively pointing at a laptop or shaking hands while smiling too wide. They can make your profile feel impersonal. Look for photos that look natural and candid.
  • Unsplash has beautiful images you can download and use with few restrictions. Browse their collection of free stock photos, wallpapers, textures, and patterns. See below for a couple of examples:
An image depicting the stock market.
A financial advisor might want to use an image of stocks or financial reports.
An image depicting computer code.
An IT specialist might use this picture of code for their background image.

You can also add other items to your profile, including documents, photos, videos, presentations, and links to published work. These materials can engage page visitors and motivate them to learn more about you and what you’ve accomplished.

Best Practices for Writing Your LinkedIn About Section

Writing about yourself is no easy task, whether it’s a cover letter, author bio, or your LinkedIn About section. These tips can make the process easier.

Leave out adjectives and adverbs and stick to the facts. Summarize your resume and include numbers and data to back up facts. Can you say you’ve reduced costs by 10%? Were you the highest-earning sales associate? Do you have skills that are in demand in your industry?

Summarize your experience and areas of expertise. Be honest — the internet makes it easy to fact-check claims of years of service or experience. Use a formula similar to this: “I have _________ years of experience in ___________________. I’m trained in ________________ and am an expert in ____________________.” You can also choose five skills to highlight in your About section.

Highlight areas of interest. Your areas of interest can be specific industries (health care, manufacturing, or travel and tourism, for example); or they could be categorical, such as retail, B2B, or tech startups. If you are open to a broad range of opportunities, be careful not to pigeonhole yourself with interests that are too narrow.

In the absence of real-world work experience, emphasize classroom skills. Employers know that college students, interns, and recent graduates may have limited real-world experience in their chosen fields. Don’t discount the customer service experience you gained while waiting tables in your younger years. Highlight coursework, group projects, and even your GPA to show employers that you’re ready for their team.

Use keywords. After you’ve written, edited, and rewritten your About section, review it and look for keywords that are relevant to your profession. Were there keywords you weren’t able to include in your title that you can work into your About section? Are there synonyms for those keywords that you might be able to work in naturally?

Build Out the Experience Section

Include keywords that are relevant to your profession. Review job postings that you’re interested in to find commonly used words and phrases, and, if you have those skills, incorporate them into your profile.

Don’t limit your experience to paid work, and don’t underestimate the work you did early in your career. Waiting tables, working retail, telemarketing, and other entry-level jobs are valuable training grounds for soft skills such as handling difficult people, solving problems, meeting deadlines, and working on teams.

Highlight volunteer work, internships, clubs, and student organizations you’ve participated in. Describe what your roles were with those organizations, and highlight transferable skills.

Claim Your Custom URL

LinkedIn lets you claim a vanity URL, which looks like this: linkedin.com/in/yourfullname. You can change your LinkedIn URL up to five times in 6 months. LinkedIn recommends choosing a URL that is a combination of your name and profession, such as linkedin.com/in/janedoeengineer. You can use 3 to 100 characters for your URL, but symbols and special characters aren’t allowed.

Verify Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn lets you verify your identity, workplace, or education to help build trust with recruiters and other professionals. Once verified, a badge appears next to your name, letting others know your information has been confirmed. Verification is free and optional, and availability varies. To get started, go to your profile, select Resources, and click “Verify now” to see your options.

Add Skills to Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn allows you to highlight 100 skills on your profile. Resist the urge to use up all 100 skills unless they all really fit; a smaller number of solid, relevant skills is usually better than filling every available slot. Again, it can be helpful to review the descriptions of open job postings to help you identify skills.

As you expand your network, your connections can endorse you for the skills they know you have. LinkedIn’s search and recommendation algorithms use your skills and endorsements to match your profile with recruiter searches, so definitely fill out this section and request endorsements from your network.

>>Read More: The Top 8 Soft Skills That Employers Want

Do You Need Recommendations on LinkedIn?

The difference between endorsements and recommendations is that endorsements are keywords that your connections can click to endorse a skill you have. The issue with endorsements is that anyone can click them, and there’s really no validation process to ensure the LinkedIn profile aligns with the endorsed skill.

Recommendations, on the other hand, tend to carry more weight, especially if they’re well written and from someone who’s worked with you. While not having recommendations won’t necessarily bar you from getting a job, good recommendations can make a solid impression.

The bottom line: Make sure recommendations are well written and reflect who you are as a professional.

Other Best Practices for Using LinkedIn

As more job seekers and hiring directors use LinkedIn to connect, there are a few things you should do to get noticed. There are new techniques that savvy users can employ.

Follow Relevant People and Companies

Follow employers you’d like to work for, professionals in your field, and relevant professional associations. Their updates can help you learn about company priorities, industry developments, and potential job opportunities. LinkedIn Recruiter also lets recruiters filter candidates by whether they follow their company, so following a potential employer can signal your interest.

Go beyond reading updates. Leave thoughtful comments, ask relevant questions, and share insights from your work or coursework. These interactions can give you a starting point for professional conversations and help you learn more about the organizations you’re considering.

Search for Industry Topics

Use LinkedIn’s search bar to explore topics related to your career goals, such as “health care technology” or “cybersecurity trends.” Select the Posts filter to find relevant discussions, then explore the people and companies contributing to them. LinkedIn supports searches for posts, people, companies, jobs, and more.

Keeping up with your field matters: LinkedIn’s 2025 Work Change Report: AI Is Coming to Work projects that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change by 2030. Industry discussions can help you identify emerging tools, skills, and trends to investigate further. Use what you learn to guide your professional development, prepare informed interview questions, and update your profile as you gain relevant experience.

Go Beyond Your Resume

While it is often recommended to keep your resume to two pages or less, LinkedIn gives you more room to detail your job experience. This presents an opportunity since adding more information about what you’ve accomplished also makes your LinkedIn profile more visible in search engines. Using keywords recruiters include in their searches can help.

Another advantage a LinkedIn profile offers over a resume is that you can upload visual work samples to your positions. If you don’t yet have professional industry experience, you can add samples of projects you’ve worked on in school that relate to the career you want. As you complete new projects or achieve new accomplishments, you can update your profile by adding them to each relevant position.

Review Your Privacy Settings

You likely want your profile to be public so that it’s easy for recruiters and employers to find you and research you. But you may want to make some settings private, such as actions you take on LinkedIn, like notifying your network when you update your profile. Check out LinkedIn’s visibility settings to ensure your settings are updated.

Let Recruiters Know You’re Open to Opportunities

You can put an Open to Work banner on your profile picture to let recruiters know you’re looking for a new role. To do so, go to your profile and click “Open to” under your photo/headline. From there, fill out your preferences.

Thankfully, you don’t have to let everyone (such as your current boss and coworkers) know you’re looking for work. You can opt to make the banner:

  • Public to all LinkedIn members, making your status visible to your entire network
  • Visible only to recruiters, making your profile banner visible only to recruiters using paid LinkedIn recruiter tools

Use the AI-Powered Job Search

LinkedIn offers its own AI-powered job search function that uses everyday language, not exact keywords, to find relevant roles. To use it:

  1. Go to the LinkedIn homepage or the main Jobs tab, and go to the search bar in the top left corner.
  2. Describe the job you’re looking for in plain language, making sure to include location, experience level, skills, and employment type.
  3. Use filters to refine your results.

>>Read More: 6 Ways to Use AI in Your Job Search

Set Up Job Alerts

LinkedIn will send you relevant job opportunities as they arise. Click on the Jobs tab to set up job alerts for positions related to your field.

You can get email summaries with opportunities based on profession, specialty, location, and other factors. The more you tweak your settings and interests, the more precise the alerts will be.

Post About What You Know, Even Now

Consider posting about what you’re going through as you’re working or looking for work. LinkedIn recommends posting two to five times a week.

Here are some best practices for your own posts:

  • Be yourself and offer your own perspective. LinkedIn doesn’t always have to be about work. Some successful posts come from professionals about lessons they’ve learned, their appreciation for their team, or even about staying positive. Share and comment on those posts, and offer up similar ones.
  • Discover and comment on relevant conversations. Find what people are talking about and join in. Discover a relevant new tip about job hunting and share it.
  • Share your experiences. Let people know what you’re thinking and what you’re doing. Share your experiences looking for work, interviewing remotely, and even what your home office setup looks like. There are many people out there who can relate.

Get Started Today: Career Services Can Help

From the day you start your online degree program at Purdue Global to the moment you graduate — and beyond — our Career Services team is here to support you. Career planning is part of our curriculum, and we partner with instructors and advisors to ensure your education prepares you for the real world.

Some of the services we offer:

  • Resume review and advice
  • Referrals to career-related resources
  • Social media profile review (including LinkedIn)
  • Coaching on how to articulate your skills and experience

Take our interactive career assessment to discover your career path, and then request more information about our online programs.

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About the Author

Purdue Global

Earn a degree you're proud of and employers respect at Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. Accredited and online, Purdue Global gives you the flexibility and support you need to come back and move your career forward. Choose from 175+ programs, all backed by the power of Purdue.

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