Front End Developer LinkedIn Profile Guide & Tips

There are plenty of online employment websites like Indeed, Glassdoor, and GitHub that post detailed job listings. However, while many consider LinkedIn as simply another online employment site, it is a social media platform that not only allows organizations to post jobs but allows users to network by following other members or being followed by others, increasing employment opportunities.

LinkedIn allows you to create a profile that can include information about your experience, training, and education, along with including a background image, requests for recommendations, relevant technical skills, and the option of a customized LinkedIn URL. LinkedIn helps users optimize job searching by simultaneously narrowing their audience while increasing the likelihood of the right parties finding their profile. 

This article will discuss using LinkedIn to optimize finding work as a Front End Developer by increasing visibility for employers and recruiters searching for skills like yours.

How to Make a Front End Developer LinkedIn Profile

While many might think of a LinkedIn profile as about the same as a resume, using LinkedIn can provide a lengthier work history with more details about your experience and skills. You might have a personal website that you’ve created to promote your skills. However, it’s likely that only a few people happen across that site whereas many more eyeballs will come across your LinkedIn profile due to the platform’s popularity with business organizations and employment recruiters looking to hire people for various purposes. Plus, you can also link that personal website to your LinkedIn profile.

Like a resume, LinkedIn allows its users to provide their work experience, education, and skills in addition to including keywords that connect with recruiters and employers who are looking for people with skills like yours. However, as with listing details about your work history on a resume, it’s important to be scrupulously honest about that information, meaning that you should include only relevant keywords in your profile and avoid putting in certain items simply in the hopes of attracting attention. 

In finding work as a Front End Developer, your LinkedIn profile should include a headline, work experience, education, and skills specific to front end web development, which should include other training and certifications as well.

Building Up Your LinkedIn Profile as a Front End Developer

The categories listed below must be included in your LinkedIn profile. The objective for creating a LinkedIn profile is to optimize communication between you and organizations or clients who can use your skills. This includes providing keywords with each category that might attract recruiters and employers in finding your profile in their searches:

Your Headline

Your headline should include your name, a profile photo, appropriate contact information, education, which should be only the name of your school, and a job title, which in this case is Front End Developer. The purpose of your header is to make an engaging first impression for your profile to persuade potential employers to read on.

Your profile photo should be professional yet appealing. The photograph should be only of you and no other people, including spouses, children, boyfriends or girlfriends, or groups of friends at a party. The image should display you attired in a business casual outfit within a basic, non-distracting environment.

Your contact information should provide the best method you believe for recruiters and potential employers to get in touch with you, which can include a phone number or email address. This is also where you can place a link to your portfolio website that provides examples of your work.

You can list your major along with your school in the headline if relevant to the career objectives. There’s no need for detail here since you can provide more information in the education section further down.

Finally, you should settle on a specific job title. You need to identify yourself as a Front End Developer whether you have worked in the profession or not because if you have trained in the vocation, you have skills for that vocation.

It’s important that your header is not weighed down by too much detail. Its purpose is to engage potential employers by encouraging them to explore your profile to find out whether your skills fit their needs.

Your Experience

Your experience section should resemble a resume in that it will provide brief descriptions of your work history. The descriptions should be about one or two sentences long with bullet points. Employers and recruiters looking to hire typically go through thousands of candidates and will not spend much time reading overly detailed paragraphs about your accomplishments, so keep it short. These organizations are looking for skills, which you need to present in a simple package, and by including the right keywords, you enhance the chances of catching someone’s attention.

Your Education

Your educational background should also be concise like other areas of your profile. You should include information about your college degree or degrees along with any relevant majors or training. This includes training that you may have gotten from an online education provider like Noble Desktop. However, certifications often get listed under the skills section, but the decision depends on where you choose to list that information.

Your Skills

The benefits of LinkedIn over a resume is that you can provide an extensively detailed list of skills along with your experience. Any employer interested in a specific skill will gravitate towards that area and likely appreciate the detail. This is also a reason to avoid exaggerating any skills or experience. Just provide an honest list of what you know. Recruiters will check on your background. For example, if you list experience with JavaScript and its libraries like Angular, jQuery, Vue.js, or React, a recruiter must verify that claim. The keywords used to list your skills can guide employers to your front door, so it’s important that your information is accurate.

You should include any certifications under the skills sections, especially any related to front end web development, web design, or programming languages.

Customizing Your LinkedIn URL

LinkedIn allows users to customize their public profile URL so that recruiters and employers can connect to those candidates’ profiles and skill sets. LinkedIn makes customized URLs available on a first come, first serve basis for users, but they can have only one. If interested, you can go to your Public profile settings to customize your URL. LinkedIn also provides a tutorial to help you set up your customized public profile URL at Manage Your Public Profile URL.

5 Front End Developer LinkedIn Tips

Below are a few more tips for using LinkedIn to find work in front end web development:

Be Sure to Provide Appropriate Contact Information

Your contact information shouldn’t be visible to everyone, so there are steps you can take for how much of your profile can be resulting from a routine online search. However, providing a way for employers and recruiters to get in touch with you is critical for finding employment as a Front End Developer. Along with including access to your email or phone number, you can include a link to a portfolio website, a relevant company site, or a blog, which could all help in establishing your capabilities for potential employers.

LinkedIn does not allow for location details beyond city/state and country on the platform. Since many job recruiters look for candidates in their metropolitan areas, including the city that you live in may help you get found in a search by employers looking for Front End Developers or Web Developers in your city, state, or region. However, some people may believe that providing a location could limit them in finding remote work. By including “remote” in your headline, employers and recruiters throughout the country will know that you’re available for that type of work. Almost any work related to web development will not be limited to only people who can work inside a building at that specific location.

Tell Your Story

You can include a summary section in your profile beneath your headline that allows you to briefly provide a narrative on your work history and your skills that might interest potential employers who read it. While simply providing a list of your experience and skills is arguably preferable, a coherent summary of your skills and background is a valid option for persuading companies that you are the right candidate for a position they have available.

A narrative can work as an addition to your list of accompaniments but should be limited to only two or three sentences. Ultimately, your summary might provide a personal profile of you that could make a connection through a personable impression.

Include Additional Tech-Relevant Information

In listing your skills and experience, any relevant accomplishments should be mentioned, including internships, collaborations, awards, or relevant memberships. Volunteer work in technology at a retirement home or community center might not directly relate with finding work as a Front End Developer but could reflect on your knowledge and dedication to working in technology that could be perceived as something that might transfer positively into the workplace.

You might also have skills that you had toyed with earlier when learning about web development. This could include working with platforms like WordPress–which a front end development job might not require–that does indicate versatility in web development.

Protect Your Privacy

Once you have created your LinkedIn profile and have everything in place, your attention should turn to privacy and security. Protecting your privacy and identity should be a priority with any activity involving the Internet or social media, which is what LinkedIn is, despite the absence of trolling or bullying. Your public profile displays a simplified version of your LinkedIn profile that you can customize to limit what anyone can see resulting from an online search.

With your profile, you can limit certain details of your profile to be visible to LinkedIn members signed in on the platform as opposed to the information being visible on most search engines. You can set your profile to hide contact information like a phone number or email address or your profile photo, for example, with that information being available to recruiters or potential employers who are logged in.

Get Feedback

If you have questions about using LinkedIn for finding work as a Front End Developer, you can seek advice from people you know who might be familiar with using the platform. You can also consult your university or online education provider to get help with using LinkedIn. For example, Noble Desktop provides one-on-one career mentorship for help with job searching, including advice on best practices with LinkedIn.

Learn the Skills to Become a Front End Developer at Noble Desktop

People have several options for learning to become a Front End Developer, which include in-person and live online training courses, bootcamps, and certificate programs that provide real-time hands-on instruction. Noble Desktop offers several live online Web Development courses.

For example, with hardly any prior coding experience, an individual could complete the Front End Web Development Certificate and get headed in the right direction for their new career with training in how to build the user side of a responsive website. This course aims to keep class sizes small so that students can receive tailored advice and guidance from their instructors.

If you would like to learn about designing websites or email programs from coding with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, you can train for the Web Design Certificate. In addition, this course will teach you how to build websites using WordPress.

If you would like to learn about more options for building websites or apps from scratch through skills in front end web development, Noble Desktop provides information on their Learn Front End Web Development page, which can guide you through learning about several options for becoming a Front End Developer, including what free resources are available and career advice.