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Imagine you’re interviewing for two great jobs at two great companies tomorrow. Today, before your interviews, you go on LinkedIn to check out the companies. The first one looks pretty good. You move onto the second, and wow. Every listed employee has a relevant header in line with the company’s brand. They all have similar photos where they’re smiling and happy. Their career trajectory is easy to follow. Their profiles are clean and updated, with great content and insights about the company.
Which of these companies do you want to work for? If you receive great offers from both, which one will stick in your mind as more impressive? If all else is equal, what’s going to be your tie breaker?
Humans are incredibly visual creatures; neuroscientists at MIT discovered that the human brain can process images in as few as 13 milliseconds. In other words, very fast.
Because of this, you always want your visuals to be striking and memorable. It’s the first impression viewers will have of whatever you’re creating, whether it be a product or your team’s LinkedIn profiles.
Having up to date and cohesive LinkedIn profiles will undeniably give your team and your company a legup on the competition. A united front always looks better than one that is not. And before you get stressed about your budget, or your overworked marketing team, relax -this is a simple way to help your marketing efforts that won’t cost you a dime.
Have Good Content-
Happy employees talk about their company. Encourage your employees to be active on LinkedIn. Tell them to write articles about their areas of expertise, or even share articles with their input. You want your employees to be active, thought-provoking members of the LinkedIn community. It will show prospective candidates what kind of people work at your company, and they will in turn be excited about coming to work for you.
Look at the Header-
Giving everyone on your team the same header image is an easy way to show a united front. The image should be something that aligns with your company’s branding, whether it be a logo, a set of colors, a particular image, etc. Anything that will identify a person as a member of the collective team works. Choose a clear, high-quality image, and make sure the dimensions are correct so it doesn’t get cut off or look blurry.
Profile Picture-
These are a bit harder to customize, but not something you should rule out entirely. The best way to do this is to designate a time during the work day for your team to take new LinkedIn profile pictures. Choose the background, whether it be a cool wall at work, the street behind your building, or even a solid colored wall (for a fun look, try a different colored wall for each member of the team).
Even more important than the background is how your team members look. Is the picture clear? Is it blurry? Are they smiling? Above all, they should be smiling; no one wants to reach out to someone who looks angry.
Work Experience-
Talk with your team and figure out what will be most helpful for your company. If your company has a lot of internal growth, make sure all your employees have their movement upward recorded on their profiles by listing all positions they’ve held with correct dates. If they’ve worked at large, easily recognizable companies, make sure that experience is on there; it will show that they prefer your company over wherever they were previously, and thus make your company look more desirable. You want the work experience to tell a story of the illustrious careers your employees have had in the field, because you want to inspire your future candidates to crave the same kind of growth and experience.
For the More Advanced User-
Make everyone’s layouts the same- Either have everyone list a bulleted list of responsibilities or have no one. Make sure each job on everyone’s work experience has a logo, title, and dates.
Give everyone similar headlines- Have them say “Position at Company” or get creative and come up with a catchy headline template (“Innovative Position Creating the Future at Company”) Have fun with it!
Have a company hashtag- and have your employees use it in all of their posts. Perhaps you choose #DevelopersofTomorrow, and then this phrase will become associated with your company because your employees will saturate the market with it.
Feel free to create your own or change these as you wish. The important thing to keep in mind is the more effort you put into this, the more it will show, and the more impressive your company and your team will look to anyone who looks you up.
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