Get ready to update your LinkedIn profile.
Linkedin is rolling out a new featured section at the top of the profile that will enable users to showcase their key achievements.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“The Featured section allows you to showcase samples of your work to people who view your LinkedIn profile. This is a great way to provide evidence of your skills and experience.”
As you can see below, the new section will sit below your main profile header, and above your Activity listing.
Now users will be able to add any of their LinkedIn posts to their Featured listing, users can also add links to external websites, images, and documents, to showcase their achievements to their profile visitors.
According to LinkedIn, Featured has been a highly requested update, and aside from enabling its users to showcase key professional capabilities, it will also help freelancers and small business owners to share more about their services by highlighting their work directly on their profiles.
To add something to your Featured listing, you’ll be able to select a new ‘Featured’ star below updates in your activity feed, which will then add that content to your Featured section.
LinkedIn notes that you need to have “authored and published a post or article on the LinkedIn platform to be able to add it to your Featured section”. But that’s not a huge limitation – for example, you could post a LinkedIn update that links directly to your business home page, then add that link into your Featured section, providing a direct business referral from your LinkedIn page.
Once you’ve added something to your Featured section, you can also edit how it appears, and re-order the content. You can also delete anything from your Featured section at any time.
It’s a significant addition from LinkedIn, as it is a whole new way to demonstrate your professional competencies, achievements, services and more.
But the option is not widely available as of now. LinkedIn is in the process of rolling the feature out to all users – so if you don’t see it yet, it’ll be coming shortly.
As noted, there’s a lot of ways this new featured section can be utilized – you can read more about the specifics of the new section here, while LinkedIn says that it’s aiming for a broader roll-out beginning next month.
