Whether you enjoy hiking, traveling, wine tasting or curling up with a good book, showing off your personality on LinkedIn can help you create deeper connections and promote yourself as more than just an employee.

LinkedIn is a powerful platform to find a job, connect with people, and get found by recruiters. The LinkedIn Interests section is one of the most overlooked sections on the platform.

Adding interests will increase engagement on your profile, allowing you to make stronger connections that can lead to opportunities in the future.

It’s important to have a fully completed LinkedIn profile. It’s not just about adding your employment history and education.

It’s also important to add your interests on LinkedIn. This is the section where you can put in your hobbies, interests, and other activities that you enjoy doing outside of work.

The other benefit of adding your interests on LinkedIn is that you can then connect with other people who have similar areas of interest.

You can check out the profiles of people who are of interest to you and connect with them. LinkedIn helps you build your professional presence online and provides you with a host of tools to promote yourself and your business.

How To Add Interests On LinkedIn Profile

You can add interest to your LinkedIn profile on a desktop computer or a mobile app.

Here’s how

1. Log in to LinkedIn

2. Open your LinkedIn profile

3. Type in the search box anything that you are interested in. It can be a company name, job type, role, education, etc.

4. Open any of the results

5. Click on the hashtags that come with the results

6. Click on follow to follow the hashtag

When you follow an hashtag, you are automatically interested in such hashtag.

Unfortunately LinkedIn has discontinued the previous Interests for profile and now you can only follow topics, groups, companies, educations, hashtags, etc to show your interest. You can also show your interest by editing your profile intro and adding headline that displays your interests or business.

Since there is no longer a section for your interests on your profile, the best thing to do is to use keywords in your summary and within each position description to indicate what you’re interested in.

For example, if you are passionate about social media or marketing, then be sure to mention that both in your summary and within your job descriptions (if relevant).

How To Edit Interests On LinkedIn

Currently, interest is no longer supported by LinkedIn and there’s no way you can edit interest on the business social networking platform, LinkedIn.

Why can’t I add interests on LinkedIn?

The reason you can’t add Interests is because LinkedIn did away with them in an effort to simplify the profile. The LinkedIn Interests section has been removed as of February 21, 2017. Now, all you have to do is add your work history and education, and – voila! – you’re done.

LinkedIn used to provide a list of suggested topics that you could select from and then post updates about. Topics could include anything from politics to sports teams to favorite books or movies.

But the problem was that people weren’t using it and some were even using it for spamming purposes. The Interests section was taking up valuable real estate on profiles that could be better used for more important stuff like accomplishments and skills.

What are interests on LinkedIn?

Your interests are a section of your profile that allows you to show your expertise in specific areas. You can let people know what skills you have and what organizations or groups you are associated with.

By adding interests to your profile, you allow recruiters and employers to find your profile based on those skills and organizations. This will help increase the chances of them contacting you.

LinkedIn Interests Examples

Web Design and Development: You can talk about tools and tricks you use for your work and how this has helped you grow professionally;

Farming: If it’s just a hobby or if it goes beyond that, like being involved in an organic farm group;

Traveling: Focusing on the places you’ve already visited, sharing tips and recommendations for future travelers; and

Reading: Mentioning what genres and authors you enjoy, or maybe share some book quotes that inspire you.

Conclusion

Just because there’s no ideal way to add multiple interests in LinkedIn, doesn’t mean it can’t be done! In this post, we’ve covered a variety of ways you can add extra information and make your profile more meaningful. The important thing is that you show your personality on LinkedIn by including interests that reflect both your creative and professional passions.