LinkedIn Guidelines

Why include a LinkedIn URL on the resume?

Including a LinkedIn profile can boost your chances of landing an interview by nearly 48%. According to LinkedIn, a well-crafted profile is up to 40 times more likely to receive contact offers and 18 times more likely to appear in search results.

LinkedIn Profile Pictures and Banners

Choosing the right profile picture is important because it can increase your chances of appearing in search results by 18 times.

• Make sure your face takes up at least 60% of the frame: Crop the picture a little bit below your shoulder to just above your head. It feels close but it looks the best in the feed

• Choose the right expression: Try to pick a picture where you’re smiling! You can also use FaceApp to make your face smile more if you want LOLLL 

• Wear what you’d wear to work: Wear clothes that match your level of dressiness at work. You don’t need to be over or underdressed. Solid color clothes tend to do best on camera

• Choose a background that isn’t distracting: Keep the background simple and use colors that will complement your face.

• You can also use different AI headshot photo generators

  • Fotor 

  • HeadshotPro

  • Aragon AI

  
  

• Create a great LinkedIn banner/background

  • Insert video tutorial using Canva
    
    

LinkedIn Header: Introduce Yourself

• There are many good ways to do LinkedIn headers, here are a few examples we like that have the right mix of concise, specific, and impactful: 

  • Software Engineer @ ShippingStartup | Ruby on Rails

  • Senior Software Engineer @ Centered Mental Health | Backend microservices, growth metrics

  • Software Engineer @ OpenAI | Ex-Meta, Ex-Amazon

  • Backend/Data Engineering @ Slack, Data & AI

  • Software Engineer, Data Platform at Spotify

  • Staff Platform Software Engineer (Go | K8S | Python | Rails | React | SRE)

  • Senior Software Engineer @ Zapier | Full Stack Development

  • Software Engineer (AI & Full-stack)

  • Frontend Engineer | React, TypeScript & JavaScript

  • Software Engineer at April | Ex-Airbnb, Modern Treasury

  • Frontend Engineer with 6+ years of experience | Invested in people-focused products

  • Former Software Engineer @ Rent The Runway - Open to new opportunities!

⚠️ Things to potentially not do:

• Senior Software Engineer (without the company or any other details)

• Anything too corny/non-descriptive 

• Listing too many skills, Ex:

  • Senior IOS developer at XYZ | SWIFT | SwiftUI | Objective-c |JAVA | JavaScript | Typescript | Agile

  • Python| Java| Databases| SDET | kubernetes|Storage| File System| Automation Framework|NAND Validation-eMMC| NFS

LinkedIn Summary: Tell Your Story

In our opinion, the LinkedIn bio is mostly about providing companies with valuable information from a searchability & skill matching standpoint. While it's not essential to have a standout bio, a well-crafted one can be good for generating excitement about you during the interview process, so it’s probably worth the extra 20 minutes (at least to repurpose your resume using Chatgpt!!). It also offers an opportunity to showcase your communication skills and passions, moreso than the resume. Here are some really lovely real bios from members of the Leopard network:

Example: 

I'm a software engineer and crisis hotline counselor. Passionate about making the world a little bit better through code 🌎

Full-stack (leaning backend) engineer with 5 years of experience. I've worked at Airbnb pre-IPO scaling the app and driving toward service-oriented architecture, and at Modern Health (YC W18) as one of its early stage engineers. I solve problems from first principles and architect systems for long-term maintainability.

Much of my expertise is in backend and API development, but I like to consider myself a generalist who enjoys getting involved across the stack - frontend, backend, infrasec, and UI/UX design. I'm a voracious learner and pick up new technologies quickly.

Example:

I'm a frontend-focused software engineer who is looking for a fully remote frontend-leaning role and enjoys working with React, React Native, and Node.js.

I'm particularly interested in designing and building systems and application-specific architectures on the frontend. I love collaborating with others and collecting bits of context wherever I can to understand the bigger picture and cross-functional concerns of the business, but I also have a natural inclination to analyze the details of a project for cases that may not have been considered.

I've worked in the healthcare industry for the past few years, but I'm also very interested in the ed-tech space and generally open to working in other verticals; I'd love to work at a company that is mission-driven, and I have a special place in my heart for Japanese and foreign languages in general, so something that provides an opportunity for me to integrate my interest in languages into my work would be a plus :)

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I'm a software engineer/problem-solver/human interested in the intersection of computer science, math, product, and people. In the past, I've worked on high-throughput, low-latency systems, backend design of predictive systems, building out data pipelines, and product-centric apps. Now, I help build solutions to some neat problems in the cybersecurity space!

I care about promoting inclusivity + psychological safety in teams, and I also care a lot about understanding the "why" and not just the "how", and being a good, genuine human being that gets the opportunity to solve interesting problems (they come in many shapes) with other good, genuine human beings.

I also have hobbies! In my free time, I see a lot of live music, go to a lot of music festivals, look at real estate, play MtG, chronically overuse exclamation marks, catalog and do analytics on the contents of my closet in Airtable, and strategize ways to get better at the game of SET.

Some stuff I've used before:

Rust, Python, Golang, C, Java, GraphQL, Django, Datadog, Data Sketches, Docker, AWS, Kubernetes, Linux, MapReduce, Kafka, Apache Druid, Hadoop, MySQL, Vertica, Grafana, R, Stata, SPSS, Protobuf (is this a keyword people actually search for?), Jenkins, CI/CD, Spark, TensorFlow, PyTorch, ROS, Nengo

Linkedin Experience Section

• Use Bullet Points for Clarity: When you're putting together your work experience on your profile, try breaking it down into bullet points for each position. This way, it's easier for recruiters to see what you've accomplished and what you can bring to the table.

  • Example: Designed, built, and maintained features for the Audible on Alexa team, using Java and AWS infrastructure, for user engagement (narration speed adjusting, book recommendations) and BI metrics-gathering.

• Use Action-Oriented Language: When you're writing about your accomplishments, it's helpful to start each point with a strong action verb. This lets you clearly communicate what you did and catch the reader's attention.

  • Example Action Words: "Developed," "Led," "Implemented," "Increased."

  • Examples:

    • Implemented a PostgreSQL database migration to reduce PHI storage.

    • Researched an open-source package to generate realistic health data, built an MVP, and scaled once it proved useful.

    • Designed and implemented the company’s initial GraphQL schema to support the enterprise web app.

    • Developed backend REST and gRPC endpoints and a GraphQL server/schema.

    • Created support documentation that empowered and enabled the user community to extend skills, leverage system features, and find resolutions to questions without intervention from the support team.

    • Managed distributed systems through the design, development, and maintenance of diagnostic, monitoring, alert, and mitigation tools.

    • Defined & implemented the Resiliency, Reliability, and performance strategy 

    • Improved reliability of the internal documentation pipeline by resolving bugs which helped increase developer productivity by 10% 

    • Planned and executed AWS cost reduction plan which reduced the team’s monthly AWS costs by 22%

    • Successfully engineered and launched React Native migration from app’s initial architecture in Cordova.

    • Developed Centered iOS native app from prototype to production and launched in the App Store.

    • Architected and wrote REST APIs for mobile apps using Python.

• Quantify Achievements: It's always a good idea to include numbers or specific results when talking about your accomplishments. This provides concrete evidence of your impact. 

  • Example: 

    • Reduced cloud engineering expenditures and loss by 5% by implementing proactive maintenance procedures.

    • Redesigned and launched the company’s main product page, leading to a 30% increase in user engagement and a 25% increase in sales conversions, by implementing responsive design principles and optimizing page load times across various devices and browsers.

    • Developed and deployed a microservices architecture for a high-traffic e-commerce platform, resulting in a 40% improvement in server response times and a 35% reduction in downtime by leveraging containerization and orchestrating with Kubernetes.

  
  

• Highlight Relevant Skills: When describing your work experience, focus on the skills and accomplishments that are most relevant to the jobs or industries you're interested in. 

  
  

  • Example:  

    • Developed HIPAA-compliant, user-facing web and mobile app features using Typescript, React/React Native, and Node.js/AWS/GraphQL/Kubernetes.

    • Designed software in Go for specialized monitoring applications, tuned petabyte-scale Elasticsearch logging clusters, interfaced with AWS cloud partners on new product testing and features, Terraform infrastructure as code, high-impact incident management, and on-call blue and purple team security work. 

    • Developed web application using Angular4 including writing components/directives using TypeScript/HTML/CSS and class in the controller which can handle different test calls from the client side, and integrated user-facing elements with server-side logic. 

    
    

• Incorporate Keywords: It's helpful to include industry-specific keywords that match the jobs you're interested in. This way, you'll have a better chance of showing up in search results. Just choose keywords that relate to your skills and the types of roles you are looking for.

  • Example: Full-stack engineer who drove backend development of Wishlists, helped move the pricing display infrastructure from monolith -> SOA, ​rewrote the frontend architecture pattern​ of listing reviews with Redux, and led a number of high-profile features on the listing page.

    
    

• Show Progression: Make it clear when your role or responsibilities have expanded within a company. This can be shown through promotions or by detailing the growth of projects or teams you've led. It illustrates your ability to take on more complex challenges.

  • Example: As one of the first engineers at Centered, I founded the Centered Dashboard client-side app end-to-end. This platform is being used daily by hundreds of Centered practitioners, to view reporting analysis, manage the server integration configurations, and introduce PRO features that generate the company revenue with premium features.

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• Update Regularly: Regularly review and update your Professional Experience section to reflect your most current accomplishments and responsibilities. This ensures your profile remains relevant and engaging.

Skills and Endorsements

• Actively seek endorsements from peers, as recommendations from individuals with similar skills are highly valued

  
  

📽️ How to Add Skills to Your LinkedIn Profile

📽️How To Ask For Recommendations On LinkedIn

Customize Your LinkedIn URL

• A personalized LinkedIn URL not only looks more professional but also improves your searchability on Google.

📽️How To Create A Custom LinkedIn Profile URL