Douglas Partner’s LinkedIn Workshop
Add comment January 22nd, 2009
I attended a great Douglas Partner’s workshop this week. I have always been a believer in the power of a good LinkedIn profile. Our experience is that your website and your LinkedIn profile will be used for reference checks by people you meet. I use LinkedIn as a combination on-line bio and self-updating Rolodex.
In Silicon Valley I think that your LinkedIn profile is as important as your website to make the right impression on potential clients, partners, and future team members. A great LinkedIn profile can increase your visibility.
The workshop was chock full of tips: in addition to good feedback from the instructor and other attendees, I appreciated the time to work on my profile. Here are three improvements I made::
- I changed my “headline” from my current title (default) to a catchy tag line: “Customer Development for Software Startups Focusing on Early Customer and Early Revenue”
- With input from other attendees, I strengthened my experience section. I really liked MB Dean’s Problem, Action, Result format and am working on using it throughout my experience summary. I came up with the following three sentence overview: “I offer business development services for software entrepreneurs. I give practical advice that cuts through the bull to help you build a business. I am a hardware engineer and a mom, so I like action lists with a do-it/done methodology.”
- I added the SKMurphy blog to my profile.
The workshop is aimed at people looking for a job, but it applies to entrepreneurs looking for consulting work and customers. It is a great hands-on workshop. Check the event schedule on Douglas Partners website to see where others are scheduled.