How to clean up your social media presence to perserve your professionalism?

To start, your profile photo should be a close-up and you should be alone.

Your photo should aim to elicit an emotion – sympathy, respect, admiration, etc. You are seeking to create a sense of professionalism, so a blurry photo will not work!

Information

In LinkedIn, you don’t have those design disasters that occur if you have a creative CV and want to change anything. This means there’s no reason not to have your information up-to-date. Include every work experience (even if it wasn’t a paid position) and if you don’t have much relevant experience, include all other ones. Check your grammar, punctuation, and spelling. If your English is not that good, ask someone whose is to revise it. There’s no shame in asking for help.

Don’t create a section for just one thing. If you have 1 volunteering experience, even if it’s great, it means creating a whole section for “Volunteering”. That makes your profile seem larger but not with content, and that could be a problem.

Make sure you always talk in first person or neutral!

Recommendations

Many managers judge people they don’t know by their recommendations – both the ones they’ve received and those they’ve given. The truth is it’s hard to get recommendations, especially in the beginning. If you don’t have a long work history and haven’t been at least a manager, it’s probable that nobody has written you a recommendation because they don’t feel like they have to. If you’re fresh out of university and want to ask a professor to write something about you that may be a good option. Make sure they were your teacher in a class that is relevant to where you want your career to go!

Cover Photo

I can’t believe most people still haven’t put one and have that generic color back- ground. This is your chance to show a side of you! If you consider yourself an adven- turer, you could put a photo like the one above. Or maybe an abstract design if you want to show you are creative. Really, the profile photo has regulations (see point 1) but the cover one is absolutely up to you! For your information, the recommended image resolution is 1400×425.

Tips

• Try to not talk politics, religion or other touchy topics.
• Follow people that inspire you. Business news, insights and discussions, so follow tons of people from that sector. Many architects post about the future of the industry, so there’s that!
• When inviting people to connect with you, the default message is “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”. Boooring! Write a more personal sentence, even to people you don’t know.