LinkedIn Profile Formatting: Complete Guide

As a professional, there’s a good chance that you have heard time and again that creating a solid LinkedIn profile is crucial. This platform has existed for longer than Twitter and Facebook even, but why exactly is it so important?

The short answer to this question is that LinkedIn hosts millions upon millions of professionals who use the platform to network with one another.

What does this mean for you?

It means that you have seemingly endless opportunities to secure jobs, make connections, and develop and share your personal brand with the world.

In the process of fine-tuning your LinkedIn profile, you might have wondered about the merits of resume builders versus resume writing services. We’ve got an insightful piece that delineates the differences and advantages of each. The article will equip you with essential knowledge to make an informed decision for your career progression.

But unlike some other social platforms, it takes some effort to get noticed by the right people on LinkedIn. And the first thing you need to do in this respect is to learn proper LinkedIn formatting so that your profile’s design looks as sharp as possible.

It is believed that a recruiter will spend an average of 6-7 seconds looking at your resume, which in this case is your LinkedIn profile.

And just like it is important to carefully design your resume, you need some excellent LinkedIn formatting skills to properly present yourself to an employer on the platform. So, how can you do that? Let’s go over some simple, yet crucial tips to make your profile stand out.

How to Format a LinkedIn Profile

The first thing anyone will see when they visit your profile is your profile picture along with a short headline. You also have the option to show your current job position as well as your education and location.

The default LinkedIn format shows your headline under your name so you should come up with something that is clear and to the point. Try not to write long sentences but rather something that reads like a tagline for what you do.

For example, writing “Operations Manager at XYZ” is better than writing “I work at XYZ currently as an Operations Manager”. This will help improve the appearance of your profile section and make it more readable.

As for the profile picture, use something professional rather than the fun image you would use for Facebook. Getting a nice headshot taken by a photographer is a good idea.

Formatting Text on LinkedIn

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

Formatting on LinkedIn is not always easy because you cannot make the text bold or italicized. You can, however, use a number of symbols to capture the attention of the reader. These symbols can be used to break up large chunks of text as well.

With that said, using too many of these symbols can take away from the professional style of your profile so try not to use too many of these.

One very important tip for formatting LinkedIn text is to use bullets. But again, this is not straightforward as the site does not have a bulleted list option to structure your text. Instead, you need to manually add bullets where you want to. You can do this in the following ways:

• The quickest way is to just add a dash (-) or an asterisk (*) instead of a proper bullet.
• Another way is to hold down the Alt key on Windows and type ‘0149’ to insert a bullet. On a Mac, you need to hold down the Option key and type ‘8’ to do the same.
• And finally, you can simply create a bullet in Word or another program and use copy/paste.

How to Insert Bold and Unique Characters

One very interesting thing you can do when formatting a LinkedIn profile is to insert bold text using unique characters. That may sound confusing but it’s quite simple. See, the platform doesn’t allow you to format the text within its text boxes and you cannot copy and paste bold or italic text from other programs into the site’s text boxes either.

But you can always copy and paste specific Unicode characters from Windows and Mac computers. If you open Character Map in Windows or Character Viewer on Mac, you will see a lot of variations for the different alphabets on your keyboard. These variations are unique Unicode symbols that can easily be copied into LinkedIn text fields.

For more ease and options, you can use online resources like LingoJam to do the same. This is a great way to use bold or unique text when learning how to format a LinkedIn profile as bold text can help you draw the reader’s attention to an important point.

Do not forget about the resume punctuation rules. Check our guide and correct all the mistakes. Want to read more about bullet points?

LinkedIn Description and Summary Formatting

When doing some LinkedIn description formatting or writing a summary of your skills and experiences, perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is to break large chunks of text into smaller parts.

No one wants to come to your page and look at a wall of text staring them in the face. It is always better to make shorter paragraphs, each talking about a different aspect of your professional or academic life. Remember, a good presentation is often key to winning over a potential employer.

So, what can you do for good LinkedIn summary formatting when something as simple as a LinkedIn formatting indent option is missing from the platform?

• Use bullets to highlight specific points about yourself and your work.
• Make things simple and easy to read. Don’t overexplain things that don’t need an explanation. The quicker you can get your point across to an employer, the more likely will they be to keep reading on.
• Put your most recent or relevant experiences or academic achievements on top so that you can ‘hook’ an employer right away.

Another important thing to remember while you format your LinkedIn summary is to hide the sidebar that shows other members on the platform with similar skills to yours.

This ‘People Also Viewed’ sidebar is essentially letting the platform showcase people who are potentially your competition. To keep the visitors’ eyes on your own profile, make sure to remove this box by heading into the Privacy & Settings page.

Best Practices for a LinkedIn Resume Format

Now that you know how to format a LinkedIn summary and description, you should know about some of LinkedIn’s best resume format practices. While you can upload a resume separately to your profile, all the information you include on the platform is essentially presented as your resume when someone visits your page.

If you see some resume format LinkedIn examples, you’ll see many of the points we have already discussed in this guide.

But on top of everything we have gone over at this point, here are some important aspects to remember when thinking of a resume format for LinkedIn:

• Mind the order of your experiences. Write about your most recent professional roles first, mention the time that you have worked in those roles, and briefly explain what your job descriptions were for those roles.
• Include your highest level of education first. Write briefly about any achievements you have made and mention the grade. Only add relevant educational experiences. You don’t necessarily need to mention your high school if you have a Master’s degree.
• Many people often don’t give enough importance to their freelance experience when creating a resume, but they should. If you have completed relevant freelance jobs, write each of those separately and consider them to be individual jobs. This will not alter the overall structure of your profile and will showcase even more of your professional skills. The same goes for any consulting experience you may have.
• One really good thing about the structure of a profile on this platform is that you can add media. This media can be in the form of a video or an image and may be used to showcase some previous projects you have completed, especially if you are from a creative field like architecture. You can also record a video introducing yourself and talking about what you are looking for. Keep in mind not to overdo this though.

FAQ

How do I format LinkedIn?

There are many ways to structure the appearance of your profile on this platform. Splitting long paragraphs into shorter ones, adding bulleted lists, and using some media to spruce up your profile are all good ways to create a nice style.

How do I add LinkedIn bullet points?

You can do this in three ways:

• Add a – or a * instead of an actual bullet.
• Copy a bullet from another text editor like Word and paste it into LinkedIn.
• Press Alt and type 0149 on Windows or press Option and type 8 on Mac to add a bullet.

Why should I pay attention to LinkedIn formatting?

It is important to know how to format a LinkedIn profile because a well-crafted presentation of yourself and your skills is likely to capture the attention of more potential employers. If your page does not look properly formatted, people might not be willing to look through your experiences even if you have great ones.

Who can help?

By going through this guide, you should be able to develop a great resume format for LinkedIn. Follow the tips and techniques mentioned here and you can easily improve the appearance of your page, hence attracting more employers and hopefully landing more jobs. If you need help with creating your document, check out our list of reviews.