Web Developer LinkedIn Profile Guide & Tips

You may ask yourself “if I have a good resume and a strong cover letter, do I really need to have a LinkedIn too?” The answer is yes, you really do. LinkedIn is useful for several reasons. It provides a space to include all the qualifications that don’t fit on your resume. Also, many jobs are listed exclusively there.

LinkedIn also allows for professional networking, including with recruiters and hiring managers. If you have a paid account on LinkedIn, it will often display the recruiter or hiring manager on a job posting. It’s a good idea to reach out to this person, especially if you are particularly interested in a job. But before you reach out, you’ll want to have an excellent profile for them to see when they click through from your message.

How to Make a Web Developer LinkedIn Profile

As with a resume and cover letter, there are some elements that belong in any LinkedIn profile regardless of your field. Because it has no space limitations, LinkedIn is the place where you can share a comprehensive record of your work experience, education, and skills. It’s also important to have a brief, clear headline, as well as a strong summary that gives a clear idea of who you are. However, there are also specific items that every Web Developer should have in their profile.

Languages

For a specific job, you should make sure you mention the required languages in your resume and cover letter, assuming you have proficiency in them. But on LinkedIn, you should mention any language that you have any degree of proficiency in, even if it’s an unusual one–again, LinkedIn is the place to put everything, because you never know what a browsing recruiter or hiring manager may find relevant to a position you don’t even know about. Even if you’ve just played with Ruby a little or tweaked the back end of your site using Java, it all counts! 

However, do make sure you’re honest about your level of experience with that language if it comes up in the interview. You don’t want to start a new job in which you’re expected to make heavy use of a language that you’re only roughly conversant with or give the impression that you can’t be trusted to be honest about your programming language proficiency (or other skills) in the future.

Technical Skills

You’ll also want to make sure that you have all your technical skills listed on your resume. Note that programming languages and technical skills are two different things. Testing and debugging, for example, are critical technical skills for any coding position. Also, listing them separately is a good sign for hiring managers that you are conscious of their importance.

Frameworks and libraries you know how to use also count as technical skills. So if you’re familiar with Node.js and/or React, you’d list those as well as listing JavaScript itself. It’ll be the same thing with Django—list it by itself rather than with Python–or with any other framework or library for any language you’ve used in your work. 

If you’re a Front End Developer and have worked with user interface or user experience design techniques, you’ll want to share those skills, as well as wireframing, responsive design, etc. if applicable. Other skills a Web Developer might list on LinkedIn include DNS management, SEO, web hosting, and graphic design. As with programming languages, feel free to include anything you have experience with, but be honest if you’re asked to talk about it later.

Tools and Technologies

The tools and technologies you know how to use are also important to include among the skills on your LinkedIn page. For example, you should share the developer tools–code editors, Git, Emmet–that you have used in your work. Content Management Systems like WordPress or Drupal are important to list, as well as ones like Shopify or Salesforce that are more focused on a specific purpose. If you know how to use APIs to integrate application software, make sure to include that as well.

Certifications and Awards

Any certification or award that you have earned should certainly go on your LinkedIn profile. These are important even if a small organization granted them or you earned them a long time ago. Of course, it’s better to gain a certification or award from a widely recognized organization, especially if there is a “gold standard” certification for a skill you have that is particularly marketable. But any certification or award you’ve earned is meaningful to some extent. You don’t want to lose the opportunity to share it. 

Also, if you’ve earned a certification that has a brief and well-known acronym, you might consider including it in your headline. Doing so will allow you to foreground it by making it known even to a hiring manager who doesn’t have time to scroll down to the certification section.

Links to Projects

Don’t forget to include links to your projects. This allows recruiters and hiring managers who may be interested in you as a candidate to click straight through to examples of your work. LinkedIn is one of the tools you can use to drive traffic to your portfolio, which, in turn, helps with the portfolio’s SEO when people search for your name.

You should also link to your GitHub in your profile, so that the person looking at it can view your code directly if they want to check out what’s under the hood, so to speak. Being able to look at both the website itself and the code will give the recruiter or hiring manager a more in-depth idea of your abilities and your approach to web development. This is especially important when the hiring manager is a web development professional. This is more likely if you are applying within the tech sector, but it could happen in any industry.

5 Web Developer LinkedIn Tips

Present Yourself in a Professional Manner

Make sure that you put your best face forward when it comes to LinkedIn. One of the most important elements is having a professional-looking headshot that makes you seem friendly but serious. Many schools and libraries will have events where professional photographers take free professional photos for workers early in their careers.

You should also make sure to have a snappy headline that states succinctly who you are and what you do. “Web Developer” is perfectly adequate because it gives the most important info upfront and in brief. However, it’s even better if you can fit in a telling adjective or two that gives a sense of your approach to what you do. Examples of such adjectives might include “innovative” or “curious.” As a general rule, keep your headline to five words or fewer.

The summary section on LinkedIn is also important. This is your opportunity to give a sense of who you are, what your career has been so far, and where you are looking to go. If the headline and headshot draw a recruiter or hiring manager in, the next thing they see will be your summary. So make sure that they keep reading by getting and holding their attention with the energy and passion of what you say.

Make Full Use of the Skills Feature

The Skills section is an excellent place to list your programming languages, tools, etc. However, make sure you also use the function that lets you list which skills you used in a particular job. There are two reasons for this. One is that it’s better if the hiring manager or recruiter can see how you applied those skills in the context of the specific job. The other is that the Skills section itself is fairly far down on the LinkedIn profile page, so a person looking at your page is more likely to see that you have a certain skill if it is listed under the job.

Show, Don’t Tell, Your Soft Skills

As with the resume, it’s more effective to explain how you used a soft skill in the context of a specific job or project than it is to simply state that you are good at communication or time management. List the accomplishments that you achieved in a particular job and, by way of doing so, explain how your excellent communication or time management skills helped you get those amazing things done.

Ask for Testimonials and Endorsements

Another example of how to show, not tell, your excellence comes from LinkedIn’s testimonial and endorsement features. Someone you’ve worked with or a teacher can write a testimonial–in essence, a review—of the excellent work you did with or for them. Or, in a less time-intensive way of praising you, they can “endorse” you for a skill you list, affirming that you are good at using a particular tool, language, etc. Endorsements are also helpful because they give a recruiter or a hiring manager evidence of your greatest strengths by showing them what more people are willing to endorse you for, which provides a more concrete sense of who you are as a candidate. 

However, most people are unlikely to write a testimonial or endorse you for a particular skill if you do not reach out to them and request it. You may feel shy about doing so, but it’s important to overcome this shyness so that you can make your LinkedIn profile the best it can be. Think carefully about whose testimonial or endorsement will be most meaningful. Consider your relationship with the person, their reputation, and their level of presence on LinkedIn. A testimonial from a supervisor who has 1500 followers will have a greater impact than a peer testimonial from someone with 300. However, any testimonial is better than none, assuming it is well-written and honest.

Get Feedback

After you’ve constructed your LinkedIn profile, there’s one more key step you should take: asking for feedback. You should get at least one trusted teacher or advanced web development professional to take a look at your profile—ideally, as many as possible. It’s especially good to ask someone who has experience as a hiring manager in your desired industry. What will help is making sure the certificate program or bootcamp you choose includes career support. If you do a certificate program at Noble Desktop, you’ll get 1-on-1 mentorship and review of your job materials from a knowledgeable industry professional. Your options for relevant certificates at Noble include software engineering, front end web development, Javascript, full stack development, and Python development. If you choose to pursue any of these subjects (or any certificate or bootcamp at Noble) you’ll have the support you need to get launched into your career as a Web Developer.

Learn the Skills to Become a Web Developer at Noble Desktop

To become a Web Developer, you must learn specific skills critical to the job. Noble Desktop can help you build these skills through in-person or live online instruction. Either way, you’ll have access to expert instructors who can clarify issues when you are confused, provide feedback on your work, and guide you through becoming a Web Developer. Small class sizes and the option to retake any course for free once you’ve completed it are additional incentives for studying with Noble Desktop.

Noble offers several relevant certificate programs demonstrating your Web Developer skills and qualifications to share with potential employers and support you in your job search. Completing the software engineering certificate gives you the broadest qualifications and career path options. If you are primarily interested in developing for the front end, consider the front end web development certificate. JavaScript is becoming increasingly popular for web development, so completing the certificate in Javascript will boost your resume. Opt for the full stack development certificate if you're interested in front end and back end programming. And if you prefer behind-the-scenes programming, pursue the certificate in Python development.

If you’re a beginner in web development, Noble’s hub of articles and resources on web development is a great place to start and plan your learning path. Noble’s web development courses are excellent if you’re eager to start learning but not yet ready to commit to a full certificate.