Instead of daydreaming about getting your dream job, spend five minutes—literally—to build a strong profile that will help you stand out from the crowd, says employment-oriented social networking service LinkedIn.

No matter what stage you are in your career, having a strong LinkedIn profile can help you be discovered for new opportunities such as jobs, business leads and mentorship. Whether you’re actively job hunting, gathering leads, or networking in your industry, having a professional, eye-catching LinkedIn profile is an excellent idea to make sure that you can be found by the right people at the right time.

And it literally takes five minutes – these five easy steps from the guys at LinkedIn themselves show you just how easy and quick it is to build a strong profile.

1. Start with a professional photo: Smile! Remember that a photo is your first handshake with a potential employer. Simply having a profile photo results in up to 21 times more profile views, 36 times more messages and nine times more connection requests.

“We’ve also recently added photo editing in our mobile app. There are now six photo filters available, and you can also crop and edit the brightness, contrast, saturation and vignette of your LinkedIn profile photo,” says LinkedIn.

2. Include your location: It may seem simple, but you are 23x more likely to be discovered for local opportunities if you include your location

3. Write a summary that stands out: Consider listing your specialty and speaking directly to your audience. If you want your profile to be searchable, include important keywords but avoid using words that are overused such as specialized, experienced and expert. Try to keep your headline to a maximum of 10 words – And you can keep it simple and say “Marketing & Communications Professional”

4. Be sure to add previous roles and keep your work history relevant: You don’t need to list every single job you ever had. Instead, only list the jobs that are relevant to your current career goals. Keeping your current position up-to-date also helps tell your professional story and profiles with a full job history get 12 x more profile views

5. Feature examples of your work: Upload videos, presentations and images to showcase great work you’ve done previously so future employers can get an idea of your experience before they even meet you

Got a few more minutes to spare? Why not add a new skill that will get you even closer to your dream job? There is something for everyone on LinkedIn Learning which has over 9,000 courses available with everything from how to communicate assertively to strategic negotiation. Some of the most popular short courses include ‘Learning to be assertive’, ‘Mastering common interview questions’ and ‘Professional networking’. – TradeArabia News Service