Time is never over to pursue a new career. It is quite common for professionals to pursue a program or degree after spending years in the workforce with the objective of leveraging your degree to change their career/pursue the career of their choice. Among all the other things & with a dream role/ career in their mind, professionals face an uphill task on how to position their degree on LinkedIn.
Let us go LinkedIn’s section by section review:
- Headshot/Professional photograph: Your student pic or past employment headshot will work. However make sure that your pic is not fancy. Use any camera including your mobile phone camera & take a photograph with a plain background. Make sure that you carry a smile, your face, neck & top of shoulders are clearly seen.
- Professional Headline: Your professional headline should include the career you want to target. In some cases you can also mention your degree major or area/subject of concentration which aligns with your career target. For example “ XXX has worked in corporate finance, M&A & as an investment banker. He is going to complete from MBA & is looking to explore strategy consulting roles;
How his LinkedIn profile headline should be :
Strategy Consultant|Investment Banker|Financial Advisory/M&A
- Summary: If you have worked for 2 decades in industry in sales & marketing & are now looking to pivot your career leveraging your degree which you have just successfully completed, the purpose of summary is same- Portraying how you are a perfect fit for the role you are targeting to apply & what makes you unique. Ideally your summary should be structured in the following manner:
- Intro paragraph: Start by educating audience what you can do with the degree( you just completed/about to complete), how unique is your background & how you are fit for a particular role.
- Second Paragraph: Support the first paragraph by mentioning new skills you have acquired.
- In the final paragraph show marriage between your old experience & the new degree you have acquired.
- Contact information: As an executive resume writer, I always recommend my clients to include contact information- email & phone number at the top of your profile since it makes it convenient for your audience to contact you for a potential position. Prefer keeping your professional voice contact number different from your personal number since it will help you stay in touch with people in case of job loss.
- Skills: Create a skill section consisting of your relevant skills using keywords identified from the qualification section of job posting. Also include titles of most recent & relevant coursework.
- Highlights: Include 2 to 3 highlights from your internship, consulting projects or assignments you undertook or academic papers you have written showcasing how your new degree coupled with your years of experience makes you ready for the next big role of your choice.
- Experience: If you underwent some internship or real time consulting projects, include that in your experience section. Include a small para of accomplishments you made as a part of your internship/live consulting project.
- Education: While including your new degree/program, write more about the courses & electives you did, “A” grade you achieve in the electives/courses, special projects you undertook. Also include a letter of appreciation ( if any) you received from your professor.
- Volunteer Experience: Employers considered volunteer or pro bono work as important as paid work. So if you have any projects( included in the education section) you did as pro-bono, do not forget to reiterate the fact in this section.
- Skills & Endorsements: Do not forget to mention the skills in this section you detailed in summary. Please remember to pin top 3 skills most perfectly aligned with your target role.
- Honors & awards: If you won a scholarship or a contest or competition such as case challenge etc, do not forget to mention them.
- Recommendations: Do not forget to ask professors who have worked closely with you for recommendations. This enhances your credibility.
