Small Steps

Small steps. That’s my mantra right now. Small things will make a big difference to how we all feel through these uncertain times, and how we come out of them.

In that spirit, one small thing I can do is share a bit of my resume / LinkedIn / personal branding knowledge to help those of you who would also like to take small steps forward.

One small, but concrete, improvement you can make is to update your LinkedIn URL.

What do I mean by this? Go to your profile and have a look at the URL which appears when you’re viewing it. This is mine: www.linkedin.com/in/tudorrobins/.

If yours also ends in just your name, then great – no need to keep reading! Some of you, however, will see your name followed by a string of numbers and letters. I’m going to tell you how to remove those.

Why Should You Do It?

Not only does a streamlined LinkedIn URL make it easier for people to find you, as well as looking cleaner on resumes, business cards, etc., it also shows you’re technologically savvy, detail-oriented, and that making a positive impression is important to you.

How Can You Do It?

LinkedIn does have an explanation for this, which you’ll find here, however, in my experience, some people find visuals helpful. If that’s you, please follow these steps:
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In the top right-hand corner of your profile click on the option to "Edit public profile & URL":

​Click on the pencil:

Type in the suffix you’d like – LinkedIn gives you five to 30 characters to do this (no spaces, symbols, or special characters). Hopefully you can choose your own name just as it is, however, it’s possible this URL could already be in use. If so, you could use dashes (these are allowed), add a number, include a middle initial, or add something after your name which describes your professional brand – for example, a nurse could add “RPN” or an accountant could use “CPA.”

Once you click "save", you can begin sharing your new, clear and customized LinkedIn URL!
If this was useful to you, please let me know - if so, I’ll share other tips in the future.
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And please feel free to reach out to me with resume, LinkedIn, or personal branding questions, because in times where many things are beyond our control, it can be helpful to take control of the things we can.

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