How to feature your GitHub repositories on LinkedIn

Put your work in the spotlight!

Photo by Abhyuday Majhi on Unsplash

Are you a Data Scientist or Software Developer who wants to highlight your best work from GitHub on your LinkedIn profile? If so, read on.

Step 1) Set social media preview image on GitHub.

• Remember the old saying, “A picture says a thousand words,” and select an appropriate image to represent your work. Unsplash, Pexels, and Canva are a few phenomenal resources for freely-usable images.
• Go to your repo and click Settings.
• Go to the Social preview section and click Edit to upload an image.
• Repeat for each repo you want to feature.

Image by author

Step 2) Feature your repo on your LinkedIn profile.

• Go to the Featured section of your LinkedIn profile (right below the About section).
• Click the plus sign to show the different types of items you can Feature.
• Click on Links.
• Enter the URL to your repo in the Add a link pop-up window, then click Add.
• Enter the Title and Description you want to be displayed for your project, then click Save.
• Again, repeat for each repo you want to feature.

Bonus Step) Learn from my mistake!

When I originally featured my projects on my LinkedIn profile, I had neglected to set the social media preview images on GitHub beforehand. The result? My GitHub profile avatar was shown for every…single…project. How repetitive, boring, and non-informative!

Of course, I wanted to fix this ASAP, so I rushed back to my GitHub and added social media preview images. I checked my LinkedIn profile, and…nothing! I refreshed the webpage and saw…the same old boring avatar instead of my thoughtfully chosen image that perfectly represented my work.

Over It Ugh GIF By BBC

Thankfully, there was a quick fix (thanks, Google)! I needed to clear the image cache on LinkedIn.

I went to the LinkedIn Post Inspector, entered the URL of my repository, and clicked Inspect. This cleared the image cache, and my snazzy new image was displayed on my profile!

And now you know an easy way to feature your GitHub repos on your LinkedIn profile! Please share if you’ve found this useful, and feel free to let me know if this has helped you.