According to Firmex, finance professionals cannot afford to be not on LinkedIn. A significant number of organizations acquire talent in the financial industry through LinkedIn.
Especially for aspiring professionals, your internet presence matters a lot as recruiters are most likely to search your name on the internet before making a decision about your application.
As an aspiring banker on a professional platform, you should consider changing the outlook of your profile, to garner the recruiter’s attention. Your profile is unlikely to get noticed if it is out-of-date and inaccurate.
Here’s how you can optimize your LinkedIn profile:
Headline
Here’s an example of a good headline for a banker:
“Aspiring Banker majored in finance specializing in forecasting and risk management best practices”.
Scrolling through most professional profiles for bankers on LinkedIn, these individuals pay little attention to the headline.
A well-optimized headline gives the recruiters reasons to click on a profile. Though you just have 120 characters to make it great and charm the recruiter.
You can include pointers on what you are trying to achieve as a banker, or include your major as a way of connecting the skills-gap. If you are an MBA degree holder, then you can reflect this on your headline along with the major.
Though here are a few things you should know about creating a headline:
- Be professional and avoid writing words like “superstar worker”, “top performer”, etc.
- Be discreet with your job search, don’t directly mention “looking for a job”, “unemployed”, etc.
- Research on other professional’s headlines with a network presence.
- Include the usage of strong adjectives/action verbs.
Connections
On LinkedIn, develop meaningful connections with professionals and recruiters. With little effort, you can significantly increase your number of connections.
However, having 5000+ connections is not valuable if they are irrelevant to your interests. Hence, keep your connections limited to professionals in the finance industry.
- Connect with individuals that are relevant in the finance industry and send a personalized message along with the connection request.
- You are most likely to get ignored if you mindlessly send out requests. Though LinkedIn advocates being active, you should derive an invitation strategy for effective network expansion.
- Message recruiters that are hiring professionals in the finance industry and ask them for advice on how you can further optimize your profile.
Professional Experience
Your LinkedIn profile works as a digital resume. It should give an idea of a constructive career progression. Hence, LinkedIn profile optimization becomes quite important.
- Write points in a bullet form, don’t include long paragraphs.
- Mentioning your roles and responsibilities isn’t ideal. Construct the points in a way that showcase all your accomplishments & contributions.
- Add your projects separately; do not add them in the career highlights section.
Keywords
As with any other search engine, recruiters are dependent on the algorithm to show them the best profile as per their searches. Based on a certain set of relevant keywords in your industry, recruiters will try to search for candidates on LinkedIn.
Here’s how you can use keywords to optimize your profile:
- Research: Thoroughly research the keywords that are of prime importance in the finance industry. Check the profiles of other professionals on LinkedIn and refer job postings to gain an understanding of how to sprinkle these keywords in your profile.
- Section: Utilize each section efficiently of your LinkedIn profile to showcase your contributions and achievements. Don’t just stuff your profile with contextual keywords. In the end, your profile should foremost be easily readable.
- Industry and Skills: Update the industry in your profile and include all the skills you are familiar with. Further, you can even include skills that you are not familiar with. Let’s say you need to include “Budget Forecasting” in your profile and you have not had any real-life experience with it. You may write it as “Interested in gaining experience in budget forecasting”.
Skills & Recommendations
Recruiters look for professionals who can deliver, hence your profile should include the skills that are highly relevant to your targeted profile. Though in the banking industry recruiters search for general skills as well. So, make sure your profile is a match for both.
Further, just listing your expertise is not going to be enough. Get your mentors, employers, etc. to write you a stellar recommendation. If you provide credibility for your skills then it can do wonders for you.
Final Word
- Just as the headline of your profile, your picture is equally important. Make sure you use a professional-looking photograph.
- Continue to engage with your connections through comments and professional messaging.
As you are a banking professional, your profile is probably going to end up looking like all about your core competencies, However, it is important to include a few pointers about your hobbies that describe your personality as well.
