LinkedIn has revamped its offerings this year, and the latest is a spruced-up personal profile page.

The new-look page is more streamlined, providing a different experience when viewing people’s profiles by focusing on activities and connections.

Improving your profile

The visual design aims to make a more powerful first impression and showcase skills and accomplishments with simple editing tools.

The work history, new insights and ratings on the right-hand-side rail match your interests and skills with others in your network, and the newsfeed has been moved onto the top of the profile page.

A bigger profile photograph has been added at the top for impact.

In a new section called “Background” there is the opportunity to tell professional stories about work history and show other aspects such as “volunteer experience and causes” and “honours and awards”.

Educational and professional experience has been put together so the viewer can see a quick summary. There is new capability to control what you want others to see at the top by nominating highlights.

Common interests

The addition of “Insights”, or ratings, on the right-hand-side means you can see what you have in common with connections and companies. Insights show common ground such as interests and skills which will make it easier to connect to people outside your network.

Better engagement

In the new profile page you can post LinkedIn updates from your profile. It is easier and faster to see what your network is up to because a new “Activity” section has been added to the top of the page.

There is also a new ability to see what other people are sharing in the network. 

The inclusion of headshots of all connections in one screen layout, rather than on a scroll, makes posting and choosing contacts even easier. 

Sadly, LinkedIn has ditched its “Events” function, which was very useful. The new page isn’t a dramatic change, but does rearrange page layout to highlight various parts of a profile for an improved social networking experience.

Get the new profile page at  http://www.linkedin.com/profile/sample.