How useful is LinkedIn for product marketers?
Is LinkedIn worth your attention to get a job you're looking for?
LinkedIn remains one of the hottest social media platforms both for job seekers and companies to find each and connect.
According to the statistics by Kinsta:
- there are currently 20 million companies actively using LinkedIn
- 90% of these companies use LinkedIn for recruitment purposes
- one of the reasons why LinkedIn is so popular among recruiters is that job candidates found through this platform will be 40% less likely to leave the company within the first 6 months
What effect do these numbers have on job candidates?
According to Kinsta's stats, 122 million users report getting an interview with a company through LinkedIn.
This is encouraging statistics. LinkedIn has 260 million users, and nearly half of them receive job proposals. So, as a job marketer, you'll be 50% likely to get a job interview or a proposal from a verified company.
However, whether it happens or not depends mostly on how effective your product marketer profile is, as this is the first thing a company will judge you by.
So, what does an effective product marketer profile on LinkedIn look like?
What steps should you take to create one?
Let's take a look.
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It All Starts with a Headline
If you first saw your LinkedIn profile, what would be the first thing that met your eye (after a profile picture, of course)?
Most of the profile headlines on LinkedIn contain a simple job description, which usually sounds too dry for a product marketer profile:
What would make it look more professional?
You can specify what your key job responsibilities are:
You can also add the main directions that your work involves:
How does it help to make your LinkedIn profile more effective?
Specifying your key job responsibilities in the headline of your profile or adding the directions you're focusing on in your work will increase your chances of matching to a company's requirements.
Note, however, that you shouldn't make your headline too extensive. This is more suitable for your summary, which we will talk about next.
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Use Storytelling for your Summary
The first thing that a recruiter pays attention to after reviewing your headline is the summary of your career. And there are different ways to approach it.
Usually, LinkedIn summaries are brief descriptions of main career points and accomplishments, not longer than 2-5 sentences.
However, you should treat your profile summary as a way to introduce recruiters to your career path rather than merely listing your key responsibilities, skills, and accomplishments.
So, why not try storytelling format for your LinkedIn summary?
After all, you're telling your professional story, and it looks better for a recruiter if you make it more personal. Here's a good example of a personal take on a product marketer job (involving personal insight and experience):
Companies look for that kind of dedication when they search for new candidates. Writing companies, for instance, who are looking for candidates for creative job positions, often pay attention to the candidates' profile summaries on LinkedIn to see how they approach their work and whether this approach matches a company's profile.
You should approach the experience section on your LinkedIn profile the same way.
A common mistake is treating this section as a job description in your CV.
However, it is better to tell about your experience at a company from a personal point of view, rather than simply listing your main responsibilities.
It sounds more genuine and credible for a recruiter to read a product marketer's experience summary that contains a personal perspective rather than dry facts.
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Pay Attention to the Skills
As for any job position, the list of skills defines the level of your professional development as a product marketer.
A product marketer's list of skills includes soft skills (cross-functional excellence and communication skills), as well as hard skills (market and product expertise, process management, etc.). And the more detailed this list is, the better.
So, every skill you have, from writing social media reports to the knowledge of computer programs and coding, you should include in your LinkedIn profile (even if it seems not to impact your employment options).
The list of your skills is what LinkedIn uses to match your profile to job posts from different companies, so making it as detailed as possible matters a lot.
In LinkedIn, you can break your skills into sections and also get endorsements for every skill.
Why do skill endorsement matter for an effective product marketer profile?
Endorsements add value and credibility to your skills. This is a way to support your experience as a recruiter can easily contact a person who endorsed your skill and ask about your professional experience, which helped you gain it.
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Thrive on Recommendations
One of the biggest advantages of LinkedIn is the possibility of posting recommendations on your profile. This is also one of the steps that many LinkedIn users omit.
What does a good recommendation on LinkedIn look like?
- It should explain a relationship between a person who gives a recommendation and their former employee.
- A LinkedIn recommendation should include a few details about the position a former employee occupied.
- It should explain what they have done to grow as a professional.
- A recommendation should explain how an employee's achievements impacted the development of the company.
Take a look at this recommendation on LinkedIn.
This recommendation, although quite brief, includes all the points we've mentioned above. Not only it includes the personal achievements of an employee, but it also goes into specifics of an employee's contributions to the growth of the company.
Why do recommendations matter?
Recommendations on LinkedIn add more credibility to your professional profile.
It's understandable why a person would ignore getting a general recommendation from a previous employer. Companies rarely ask for them, so it may seem like an unnecessary effort to ask for one and bother your former employer.
Nevertheless, LinkedIn recommendations are a different thing. They can hardly be faked, as they always provide a link to the profile of a person who gave a recommendation.
For a product marketer, having recommendations from previous employers plays a great role, as they get endorsement and support for their experience, which matters for their professional profile.
Invest Time and Effort into Your LinkedIn Profile
Building an effective product marketer profile on LinkedIn will take a lot of your time. However, the importance of making it look professional cannot be underestimated.
Hopefully, our tips will inspire you to create a professional product marketer profile on LinkedIn, make your profile more competitive, and connect with influential employers.
