Donna Serdula

Your LinkedIn profile is more than just your resume! It’s your digital introduction and first impression to the world. Make sure that first impression is a good one by optimizing your profile. This handy Cheat Sheet offers quick references to tools and tips to help make optimizing your profile efforts easier.5 Tips to a Job Search Optimized ProfileWhen you are in the midst of a job search, it’s imperative your LinkedIn profile showcases you in the right light and makes a hiring manager, recruiter, or human resources professional want to reach out to learn more about you!

They are almost synonymous: LinkedIn and job search. It’s a shame, really. Often, connotation is what stops a lot of people from joining and interacting on this professional network. When you use LinkedIn for branding, reputation management, thought leadership, and business intelligence, a funny side effect happens.

LinkedIn search is a little peculiar. When you search by a person’s name in the LinkedIn search bar, it doesn’t matter if the person is in your network or not; his or her profile (provided there is one) appears in search results.But as you know, people don’t always search LinkedIn by name. When typical users search by keyword, the results that appear are from profiles that are in their LinkedIn networks — not the entire LinkedIn user database.

Whether you are working on your LinkedIn profile or just doing some good ol’ fashioned job research, coming up with the right keywords is challenging. The good news is that there are tools designed to assist you in finding the right keywords. Check out the following tools and strategies to find keywords for your LinkedIn profile.

Now that you’ve decided to optimize your LinkedIn profile, let’s make sure you didn’t miss any sections or make any mistakes. Your public LinkedIn profile is your online reputation and digital face to the world. ©Shutterstock/Monkey Business ImagesYour LinkedIn profile must be perfect, as this is how people see and judge you.

LinkedIn is one of the few social networking sites where you can remain quite passive and still experience amazing success. Imagine getting on Facebook or Twitter and doing absolutely nothing — nothing would happen.But on LinkedIn, simply by having an optimized profile infused with your keywords, people find you.

It's not always identity theft that stops LinkedIn users from wanting to provide their contact information on their profiles. There are times when someone may be dealing with a stalker or an abusive person. In these situations, LinkedIn does allow you to limit a person's access to your profile and LinkedIn activity.

The Interests area of the Additional Information section of your LinkedIn profile is where you connect with your reader on a more personal level by adding your hobbies and interests to your LinkedIn profile.Remember this: People do business with people. That's why when you walk into another person's office for the first time, the very first thing you do is look around.