Raise your hand if you visit LinkedIn members’ profiles and get as far as their Additional sections. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t. Rarely do most LinkedIn members travel that far down the LinkedIn profile. I usually don’t.

Now raise your hand if you list your volunteerism, publications, projects, patents, organizations, and other noteworthy achievements. I think I’m hearing crickets?

Quite honestly I don’t blame you if you didn’t raise your hand to the questions above. After all, these major achievements (classified by LinkedIn as Additional) are buried in the basement of your profile; they can’t be moved. (I wrote about this here.)

I wonder if LinkedIn users even know if these additional achievements exist.

Note: these achievements were once bundled in what was called Accomplishments but are now separate, as they should.

The question now is how do you alert visitors of your LinkedIn profile to your major achievements?

One solution: mention them in your About section

You can write about your outstanding projects and other notables in your Experience section, which is a good policy. However, I suggest making note of them in your About section.

About is most likely the first section visitors will read. Unlike your resume, it is more personal and, in my mind, more enjoyable to read.

Enjoyable in what way, you might wonder? In About you can: provide a creative hook in your first three lines; express your passion for what you do; describe the problems in your industry and how you can solve them. It’s a section where you can tell your story. Read what I wrote about here.

How to point your visitors to your Additional sections

Given that your About section can draw the attention of visitors, doesn’t it make sense to point your audience to your major achievements? Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the ability to post links to them, so words will have to do.

For Projects you can write a brief statement:

“If you would like to read about my outstanding projects in Landscape Architecture, scroll down to Projects.”

Perhaps you Published a book or article. Offhand I can think of three of my close connections who’ve written books, Jim Peacock, Brian Ahearn, and Donna Serdula. The could write in their About:

“Do you know I wrote a book called (name of book)? Well, you can find it in the Publications section at the bottom of my profile.”

Many of my clients have Patents for products that they’ve created in their career. This can’t go unnoticed. If you’ve own patents, draw your visitors’ attention to them:

“I’m proud of the patients I own in the field of medical devices. They’re listed in my Patents section below.”

College students should make use of the Courses they’ve taken and Test Scores they’ve achieved. If you earned outstanding Honors and Awards, use About to point visitors to them.

Other types of accomplishments not obvious unless you point your visitors toward them include: Languages, Test Scores, and Organizations. You now have the idea of how to help your visitors find what can be a bona fide feather in your cap.

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Recently I shared a long post titled: YOUR LINKEDIN ABOUT SECTION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU THINK. This post is relevant because it shows how others feel about the importance of the About section. Thus, it can be a vehicle for directing your visitors to notable achievements.