Update: This article was originally posted on May 16, 2022. It has been updated with new information and tips below.
Employers often rely on candidates’ LinkedIn profiles to supplement their assessments, and business school admissions committees are no different. Especially as top MBAs become increasingly selective, many schools will look to your social media for more information about you.
This is why it’s important to ensure that your LinkedIn profile doesn’t just complement your application but it also actively allows you to stand out among the competition.
In this post, we go through our top tips for ensuring that your LinkedIn profile is MBA-ready. By following our advice, you’ll have a social media presence that highlights your strengths and accomplishments while communicating them optimally!
Tip 1: Adapt your profile to your MBA application
One of our most-repeated pieces of advice to our clients: “know your audience.” This applies not just to your MBA CV but also to your LinkedIn profile as well.
While you will most likely conserve most of your LinkedIn profile, you will want to ensure that a) it’s up-to-date and b) highlights your professional, academic, and extracurricular/extraprofessional achievements.
This is because the adcom wants to see that you are an outstanding candidate with meaningful experience AND someone who is likely to enrich the community and participate fully while pursuing the MBA.
So, be sure to highlight all of your relevant and meaningful experiences, as well as any awards or achievements.
For your professional experience, in addition to your role, the location, and the dates, you’ll want to include bullet points that highlight key actions and achievements (more on this below). When forming these points, think about questions like:
- “What were my most impressive actions?”
- “Who was on the team? Were they clients, senior leadership, or analysts?”
- “Were the team members spread across multiple countries and from many cultures?”
- “What department or departments were impacted by the turnaround?”
- “Did it require your ability to manage across specializations and areas of expertise?”
When it comes to highlighting your extracurricular/extraprofessional activities, showing that you’re an active member of your community or have a strong drive to create social impact is a great way to bolster your LinkedIn profile.
For this section, treat each item the same way you would a job. Add the organization name, location, your official role, dates of involvement, and 1-2 bullet points that illustrate the scope and impact of your work. Bullet points should be no longer than 1 line.
When including your degree programs, state the name of the school, location, degree you pursued, and dates you attended. You might also want to include 1-2 bullet points that show off your achievements and involvement during this period.
This could include graduating with honors, a high GPA, winning a scholarship, publishing a thesis, being chosen as a teaching assistant, or getting involved in extracurricular activities. You can also add any honor societies you were admitted to.
One question we often get from our clients is whether or not to include internships. If you’re a recent graduate from college or are applying for a deferred MBA program, the internships you held in college will be important roles to include to bolster your LinkedIn profile. If you had an internship that was many years ago but was located in a different country (and this played a big role in how you decided to shape your career), it’s definitely worth mentioning.
However, if you have many years of experience, that random 3-month internship in a totally unrelated field or summer job at your parents’ restaurant might not be relevant anymore. In this case, you can consider drastically trimming these roles (include just 1 bullet point) or removing them altogether.
TOP TIP: Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is consistent with your personal brand
Tip 2: Create a powerful headline and profile summary
Your headline is what appears under your name on your profile. While this section is only a couple of words, it allows you to provide keywords that highlight your career focus and emphasize your post-MBA goals.
Your profile summary allows you to share your key achievements, leadership skills, and career objectives. Ideally, in your summary, you want to answer questions like “Why am I pursuing an MBA?” and “How will I enrich my MBA peers and community?”
Because these sections are very brief, you’ll want to include ONLY the most important and relevant information for the admissions committee. Try to choose the ideas that really make you stand out from other applicants!
Ideally, your profile summary should be 2-4 lines tops.
Tip 3: Be well-rounded
For your LinkedIn profile, you’ll want to show a good balance between hard and soft skills. Demonstrating you have both shows that you are a well-balanced individual who will thrive in multiple environments.
As such, make sure that the bullet points you include on your CV include a good mix of hard skills (to show you have the smarts to thrive in a rigorous academic environment) and soft skills (to show you have the leadership and interpersonal skills you’ll need to thrive in the community and as a future executive).
Examples of hard skills include analytical skills, management abilities, and strategic capacities. Soft skills could be ideas like good communication or empathic abilities.
Tip 4: Be mindful of who you follow
If the adcom is interested in your profile, chances are, they might glance at your interests section (which is a collection of what companies and organizations you follow on LinkedIn).
This is why you want to ensure you are following leaders in your industry, as well as key players in other fields you are interested in. This is especially true if you plan to use your MBA to transition careers or are hoping to make social impact.
Follow companies and organizations that align with your post-MBA goals, your interests, and your values. The admissions committee might see that you are following a thought leader who has made significant advancements in areas related to your application, which will signal that you are truly committed to and passionate about what you’ve addressed in your application.
However, if you are mainly following big banks and financial institutions but are interested in a career in social impact, for example, you may send the wrong message to the school.
Get expert support in preparing your LinkedIn profile
Although filling out and adapting your LinkedIn profile for your MBA application may initially seem like an easy task, it can easily become overwhelming if you are unsure of whether you are doing it right amidst all of the other deadlines and requirements you must complete.
Luckily, our team of MBA experts here at Ellin Lolis Consulting knows just how to help you reach application success while balancing your work life and personal responsibilities. Not only can we help you prepare your LinkedIn profile but also draft an outstanding CV, write compelling essays, and get ready for an MBA interview that wows the adcom.
Our outstanding, all-in consulting has made our clients’ dreams come true – in fact, 98.9% of our clients got into at least one of their top-choice MBA programs as a result of our support.
To learn more about how we can help you achieve all your MBA goals, sign up to work with us today!
Real MBA Essays That Got People In
School-specific sample essays that got our clients accepted
