What's the best way of setting up your LinkedIn Profile?

[psychocandy]

As an agent, I would suggest solely that you get people to recommend your work. Some clients do check out profiles and I have had a client say "I dont know if I trust him, no one on linkedin has recommended them"

Edit: Oh and obviously, you dont need to make it your managers. Because that is a sure fire way of us agents finding out who you worked for. Its the new "i just need two references".

Recommendation thing on linkedin is total bollacks. I know loads of people who recommended each other just to get it.

[The Agents View]

Recommendation thing on linkedin is total bollacks. I know loads of people who recommended each other just to get it.

Well that's true - but it does work!

The only thing I'd say here, is that you need to make yourself easy to find. Director of TinpotLtd might make you feel grand, but it doesn;'t help with the right people finding you. If you're a Wintel guy - put your job as "wintel contractor" - If you're an IT PM for software developments - put that as your headline - use key words as well, and I'm pretty sure people will start finding you with contracts to offer. If you put director of tinpotltd, I'd probably scan over you on the first run, as I can't see the relevance.

HTH

[Vandalay]

I've been building up both the number of recruiters and non recruiters alike on my linkedin profile over the last 6 months or so.

The key to harnessing how you interact with recruiters is to use keywords in your profile relating to your industry, as you will then appear in their search results.

It has worked well and as a result I get much more targeted approaches from recruiters these days than I used to.

Also make sure you switch off the ability for your connections to be able to browse a list of my connections. This way you can prevent recruiters from using you just as a jumping board.

[contractoralan]

Recommendation thing on linkedin is total bollacks. I know loads of people who recommended each other just to get it.

in most cases, you are correct. people write 'hes a great guy. hardworking' etc etc.

but if a recommendation reads - "we had an issue with performance of appl x. he helped us fix it in 3 days and gave additional recommendations. it is one year since, and we do not have any issues since"

this will definitely add value to your profile. Don't forget to use this in your CV.

Get your contact to write something specific. Don't expect them to think about the nice thing you did for them. Most don't bother.
In your recommendation request, ask them to specify about point X. They will almost always do it.