How to get started on LinkedIn the right way in 2025 (part 2)

Last week we talked about the most common LinkedIn mistakes at the very top of your profile. Let's dive into mistakes in the rest of a common LinkedIn profile.

Welcome back friends! 👋

We’re moving right ahead with this LinkedIn basics series. Your LinkedIn profile is where a LinkedIn journey starts, but there are so many moving pieces to it. Let’s jump right in, shall we?

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LinkedIn profile must haves: part 2

Last week we covered how to optimize your profile picture, banner photo, open-to-work banners, connection count, headline, location and current employer.

All of these sections can be found at the very top of your profile, without the viewer needing to scroll down. These are where the first impression is really made.

But what about after you’ve captured their attention and ave convinced the viewer to scroll down? The following sections are where you can really seal the deal on landing a coffee chat or interview!

(P.S. Don’t forget you can schedule a personalized audit call with me here!)

1. Missing profile or banner photos

The visual elements at the very top are where eyeballs will go first when a hiring manager or recruiter lands on your profile. That means you need to optimize these elements to make the best first impression you can!

Your profile picture should be professional, high quality and smiling. Invest in a professional headshot. But if you can’t, make sure you’re taking your picture in natural lighting.

But your banner picture is also precious real estate to convey info about your skills. You can make a customized one using Canva templates and it should at the very least show your name, target role and contact info.

2. About section

This is the one place where you can really showcase who you are not just as a professional, but also as a person because this is your chance to share your story and the opportunities you’re looking for.

You should include 3-5 short paragraphs explaining your professional background/qualifications, what opportunities you’re targeting, what you like to do outside of work, and lastly your contact info (ideally email) so that recruiters can reach you directly with jobs.

3. Featured section

Showcase accomplishments or pieces of work you’re most proud of in this section.

Most beginner profiles will not take advantage of the featured section because early career professionals will often think “I don’t have any major accomplishments!”

If you haven’t been recognized for huge awards, that’s ok! If you’ve contributed to any efforts at your company that are public, share the link to that initiative. If you’ve written a LinkedIn post about an accomplishment or that introduces yourself, this is the best place to share a glimpse of who you are. Lastly, if you’ve shared content on other platforms or built anything you want to share with the world, link those here too. You can think of this as your highlight reel section!

4. Activity section

Your activity section shows, well, how active you are on LinkedIn. And why would you want to appear active here? Because as we mentioned with your connection count, the more active you are, the more likely recruiters will reach out to you with opportunities because there’s a high chance you’ll actually respond to them.

There are three “tiers” of LinkedIn activity.

First, and least impactful, is liking posts. It doesn’t contribute much to conversations or encourage people to check out your profile, but it’s the easiest to do and shows recruiters you’re logging in at least once in a while.

Second and perhaps the most likely way you’ll be doing “activity” on LinkedIn is commenting on people’s LinkedIn posts. It’s not as, shall we say, bold, as writing your own posts, but it’s still an effective way to share your thoughts on the platform and establish your expertise—which will then increase the likelihood of recruiters finding your profile and reaching out with opportunities.

Third, as you probably have guessed, is writing your own posts. It’s the most effective way of being discoverable on LinkedIn because posts are the only way you’ll end up on the feeds of people outside of your immediate network (aka the 2nd and 3rd+ connections).

Now I’m not saying everyone has to become a LinkedIn influencer to be able to land jobs through the platform. But there are definitely right and wrong ways to share posts on LinkedIn. And we’ll be covering that next week because the topic of LinkedIn posts deserves its on discussion!

5. Experience section

Many often think of this section as a 1-for-1 copy of what’s in their resumes. It certainly can be a copy, but there are a few differences between the two if you want your experiences to really attract relevant job opportunities.

This section should absolutely be impact-oriented just like your resume should. What I mean by that is each bullet should focus on the impact of your responsibilities at each job, rather than the responsibilities themselves. And the best way to talk about that impact is through the XYZ formula: “Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z.”

That’s the format you should be following in your resume too. But an advanced LinkedIn profile technique I recommend is withholding some of the “as measured by Y”s from your LinkedIn experiences, and only keeping them in your resume.

Why? Because you want to leave recruiters wanting more. You want them to have a reason to reach out to you directly for an interview, rather than revealing all your cards from the get go. My recommendation is to leave in 1-2 metrics in each experience on your profile.

6. Education/licenses and certifications section

These two sections are pretty straightforward, but I want to call out two notes.

For your education, leave off graduation years. You don’t want to give recruiters and hiring managers any reason to be biased against you.

For your licenses and certifications, it’s best to only list the most relevant qualifications so that your profile is as targeted toward your ideal role/industry as possible.

7. Recommendations

Many people overlook this section, probably because they’re too afraid to go out and ask colleagues for recommendations. But having at least one recommendation on your profile goes such a long way, precisely because so few people have recommendations.

You should be messaging old managers or alternatively colleagues with whom you had a great working relationship to request recommendations. But the key is making the process as easy as possible for them to provide their recommendation.

Don’t bother using the LinkedIn feature to automatically send them a recommendation request (it’s too generic). Send them a message saying this instead:

“Hi [name],
I hope you’ve been doing well since our [name of mutual company or school] time together. I’d really appreciate a brief recommendation from you because I’m in the process of setting up my LinkedIn profile. It would be great if you could mention our time together working on [project], where I contributed [your specific impact on the project] in the recommendation, and [any other details that you want them to remember]. I would be so grateful for your time and happy to return the favor with a recommendation for your profile as well.
Thank you in advance,
[your name]”

8. Skills section

This section comes at the very bottom, but it should not be overlooked! The reason is this section is how you can show up in recruiters’ searches for candidates.

It’s important to remember that LinkedIn isn’t just a place for job seekers to find job opportunities. It’s also how recruiters find those job seekers, and they often do so by searching for specific skills, and seeing a list of people who list those skills on their profiles.

But simply having the skill on your profile isn’t enough. You want to ensure you show up higher up in these search results for recruiters. One of the ways you can do that is through endorsements on your skills.

Let’s say you and another candidate with otherwise all the same qualifications as you show up in a recruiter’s search results for the skill “Programming.” If you have 3 endorsements on that skill but they only have 1, you’ll show up higher in the recruiter’s search results for programming.

And how do you actually get endorsements on your skills? By endorsing others first! But the key is making sure people endorse relevant skills for you, aka skills that the jobs you’re actually targeting want! So here’s what you’re going to do:

First make sure you take note of the most commonly requested skills in jobs you’re targeting. Scan the qualifications section of each job posting and make note of key phrases and industry jargon that commonly pop up across multiple postings.

Then make sure you’re adding these skills to your own profile by clicking the “+” button in the skills section.

Next, you need to order these skills by clicking the pencil button, then the three dots button, followed by the “Reorder” option.

Shuffle the most relevant skills all the way to the top. This is because people who visit your profile won’t want to scroll all the way down your list of skills, especially if you have a lot listed (which is totally ok btw. You can list as many as you want). So make it easy for your potential endorsers by moving the skills you want most endorsed to the top.

Last step: actually get endorsements by endorsing others first. The lowest hanging fruit are former colleagues, friends and family. Trust me when I say that a random endorsement on people’s profiles is not weird at all. The whole point of LinkedIn is networking and supporting each other!

You can then let them know you’ve endorsed them for certain skills, but oftentimes they will return the favor without you needing to ask for it. Over time, as you get more endorsements and your profile gets more views because you’re consistently sharing your thoughts on the platform, random strangers will endorse your skills. So don’t be weirded out! Just make sure you return the favor for them when the time comes (:

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Whew, that was a long one! As you can tell, there are so many sections you can optimize in a LinkedIn profile. Keep in mind, this can be done over time. So don’t put too much pressure on yourself to have the perfect LinkedIn profile immediately!

In the meantime, if you want a quick and visual cheat sheet to keep track of the many things you should be doing to optimize your profile, you can grab my guide here.

Next week, we’re talking about how to get started writing your own LinkedIn posts, so stay tuned!

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That’s it for this week’s newsletter! See you for the next episode of The Data Diaries soon 👋

- Megan

And in case you don’t know who I am, I’m Megan Lieu, Data Scientist-turned-Developer Advocate who has helped thousands of job seekers through my content on LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as my courses on LinkedIn Learning. I’ve learned a lot from the ups and downs of my data career, and sharing the lessons has helped me build a community of 275k+ tech and data professionals.