After deciding that LinkedIn would be the best way to brand myself, I knew I had some research and thinking to do.

While I am nowhere near becoming a lawyer, I try to keep up with the Lawyerist Blog, which is the “lawyering survival guide.”  One of their career posts is dedicated to how law students should use LinkedIn.  I figured I would get a head start, and give my LinkedIn profile a makeover.

Lawyerist suggests following the five B’s to mastering LinkedIn: the Basics; Beefing up your profile; Building your network; Branding yourself; and Best practices for job searching.  The five B’s were a lot to absorb in one sitting, so I only focused on the basics of LinkedIn.

After reading the five B’s, I looked over my profile and pinpointed all of the areas that could use a little bit of love.  It is important here to be critical, examine the profile from the lens of a recruiter, and even ask a friend for some feedback.

I noticed the following flaws with my profile:

Professional Headline:

My “professional ‘headline’” was rather bland: Student at Scripps College.  Really?  Was I sleep deprived when I wrote that?  I must have not realized people could get that impression from my “Education” section.  I transformed my “headline” to something short and sweet, communicating a tiny piece of my interests and me.

Summary:

What summary?  I had none.  How am I supposed to brand myself when I do not even give people a summary of who I am?  For this section, I wrote about the kind of person I am, what I am currently doing, and what I would like to do in the future.

Experience:

Here I had been lazy and had listed every single job and internship I had ever had without even bothering to provide descriptions.  I narrowed down my experience to positions that would help me be more marketable and provided a brief description of the companies/organizations.

Additional Information:

I had minimum information here, so I decided to add a link to this blog as well as to my twitter account, which I will now be using for branding purposes.  I also added a couple of more interests and kept the “honors & rewards” section to a minimum.

If you’re going to use LinkedIn for networking, it is probably best to put some effort in it.  After all, LinkedIn will be your online presence and perhaps even the gateway to your dream job.  I made a mistake when I first created my LinkedIn account – I logged in and that was it.  It is definitely up to me to now take control and use this tool to an advantage.