The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/448505
WWW.ILTANET.ORG 55 Some examples you can add to the Projects section of your LinkedIn profile include: • Articles you've authored/co-authored that were published in Peer To Peer magazine • Webinars you've worked on, either as a speaker or facilitator • Conference sessions you've helped plan or present • Committees you've participated on PROJECTS OR VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE? There are key differences between the "Projects" and "Volunteer Experience/ Causes" in LinkedIn. The Volunteer Experience section only allows you to link to an organization, list the volunteer position held, provide time frames for the effort and provide a brief description. In contrast, the Projects section provides a hyperlink field so others can click to see the result of the project (e.g., a webinar recording you worked on) and allows you to mention others who collaborated on the effort. The ease of linking collaborators and publishing across multiple people's profiles is one of the great features of LinkedIn Projects. Add collaborators to a project via the project detail's quick search field. Once added to the project, collaborators receive a notification with a link to the project entry and can add the project to their own profile with a single click. I've used the Projects section extensively to highlight collaboration efforts and have discovered a few useful tips, some of which aren't clear from the online help documentation: • Connect to your collaborators prior to attempting to add them to the project. You can only add collaborators if they are already first-level connections in LinkedIn. • Remember that collaborators receive notifications when you add them to a project. Wait until you've finalized the draft before linking collaborators so they don't receive notification about a half-baked entry. • When LinkedIn displays the project detail, all collaborators are listed with their current profile tag lines, which aren't necessarily what they were when the project completed. If someone has changed jobs and their tag line lists their title/company, the new title/ company will be reflected when the project information is displayed. • It is a good practice to show the most recent projects you've worked on at the top of the projects list, but LinkedIn adds any new project to the bottom of the projects list by default. However, you can rearrange the entries by dragging them, similar to the other sections of your LinkedIn profile. • If you add an external hyperlink to the project's deliverable, the hyperlink is applied to the title of the project. It doesn't show as a separate field in the details. When someone clicks the project name, it will open the resulting page in a separate browser tab. PUT YOUR BEST BRAND FORWARD LinkedIn provides members with more than just an online resume. In the Projects section, you can showcase your portfolio of accomplishments, broaden the footprint of your firm and highlight collaborative efforts. Your efforts just might make you a brand name to remember! About the Author Tim Golden, Manager of Enterprise Architecture & IT Governance at McGuireWoods LLP, is responsible for all cross-functional areas within IT, including architectural design, project management, quality assurance, information security, release/ change/configuration management, and IT policies, procedures and metrics. Tim has been with the firm for 15 years and has been a member of LinkedIn since 2004. Contact him at tgolden@mcguirewoods.com. So what does a completed project look like? Here is an example of what a ILTA conference session might look like on a participant's Experience page: