We Studied 750 Top LinkedIn Profiles. Here’s How to Write Yours Better.

Your LinkedIn profile is likely among the top—and thus most clicked—results if someone happens to Google you. And a well-curated LinkedIn summary can offer them a wealth of information about your professional background. So whether you’re just quietly cruising through options or firing off applications like it’s your other job, you want your profile to shine.

Maybe you’ve already done the obvious, making hundreds of connections and racking up tons of endorsements. But there are still all these boxes where your writing is supposed to go, and you’re never quite sure what to say. What words would a radiant master of LinkedIn put here, you wonder. We have an answer for you.

We’ve been studying this question by analyzing the language on hundreds of top-tier LinkedIn profiles. We looked for patterns and trends to better inform what works—what can enhance your reputation and advance your career. In the end, we culled data from 750 profiles of employees at Fortune 500 companies, including entry-level workers, managers, and directors. From this, we distilled four key findings.

1Employees—especially entry-level workers—could often say more about themselves up top.

Filling out your profile summary matters, but only 42 percent of the entry-level employees we analyzed seemed to bother. Managers and directors both did so a bit more often—closer to half in our study.

We suspect people overlook the profile summary because they’re often busy describing their work experience further down their profile—or waiting until they’re actually looking for a new job to make a proper introduction atop their page. In fact, regardless of their experience level, people proved more likely to fill out the work experience section. Especially among managers, 65 percent did so, cranking out a robust 192 words on average for each job they described. (More on word counts further down.)

The top of your LinkedIn profile is an opportunity to summarize what you’re about—to make an impression beyond the array of jobs you’ve held. You might try thinking of it as an opportunity to answer the question, What makes me an outstanding candidate for my next career move?

Communicating as much may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be an epic undertaking; the folks who filled out their profile summary in our analysis averaged between 70 and 100 words.

Also, as LinkedIn itself notes, while this field allows up to 2,000 characters, it will only display the first two lines before readers have to click to see more. This isn’t the place to save the best for last, so be sure to showcase your strongest attributes and achievements in the first sentence or two.

(An intriguing side note: Directors had appreciably more misspelled words in their profile summaries than entry-level workers—a ratio of six to two, by our count. What accounts for this seemingly lackadaisical approach to orthography among directors is a mystery.)

2Speak the language: Directors used more business terms.

Every profession has its own unique shorthand that insiders use to communicate conveniently. (Are you a leader in innovative solutions that impact return on investment? Or more hot on high-level abstraction? …You get the idea.)

While we’ve noted before that this can cause trouble when you’re trying to reach a broader audience that’s not on the same wavelength, it’s a practical inevitability among a group of people all working in the same field. On LinkedIn, using these words might just signal to peers, Hey friends, I’m one of you.

Comparing against a list of 100 of the most common such terms, we found that directors used more than three times as much industry parlance as entry-level workers. Managers, perhaps fittingly, were in the middle.

The single most-used example, which led across all three levels of experience, was the word “leader.” If you’re curious, tab over to your profile now and see if you spot any from our overall top five: leader, strategic, solution, innovative, ROI.

Notably, entry-level employees also often sought to portray themselves as proactive in their profile summaries, while the word dynamic was a standout word among managers in our study. Directors, perhaps tasked with the most budgetary responsibility, particularly emphasized ROI.

“These kinds of terms help recruiters easily search and find qualified candidates on LinkedIn,” says Angela Ritter, a recruiter for Grammarly who reviews upwards of 200 resumes each week. “Having common business language on your profile is important, but you have to be prepared to talk about your expertise with those terms. ”

3Is your LinkedIn profile saying too much, or just enough?

Our analysis found that the higher up you go in a company, the longer your job title tends to become. Where the typical entry-level worker we studied has around three words in their job title, managers had four and directors had six.

This pattern held true across the hundreds of profile summaries we analyzed. While entry-level employees who filled in this field offered an average of 70 words in their profile summary, managers put down 80 and directors piled on 97.

But that trend was not the case further down the page, where managers led with a striking 192 words on each entry for work experience. Directors were in roughly the same ballpark with 169, but entry-level workers lagged markedly, totaling a mere 106 on average.

What accounts for this discrepancy isn’t certain, but the takeaway for neophytes is evident: There’s likely room to talk a bit more about what you’ve done.

For her part, Ritter urges recent graduates to talk about their accomplishments: “If you’re a recent graduate, keep your relevant internship and college leadership roles on your LinkedIn page,” she says. Such credentials are worth hanging onto until you’re at least two jobs into your career.

“When you’re fresh out of school, detailing your collegiate accomplishments can play a factor in landing a position. It further demonstrates your work ethic and ability to multitask to a hiring manager who is getting to know you.”

One other thing to note as you tab over to your LinkedIn account and consider your profile title: does it look a little short, or perhaps overlong? We found the typical profile title is around six words—or seven, if you’re a director.

4Entry-level employees don’t use LinkedIn for recommendations as much as they could.

Here, the trend is stark: people with entry-level jobs received scant recommendations on LinkedIn, and they gave even fewer.

While entry-level employees in our study received some 61 recommendations in total, managers outpaced them fourfold, with 277. Directors nearly doubled that figure again, with 519 recommendations received.

The pattern was even more prominent when it came to giving recommendations. While the newcomers we looked at gave just 24, managers tallied more than ten times as many, with 267. Among directors, the disparity was more than twenty-fold; they gave a total of 532 recommendations.

It’s worth noting here that across experience levels, the more recommendations a LinkedIn user gives, the more they tend to receive. If you’re looking to up your count, there are worse strategies than to simply mash out a few recommendations of your own for deserving colleagues, then see who returns the favor.

Alternatively, you could also just reach out and ask a couple of people. If you go that route, try a polite email instead of a request sent through LinkedIn, so it’s harder to miss.

Put your best self forward.

Skimming job listings isn’t most people’s idea of a picnic. Between drafting a cover letter, waiting for a response, and the often nerve-racking process of interviewing, landing a dream job isn’t easy. Even updating your LinkedIn profile can be a disquieting chore if you’ve neglected it for a month or six. (It happens.)

What it takes to make a solid impression with a recruiter or potential future colleague shouldn’t be a mystery. Grammarly is here to help you look sharp as you make your way forward.

NBA Grammar Power Rankings

Since we launched our NFL Grammar Power Rankings (followed by MLB and college football), sports fans and journalists alike have urged us: “Do basketball next!” Basketball season has finally arrived, so we put NBA fans to the grammar test.

Who’s shooting bricks and who’s getting nothin’ but net when it comes to grammar, spelling, and punctuation? We began by collecting the first five comments posted under articles on each official SB Nation NBA team blog until we’d gathered a total of 100 comments (of 50 words or more) for each team. Using Grammarly’s algorithms, we identified the errors, and then a team of live proofreaders verified and tallied them. We counted only black-and-white mistakes such as misspellings, wrong and missing punctuation, misused or missing words, and subject-verb disagreement.

To avoid skewing the rankings, we didn’t penalize catchphrases like “da Bulls,” Internet lingo, common slang, team nicknames, or stylistic variations like serial comma usage. Finally, we calculated the average number of mistakes per one hundred words by dividing the total word count of the comments by the total number of mistakes for each team.

The Upper Midwest scored a win, with the Minnesota Timberwolves coming in on top and Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Bucks landing at third. The Denver Nuggets pulled in just behind the Wolves at second. The Atlanta Hawks, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Utah Jazz didn’t fare as well, landing in the bottom three.

Despite coming in twelfth overall, Knicks fans had the most diverse vocabularies, using twenty-five unique words per one hundred words. Check out our infographic to find out where your team’s fan base ranked and even learn a few of their favorite words.

To share this infographic with your blog readers, embed this in your blog post by pasting the following HTML snippet into your web editor:

Please attribute this infographic to https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check

Republican Primary Candidates Grammar Power Rankings

At Grammarly, we believe that every time we write, we make a statement. Technology encourages fast-paced typing and textspeak—and while we don’t think that’s always bad—we do think it can fuel misconceptions and get out of hand.

In the interest of fun and a little gamesmanship, we’ve started a series of studies to award Grammar Power Rankings to different categories of commenters across the web. After a quick look at NFL and MLB fans, we’ve decided to focus on the upcoming presidential race, starting with the Republicans (who begin their GOP primary debates this week).

Stay tuned for a potential study about Democratic candidates’ supporters in the near future. For now, check out this infographic for the results and methodology from the GOP study:

To share this infographic with your blog readers, embed this in your blog post by pasting the following HTML snippet into your web editor:

Please attribute this infographic to https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check.

Methodology

We began by taking a large sample of Facebook comments containing at least fifteen words from each candidate’s official page. Next, we created a set of guidelines to help limit (as much as possible) the subjectivity of categorizing the comments as positive or negative. Since the point of the study was to analyze the writing of each candidate’s supporters, we considered only obviously positive or neutral comments. Obviously negative or critical comments, as well as ambiguous or borderline negative comments, were disqualified.

We then randomly selected two hundred fifty of these positive and neutral comments to analyze for each candidate. Using Grammarly, we identified the errors in the comments, which were then verified and tallied by a team of live proofreaders. For the purposes of this study, we counted only black-and-white mistakes such as misspellings, wrong and missing punctuation, misused or missing words, and subject-verb disagreement. We ignored stylistic variations such as the use of common slang words, serial comma usage, and the use of numerals instead of spelled-out numbers.

Finally, we calculated the average number of mistakes per one hundred words by dividing the total word count of the comments by the total number of mistakes for each candidate.

 

Two Underrated Christmas Stories to Read This Season

Welcome to Day Two of LitMas, the holiday for bookworms of all sorts! Yesterday, we gave you one short poem by Longfellow, and today we have another gift to share.

On the second day of LitMas, we’re paying homage to LitMas’s distant cousin, Christmas, with two stories you can read in less than an hour about this fascinating holiday. They’re both old enough to be classics, although neither of them gets as much attention as the “Night Before Christmas” and “Christmas Carol” set.

Read The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus for a Wacky Santa Backstory

In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child.

Did you know that the writer of The Wizard of Oz also wrote a Santa backstory in the same universe? No? Then it’s time to check out this highly fantastical account of Santa’s entire life, complete with woodland fairies, nymphs, and (in the sequel) the same bubbles Glinda uses to travel to Oz. Of course, this Santa saga is far from canon, but it reads like old-timey fantasy fanfic. And who couldn’t love a good alternate universe Santa this holiday season?

Read the full The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus here.

Dive into A Pictorial History of Santa Claus for the Real Santa History

Image Source.

If nonfiction dominates your reading list, we’d recommend you give the Public Domain Review’s image-laden history of Santa Claus a read. Their thorough history of Santa’s look dispels some rumors about the red suit’s origin, such as the popular myth that it was created by a beverage company. Their writers also went deep in the archives to pull old Santa looks, and some of them are downright delightful. Don’t want to know the man behind the red-and-white curtain? You can always check out the history of Rudolph instead. Either way, knowing the history behind these cultural icons is fascinating.

Read the full A Pictorial History of Santa Claus here.

Want to create a new holiday story with us live? Tune in to our Facebook Live broadcast Thursday at 6 p.m. PST / 9 p.m. EST!

Confusing Words: Versus vs. Verses

Versus:

meaning against (especially in sports and legal use); as opposed to, in contrast to. (Often abbreviated as vs.) For example:

The rivalry of the Green Monkeys versus the Blue Barracudas has raged for years.

I’m weighing the pros and cons of the white-and-gold dress versus the blue-and-black dress.

Verses:

meaning a kind of writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme; small sections of the Jewish or Christian Bible; several similar units of a song. For example:

Due to her writer’s block, the poet could only complete a few verses each day.

John 3:16 is one of the most well-known verses in the Bible.

I like this song, but the verses are hard to remember.

For explanations of other confusing word pairs read this blog post about the difference between then and than.

Finding a Rhyme and Reason for National Poetry Month

Academia teaches us to use proper nouns, pronouns, and punctuation, but what about other types of writing? What about types of writing, like fiction or poetry, which capture a reader in ways beyond the period or comma?

April is National Poetry Month, and a great time to help writers to answer these questions — even if in an intangible way. For example, to strict grammarians, poetry may seem as though it has no rules. But this is definitely not the case. While poetry takes traditional grammar rules, chops them up, moves them around, and fits them back together again in a contorted puzzle, it does have — pardon the pun — a rhyme and a reason.

It is possible to break a poem down by its rhyme scheme or meter, and to identify its specific form. In addition, you can often identify certain grammar rules that are utilized in poems – including commas, point of view, or the use of capitalization. But these rules, similar to poems, themselves, are subject to creative license.

In poetry, writers may choose which rules to use and how to use them – and may choose to disregard some of them in the process. Brent Calderwood, a writer, editor, and activist, recently expanded on this topic in his article about writing rules: “Writing is like a painting. You have to know the rules before you start experimenting with them.”

This method of understanding grammar rules, and then breaking them down, encompasses much of what we call informal writing. Blogger Anne Wayman writes about how writing has become more informal over time: “My hunch, too, is that over the last decade or so all writing, including formal writing, has become more informal. While some might lament the lack of rules and structure in much of today’s writing, I like it – as long as it communicates clearly, accurately, and completely.”

Anne’s point is quite relevant to poetry. It is the communication of a piece that remains the golden rule of poetry. While a poem might break a few rules of academic writing, as long as it communicates a feeling clearly, it can by many standards be considered a good poem.

Poets do not ask permission to bend the rules of grammar. Instead, they create new forms of writing such as haikus, sonnets, or ballads (you can view a large list of poetic forms here). Many great poets have chiseled their names into the walls of history through the creation of such forms. Some, like Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, or Emily Dickinson, remain as relics in our literature books. While others, like the Taoist Laotzi, have forged religious and philosophical belief behind their words.

There were many famous authors who also wrote books of poetry to accompany their other forms of writing — Wendell Berry, Richard Aldington, Walter Allen, and Simon Armitege, just to name a few. The list of influential poets is also too long to put here, but PoetrySoup.com has an interesting top 100 list to get you started.

As we head into poetry month, and contemplate the rhyme and reason of poetry, let’s not forget to give homage to those great writers who have come before us. They are, after all, the ones who created the poetic rules we often observe. They are the ones who walked off the beaten path, and for the first time created the complex rhyme schemes that we identify today. Whether you prefer free verse or formal poetry, remember to appreciate these poets and their rules as the forefathers of poetic form — and to observe and appreciate the form that does exist.

Perhaps then, we too can help invent the poetic forms of the future.

Happy National Poetry Month!