P.S. if you want some feedback on your linked in profile connect with me and send me a msg.

I am convinced the ☝ number 1 thing you can do to accel your career is a well-groomed LinkedIn profile.

Why was I doing this?

I was not trying to get 200K+ job offers; it just happened. I was trying to do free workshops on AWS at innovation centers in Canada, but booking events was difficult. After multiple rejections, I straight up ask why no one is booking me. I was told, they didn't take me seriously because my LinkedIn profile was barely filled in. I hate LinkedIn but I heard it enough times I decided to go all in, and I'm glad I did.

Good or bad LinkedIn has become the source of truth for the professional industry, and this includes developers.

The hand I was dealt

I'm from a small town
I don't have a Computer Science degree.
I haven't worked at any FAANG or super-well known company
I never went to university
I started with little to no network, everyone I knew growing up was poor and unsuccessful

Max Out Your Connections

This is straightforward. Add enough people until you have at least 500 connections. If you have anything less than 500, recruiters and employers won't take you seriously. Also, the more extensive your network, the farther your reach.

There is a limit to how many connections you can add in a day. So pace yourself; otherwise, the LinkedIn algorithm will figure out what you're doing and will slow you down by limiting your search results for a month.

Strategically Build Your Network

Don't just add anybody to reach 500; look for people that are going to be of best use to you. So for myself, this is my strategy:

AWS employees or people who hold multiple AWS Certifications
Security CTOs or Experts
CTOs in Toronto
Full Stack Bootcamp graduates
eLearning startup employees, eg. ACloudGuru, LinuxAcademy

You don't want to be sending lots of connection requests that don't get accepted. The reason why is you can have up to 30,000 connections. There is a limit of sending out 3,000 requests, and then after that, you're going to have to ask people to send you connection invites.

Title and Specialization

I happen to be good at everything because I've been at it for 15 years, but I do not list all my skills. Only Inexperienced developers list every possible language and framework they touched. If you ever had the chance to be on the hiring side, you would notice this trend.

So you need to remember this saying:

A jack of all trades is a master of none

So here is what I would suggest you do.

Core Title

Ensure you have a recognized core title. Please don't just say something generic such as "Web Developer" eg.

CTO
Full Stack Developer
Front-end Developer
UX Engineer
Solutions Architect.

Indicate Experience

Then work in your experience level, eg. Intern, Senior, Junior

Junior Full Stack Developer
Senior Front-end Developer
UX Engineer Intern
4yrs Solutions Architect

Framework/Langauge Specialization

Then add your framework/language specialization: eg.

Senior React Front-end Developer
Senior Full-Stack Ruby on Rails Developer
UX Engineer Intern, Mastery of Adobe XD
BigData Engineer, Python Expert

Notice for the last two titles I specified experience in the specialization instead of the core title. Sometimes it just works out that way.

Conceptual/Industry Specialization

Then add your conceptual/industry specialization. It doesn't have to be in your title but needs to show up repeatedly throughout your profile, and you could get away having two.

So for myself, I am eLearning and Security.

Skills and Endorsements

It's essential you choose your top 3 skills wisely. It is what people are going to most likely endorse and will help recruiters when they are searching for you.

I think you should go as specific as possible when choosing your top skills. Avoid generalities such as Web Development, Startups, and instead, pick very specific things so a template:

Langauge
Framework
Speciality

So this could be:

Salesforce
PHP
Azure

Sometimes you can infer language through framework so you can see here I have Ruby on Rails.

How much does the endorsement count matter? Uncertain. I think it has to be 99+ to be of value anything less doesn't matter.

I would strongly suggest you look at other people who are successful in the roles you want to and see what's their skills.

Recruiters and job posts match on skills to quickly filter candidates. So you can look at job postings than add all the relevant skills and get endorsements, so you tick all the boxes. I strongly suggest you do this. These skills don't need to be in your top 3 need them in your skill list

Gender, Race and Politics

HR's job is not to be fair but to protect the companies best interest. The companies best interest is not getting sued or taken to human rights tribunal over things such as gender, race or politics because they hired a lemon.

When you have projects or post topics or comments on gender, race and politics, you could be putting out red-flags.

Be like Switzerland and stay neutral or get a friend to look over your LinkedIn and social links to spot any of these possible misinterpretations and scrub or rework them.

Premium LinkedIn

Is it worth it? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes.
Its something like 400 USD per year for the lowest tier.

LinkedIn Premium makes your public profile more accessible and allows you to tell recruiters if you're looking for work and prioritize you over other candidates.

The 200K+ offers ony came after I had premium. The best high paying jobs are delivered generally through third-party or in house recruiters.
With LinkedIn Premium I could exactly see the top search terms recruiters were using:

Security
CTO
eLearning
AWS

LinkedIn Premium badge can tell you who are serious about networking on LinkedIn. It's going to send the right signal.

My LinkedIn Premium trial just ended, and I'm going to pay for it, just deciding if I want to go one tier up.

Is there more to it?

Yes, I might do a second post on more things, some of these I'm still validating whether they matter or not but off the top of my head:

how to deal with gaps in LinkedIn history
show you list prior experience if you are switching careers?
whether to show your country/schooling of origin eg. India to Canada
different kinds of media you can attach and their effectiveness
do testimonials matter and how to ask for them?
best way to showcase projects and volunteer work
adding connections at events using LinkedIn geo-location functionality

If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn and start building your connections go ahead and add me, click the big button below

Also, if you want some friendly help getting feedback about your LinkedIn Profile, I can try my best to help you out.

P.S.S. Both Karan and Ashwin at ExamPro published their first DEV.to articles. Can you do me a favour and check out their articles and if you like them and give them some encouragement.