You will be able to fill your profile with evidence a recruiter can take in at a glance.
Arjun teaches lower-secondary students and wants to move into corporate training, the field employers call learning and development. Arjun's headline and About section are done, and the rest of the profile now has to hold a recruiter's interest.
Imagine a recruiter searching for candidates. Your profile comes up, they read your headline and About section, and they want to know more, so they scroll. Most recruiters give up when they find a current job listed with nothing under the title, a role from four years ago with a single line of description, skills such as "Microsoft Word" and "teamwork", and not one recommendation. Lesson 4.1, "Headline and About: say who you help and how", dealt with the top of the profile, which brings people in. Whether they stay and contact you depends on what sits underneath: your experience entries, skills, recommendations and photo.
Most of this work is finished already. In module 3 you wrote a master CV in lesson 3.5, "Rebuild your CV", with result bullets under every role. Have it open as you go through your LinkedIn roles one at a time. For each, take the two or three bullets that are strongest and fit your target direction best, and paste them in.
Stop at two or three. Recruiters skim, taking in the opening lines of each role, and a longer list pushes your best result out of sight. LinkedIn also cuts each description short until someone clicks to expand it, so lead with the strongest bullet.
Arjun's teaching entry opens with the bullet that leads the CV too: designed a six-week revision programme for 35 lower-secondary students, later adopted by two other teachers in the department (example figures). Lesson 4.4 shows how to make the wording a little warmer for LinkedIn. Whatever you change in tone, every fact has to match the CV exactly.
Don't skip older jobs. A title with nothing beneath it makes the profile look half done, and missing years in your history make a reader wonder what happened. Where a role matters less to your new direction, a single result line is enough.
Recruiters can search LinkedIn by skill, so the skills you list affect which searches you show up in. Go to your market sheet, your record of which skills appear in your target job ads, and pick out the ones you can claim honestly. Enter them using the ads' own wording. Say "data visualisation" turned up in fourteen of twenty ads: list that exact phrase.
Next, delete the skills every applicant could claim and the ones unrelated to your target role. "Microsoft Word" and "teamwork" use up places that could go to skills that help you. Arjun took out "classroom management" and put in "instructional design", "facilitation" and "training needs analysis", three skills Arjun uses at work that also show up in learning and development ads.
Keep the test from module 3: if you couldn't discuss a skill in an interview, leave it off. A recruiter who found you by searching for that skill will bring it up when you speak.
A recommendation is a short note written by someone who worked with you, which appears on your LinkedIn profile. It's the nearest thing LinkedIn has to a reference. People reading your profile give it more weight than anything you write yourself, since the words come from another person.
Pick people who watched you work at first hand: a former manager, someone you worked alongside on a project, or a client. A small number chosen carefully does more than a wide request. Two specific recommendations from people who know your work are worth more than ten vague ones.
Most people you ask will want to help, then sit in front of an empty text box with no idea what to say. You get a far more useful note if your request suggests what they could cover. Tell them where you're heading, name the things you'd like mentioned, and finish with a line that lets them decline easily. Arjun wrote to a former head of department:
"Would you be willing to write a short LinkedIn recommendation? I'm moving into corporate training, so it would help most if you could mention the revision programme and the new-teacher workshops. No worries if you're too busy."
Naming the revision programme and the workshops gives the head of department something concrete to write about. The last sentence means they can say no without any awkwardness.
Your photo is how people recognise you. Someone you met at an event or spoke to on a call may search for you afterwards, and the photo tells them they've found the right profile. It also makes the page look like it belongs to a person, where a blank one looks like a placeholder.
Choose a recent, clear photo with only you in it and your face easy to see. A studio portrait isn't necessary. A friend can take it in good daylight with you standing against a plain wall. Leave out group shots, wedding photos cropped down to you, and any picture where it's hard to make you out.
Lesson 3.3, "What to leave off a Singapore CV", told you to keep the photo off your CV. The advice differs because the two do different jobs. A CV is a screening document, and a photo adds nothing to it. LinkedIn is a networking site, where people need to recognise one another, so a photo is expected there.
When every section is filled in, read the profile from the top down as a recruiter would. Each part should point the same way: your headline says what you want, your About section explains why you fit, your experience supplies the evidence, your skills get you found in searches, and your recommendations have someone else vouching for you.
For the activity, work on your last two roles and two recommendation requests, because those give the biggest improvement for the least effort.
Add result bullets to your last two roles, then send two recommendation requests that each suggest what to mention.
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