How to Showcase Your Minor on LinkedIn?

One of the most important parts of your professional profile when searching for a new job is your education.

However, only updating it on your resume is often not enough, you need to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is also up-to-date.

And when it comes to education, there is something that most applicants sometimes miss out on listing – their minor.

But that raises the question – how to include your minor on your LinkedIn profile just right?

We are here to help you, in this article, we are going to explore the following topics:

• What is a minor?
• Should you add your minor on LinkedIn?
• How to add your minor on LinkedIn?

So, if you are ready to show off your minor on LinkedIn, let’s dive in.

What is a minor?

An academic minor is a college or university degree that is secondary to the person’s major.

Just like with the major, to earn a minor, one has to complete a series of classes, laid out by the academic institution.

The main difference between a major and a minor is the time needed to earn the academic degree, and the number of courses required

To get your minor degree, in most cases you would only need to invest three years of study, and the courses you have to complete are therefore less than these of a major degree.

Typically, students choose to pursue a major connected to their intended career, and take on a minor depending on their personal interests.

However, in some cases, students prefer to pursue a minor to provide a specific specialization that can make them more attractive to potential employers.

Should you add your minor on LinkedIn?

The short answer to this question is yes, but only if it is relevant.

Listing a relevant minor on your LinkedIn profile can only be of help to you, as it will provide additional context for recruiters.

You might consider leaving your minor off your LinkedIn profile if:

• It is completely unrelated to the job positions you are applying for and the career you are pursuing
• If you graduated more than 10 years ago, as a minor from that long ago will probably be considered irrelevant
• If you have more than one minor – in that case, you would want to draw attention to the most relevant ones

But make no mistake, a minor alone won’t land you a job. You would need to show you have more than that, and you can offer your potential employers some relevant experience, skills, and qualification.

How to add your minor on LinkedIn?

Now that you understand when you should include minor on your LinkedIn profile, it is time to find out how to do it just right.

Just like you would do on a resume, you need to list your minor in the appropriate place – the education section.

In your education section in your LinkedIn profile, you will find many options. Let’s go through them all:

• School – in this field, you need to enter the academic institution where you got your minor in
• Degree – that’s the place you need to specify that the rank of the degree is a minor
• Field of study – in this field, you should specify the main subject area of your studies
• Start date – it is important to list the date that you started your minor degree
• End date – along with the start date for your studies, you need to list the end date as well. However, if you are still studying, you can always list your minor as “ongoing”
• Activities and societies – it can only help you out in the hiring process to list the activities you have carried out during your minor, as well as the associations to which you belong
• Description – you should take advantage of the opportunity to add description to your minor in your LinkedIn profile, and complement all your information to show you in the best possible light
• Media – if you have any additional documents related to your minor that you would like to show to the hiring managers when they are browsing through your profile, this is the perfect place to attach them

Last but not least, if you have more than one minor that you would like to add to your LinkedIn profile, you can always do so by clicking the “Add a minor” button in the education section of your LinkedIn profile.

Takeaways

We are all done, now you know how to showcase your minor on LinkedIn.

Let’s go through all the important steps you need to take when listing your minor on your LinkedIn profile one more time:

• Consider if it is relevant to the positions you are applying for – you would not want to clutter your profile with information that does not help you get your dream job
• Consider if your minor is still relevant once more – if it was too long ago, or you would like to draw attention to a more relevant minor, you might want to omit a minor
• Fill in all your relevant fields to your minor in your LinkedIn profile – these include:
  • School
  • Degree
  • Field of study
  • Start date
  • End date
  • Activities and societies
  • Description
  • Media
• Consider listing more than one minor on your LinkedIn profile, if you find them to be relevant to the positions you are applying for

Now that you know all that, go to your LinkedIn profile, and make your minor present you even better to hiring managers.