LinkedIn and branding: brand yourself

As the world's largest professional network with more than 80 million members worldwide, LinkedIn can help you brand yourself. Our knowledge is goods now.  Companies, schools or other organizations who can give us jobs are our customers. As sellers, what can we do to enhance our products' value? LinkedIn provides a platform for both us and our customers. We may use the platform to display ourselves to others. In the following parts, I will discuss how to use PROFILE to brand yourself.
First of all is LinkedIn photo.  The photo may tell people about you. You are the brand. Opinions are formed in a nanosecond. And that means the photo at the top may be the most important part of your LinkedIn profile. So the photo should be natural. It is best taken recently. I can understand some people like to post their photo which was edited by Photoshop. But I don't think that it is suitable. LinkedIn is a profession platform. The hirers are looking for the people who can qualify their job and get along with colleagues instead of beautiful ones. Looking natural yet polished is far better. It is a headshot with nice shirt or blouse in a solid color.

Second is about SKILLS and EXPERIENCE. The hirers usually use keywords to search targets. Almost all the keywords are relative to skills and experience. So when you brand the two items, accurate keywords are necessary. To increase the interviews chance, you also need provide as many keywords as possible about your skills and experience. However, independent work experience should not be added. For example, if you want to find a software engineer position, the experience you worked as a waiter/waitress need not be put here.

Finally, your courses are also important. As new graduates, most people don't have work experience. In order to let the employers believe you are the person who they are looking for, you can show them what you learned.

In sum, branding yourself is the most important and difficult step before you go to job market. Besides the three sides above, we also have other things to do. Hopefully you can best use Linkedin to show you to hires.