Date: July 9th, 2020
To: Jiajie Xu
Peer Reviewer: Zainab Rauf Tramboo
Title of the document under review: LinkedIn Profile of Jiajie Xu
LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiajie-xu-9120b81b2/
Hello Jiajie,
Thank you for submitting your LinkedIn profile for review. This is a well-organized and impressive profile to start with. Following are some comments and suggestions for further improving and completing the profile.
First Impressions
Overall, this profile is a great start for joining LinkedIn. The profile is easy to read, brief, and neat. First impressions of the profile page are positive.
Firstly, all relevant and needed headings are mentioned in the profile for indicating credentials. Secondly, the profile summary is friendly yet professional and indicates practical experiences valuable for an aspiring environmentalist with respect to lab and field works.
Please note the following suggestions:
Profile Photo
- While the profile photo is friendly and showcases your love for the environment, there is room for improvement. A close-up picture with a professional attire consisting of a buttoned-up shirt will fill in the missing professional visual aspect to the profile.
- Reduce the noise and busyness of the background in the profile picture to allow the focus to be just on you.
- Additionally, have someone else take a photo of you rather than clicking a photo of yourself.
- Adding a background photo to the profile will enhance the profile especially if the background is related to your credentials i.e. the environment or engineering.
Title Box
- Recruiting professionals most commonly refer to the current title box headline to recruit prospective employees while searching online, so it is imperative to have the title encompass words that best professional describe you. For this reason, the title of “Bachelor of Earth and Environmental Science UBC” may not be sufficient.
- Add a dummy title that includes the job title(s) targeted by recruiters. One example is “UBC Earth and Environmental Science Student/ Sports Enthusiast/Traveller .”
Effectiveness of the Summary
The summary is written in a first-person narrative which is recommended. It is also concise and captures a professional personality that states unique experiences, skills, academics, and curiosities of an aspiring environmentalist. The summary effectively helps the profile stand out from the crowd; however, adding more details will be helpful:
- Describe career goals, specific sports activities, and name your most valuable lab and fieldwork in order to individualize the profile.
- List the professional and practical skills, you have attained in your full-time work experiences, with commonly used keywords
Experiences
- Summaries of experiences are easy to read. Although, the summary for the current full-time work is not complete. In order to showcase your professional relevance in the current period, it is important to mention your current learnings and responsibilities.
- Use bullets to assist in an easy and organized reading flow for the ‘Lab and Field Technician’ work experience.
- Provide details: be more detailed about the work done and things learnt as well as be specific about the benefits accomplished via your performance.
- Highlight specific accomplishments and achievements in your workplaces to impress the reader with your performance skills.
- Use numbers, data, and keywords to emphasise the importance of your work and achievements.
Accomplishments
- Mentioning languages is an asset in today’s world.
- Put more effort in mentioning your accomplishments to date that would be valuable for your future employer. Have you won any awards? Did you get any scholarships? Did you publish any research work? Answers that answer questions like these can help certify your credentials.
Volunteer Experience
- Including volunteer experience would be impressive if possible.
Education and Courses
- List relevant courses studied under the specific degrees attained in numerical order, and using bullets to list them will improve the readability.
- Add and elaborate on the courses you choose to list.
Skills
- List keyword skills that are often seen in your area of employment in order to gain recruiters’ interest.
- Pass LinkedIn Assessments on possessed skills is impressive and great for your page’s credibility.
- List more soft skills like “teamwork” and “communication skills” as they are imperative to have as an environmentalist.
- Work continuously to increase your endorsements as well as reach out to your networks to endorse your skills to build creditability.
Connections
- It is encouraged to connect with more profiles on LinkedIn as currently, you have only 2 connections. To start off connect with co-workers, fellow students, professors, and mutual connections to expand your network. More connection suggests recruiters and viewers that you are social and personable.
- Reach out to connections with credentials to write a brief LinkedIn reference or give endorsements.
- Join and follow more relevant associations and groups to increase the notifications and keep you up to date and well informed on the job market.
URL
- Use a custom URL for the profile to remove the clutter of random numbers that LinkedIn assigns by default.
Grammatical and Expression
- The tone used in the summary as well as throughout the profile is friendly yet professional.
- This writing is concise with no major grammatical errors — though:
- There are repetitive missing commas such as the under ‘Lab and Field Technician’ work experience- “Configure, operate and maintain” should be “Configure, operate, and maintain”
- Under ‘Lab and Field Technician’ work experience there are few spelling errors such as “sub0grade” should be “subgrade” and “chemical laboratory tests fore” should be “chemical laboratory tests for”
- Here are a couple of sentences to consider rephrasing:
- This broadens my horizons and brings me living experience under different environment.
- Rewrite: This broadens my horizons and allows me to gain experience while living in different environments.
- I am open to have discussion and will keep checking message on LinkedIn.
- Rewrite: I am open to having discussions and conversations via the LinkedIn messenger.
- My curiosity drives me to explore knowledge from various fields and sources.
- Rewrite: My curiosity drives me to gain knowledge from various fields and sources.
Conclusion
You have an effective profile page for beginning your journey on LinkedIn. With a few changes and some additions, you are well on your way in grabbing the attention of recruiters and enlarging your professional network.
To summarize for you, here is a list of suggested edits:
- Improving the profile and background/banner photo
- Rewriting the title box headline by using dummy title
- Rewriting the summary with a focus on highlighting your professional and practical skills
- Including volunteer activities
- Putting more effort in listing relevant achievements in terms of awards or research papers
- Listing relevant academic courses numerically
- Increasing keywords for search engines
- Soliciting references and seeking endorsements
- Connecting with more LinkedIn profiles to broaden your professional network
- Continuing to join relevant groups and follow associations
- Rephrasing some sentences in an effort to increase details and clarity
- Correcting grammar errors
I hope my suggestions are helpful. If you require any further assistance or have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you,
Zainab Rauf Tramboo
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