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The days of resumes, of business cards, of working from an office are gone. Everything is now done digitally. This includes your reputation. If you’re a career professional in 2022, you also have some pretty high goals for yourself - whether that’s building the best team possible, establishing yourself as a leader in your field, or trying to take the next step up in your career. No matter what your goals look like, people will be looking you up to decide how seriously they’ll take you.
While life is completely uncertain, one thing you can always focus on is yourself. As you look forward to 2022 and start to think about your career goals for the year ahead, you’ll want to make sure you’re starting the year off strong and ready to accomplish all of your goals. No matter where you are in your career journey, it’s always a good idea to have an updated LinkedIn profile.
If you want to reach your goals, it’s important to own your own story, especially on LinkedIn. In order to own your own story, you need to decide what exactly that narrative looks like and build a strategy around it.
Who’s Controlling Your LinkedIn Story?
As I like to say, “HOPE is not a strategy.” What that means is very simple. Before you start your LinkedIn profile, pick which one of these categories you fall into. Are you:
1 - #Hiring and looking to add to your current team
2- Aggressively seeking employment (#OpenToWork)
3- Passively seeking employment and not wanting to tip off your boss
4- Everything else - want to look professional, be a thought leader, or increase personal branding
In other words:
H - #Hiring
O - #OpenToWork
P - Passively Seeking
E - Everything Else
“HOPE is not a strategy.”
So How Are You Using Your LinkedIn?
Before you continue, select where you are in the HOPE acronym. In other words, where do you fall within the HOPE strategy?
H - #Hiring
If you’re on LinkedIn as a hiring manager trying to fill a role or roles, not find a new one, your plan of attack is going to be different than those people who are looking for new jobs. The number one thing you want to do is make sure you’re representing both yourself and your company in a positive light. You want people to get excited about the chance to work with you and your company.
O - #OpenToWork
Before you classify yourself as an aggressive candidate, make sure you’re really okay with everyone at your current job knowing you’re on the hunt, if you are still employed. If you think your colleagues aren’t using LinkedIn, you’re fooling yourself, and they will find out. Sound irrelevant? It’s not.
You’re going to specifically want to curate your profile to attract HR and recruiters for the job you want. Of course, you don’t know who this person is specifically, but you can get a safe idea of what type of person they might be.
The person who will be your boss is not the one searching through your LinkedIn profile. It’s going to be a recruiter (internal or agency) or someone working in HR. These people aren’t going to be super technical, so don’t waste your time filling your profile with impressive lines of code. Instead, they’re just going to click, do a quick scroll-through, and decide if you’re worth a call.
In addition to the #OpenToWork, you can also click to display “open to opportunities” on your profile through a setting on LinkedIn, but as I mentioned earlier, people at your current job will see this, so make sure you’re okay with having that out there.
P - Passively Seeking
If you’re a passive candidate, your profile won’t be that different from an aggressive candidate. You definitely won’t want to make any mention of your job search on your profile, and you do not want to click the option that allows you to appear as open for jobs unless you want your boss to call you in for an awkward Zoom meeting Monday morning. Instead, you want to appear a content and integral part of your current team.
Technology unemployment is at an all time low right now, hovering around 2% as of January 2022. It’s a safe assumption that if you’re one of the best, you’ll already be happily working somewhere, and that’s the impression you’re going to want to give on your LinkedIn page.
E - Everything Else
Maybe you want to give a good impression if someone happens to look you up, but you really don’t have any interest in keeping up regularly on LinkedIn or growing your online presence. In this case, there are some bare minimums you should meet.
Back to the Basics -
Regardless of where you fall in the HOPE acronym, here is some basic information you should know about your Linkedin. If someone looks you up and your profile is sloppy and unfinished, it won’t matter what your goals are - you won’t be reaching them. This is something you want to take seriously and work carefully on, section by section. When deciding how to update your profile, I find it’s easiest to start from the bottom and work your way up.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Interests: This section isn’t necessarily the most important. It can give your audience some insight into your character or what you enjoy, but it’s not a make-or-break.
Recommendations: You should have at least a couple of these. If you’re too embarrassed to ask, keep in mind that people don’t know your personal relationship to the people who recommend you. Maybe you have a friend who has a good title at a good company and wouldn’t mind writing one for you. At the end of the day, it’s not a huge deal, but it’s definitely nice to have.
Skills & Endorsements: Not everyone is going to look at this section, but it can be nice to have something here. It’s not hard to get people to endorse you, especially friends and colleagues. I would have a maximum of ten skills listed. If you have too many, instead of looking well-rounded, you’ll look like you’re trying too hard, and it will look sloppy.
Get Smart About It
Education:
High Schools/Prep Schools- First off, there’s no need to put your high school or preparatory school on your LinkedIn profile. If it is extremely prestigious, then maybe you can make a case for it, but for the most part, if you’ve been out of college, there’s no need to have any education beforehand.
College & University- This section has the most controversy when it comes to opinions, which usually has to do with indecision about putting the dates or not.
There are four reasons why you wouldn’t have the dates:
Hide your age
Didn’t graduate
Something to hide
Forgot
Keep in mind, people will always assume the worst, so my advice is to be honest and get ahead of whatever the problem is. In addition, make sure all of your schools have logos - that is a common mistake. Without them, it won’t look official. Most, if not all, colleges and universities should have logos for LinkedIn.
Certifications: If they’re relevant to the field you’re in or the field you’re looking to get into, list them. If not, don’t. If you’re going to list them, make sure they’re not expired.
Awards & Accomplishments: This is an “all or nothing” section. You should either put them all or put none of them.
Work It Out
Experience: This will depend on where you are in the HOPE acronym. This is where you need to ask yourself, “What is the story I’m trying to tell, and what is the goal I’m hoping to accomplish?” Ideally, no matter what your goals are, you want to show a progression throughout your career. This is the meat of your profile. Have you moved up in various leadership roles? Maybe you’ve managed global teams. What are you trying to show the world?
While everyone has a different story they’re trying to tell, there are some common things you want to ensure you have correct.
Current Title: Your title on LinkedIn does not have to match the one given to you by your manager. LinkedIn is your professional social media page, not your resume. You need to keep in mind the following things:
Write your title the way it would be most commonly written.
Don’t use abbreviations - if you write “Sr” instead of “Senior,” LinkedIn won’t recognize it as a keyword.
Accurately reflect the work that you do.
If possible, keep in mind the job that you want.
Often, people get hung up on what their title is within their company. However, it is essential to note that titles that are important internally may not have the same recognition outside of your company. For this reason, it is best to simplify or generalize your title on LinkedIn in order to get the attention of the audience you want.
Your title within your company might be “Python React Developer”, but if you have experience with other languages and want to market your wider skill set, “Backend Engineer” would be a broader title to get you noticed more.
Passively Seeking: Make sure your dates are accurate for your current job tenure. If you’ve had a steady stream of promotions, accurately depict that on your profile.
Everything Else: You should at least have the companies you’ve worked for listed on your profile, and they should all have logos. You should list at least one job per company. Make sure all your dates are accurate and updated.
What You Say Says A Lot
Activity: You want to make sure that what you’re interacting with is relevant. LinkedIn isn’t like Facebook or Twitter. What you post on LinkedIn should be something you’d be comfortable with your boss or the CEO of your company seeing. Are you commenting on the latest drama with the Kardashians, or are you responding to a thought-provoking post by Bill or Melinda Gates?
Passively Seeking: Interact with things relating to your company on LinkedIn.
Articles: These fall under the activity section and are a great way to put out knowledge and build up your credibility in your field. They can be long or short, and you can write them about anything, but on that note, make sure what you’re saying is relevant. Don’t be overwhelmed at the idea of publishing something. Your first article can be short- just put something out into the world and see what kind of reaction you get.
Featured: This section allows you to pin any customized activity that you want to feature. This is one of the first things people will see on your profile, so if you’ve been mentioned in other articles or have written any articles, you want to make sure you pin them here.
Down to the Details
About: This is your elevator pitch. This is the nitty-gritty of exactly what you want everyone to know about you. This should be carefully crafted to showcase your best professional self. Mention some of your great characteristics, projects you’re working on, or current responsibilities. Be careful - don’t make this too long or no one will bother to read it. It’s called an elevator pitch for a reason.
#HIRING: In your about section, write a paragraph about your experience within that company. Mention opportunities you’ve had, projects you’ve worked on, things that you’ve learned - things that you would want to see if you were researching a company you might want to work for.
If you went to a good school, feel free to put that information at the top of your bio as well. It builds your credibility and speaks to the caliber of people your company hires.
Passively Seeking: Fill your profile with keywords, especially in your about section and headline. You want to ensure recruiters can still find you, but you definitely don’t want to put on your profile that you’re open to new positions at risk of opening an awkward conversation with your boss.
Think about who will be reading this and what you want their takeaway about you to be. Where you fall on the HOPE strategy will direct how you should frame it. If you’re looking for a job, talk about the work you've done throughout your career. If you’re hiring, talk about some of the cool projects you’ve been able to accomplish in your current role.
Headline: This is what’s written right underneath your name and can be customized. This is the first thing people will see when they look you up, so you want it to be catchy and straight to the point. It can be your current title at your job, or if you’re trying to entice recruiters, make sure you’re using a keyword that relates to the kind of role you want to be considered for.
Everything Else: Put your title on your headline.
If You Want to Talk
Contact Information: If you’re going to put anything here (which you don’t have to), make sure it’s the correct information. There’s nothing worse than realizing all your career-related emails have been going to your “.edu” address you haven’t touched since you graduated. Or even worse - to your old work email.
Social Media: To keep your LinkedIn profile professional, it is imperative you do not share any social media links that aren’t also professional. If you’re a tech professional tweeting about the latest in AI, by all means, set up that link. If you’re live-tweeting pictures of your kids at a soccer game, LinkedIn is not the place to showcase that.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Headshot: You need to have a photo of yourself on LinkedIn. It’s non-negotiable. If people are looking for you on LinkedIn, having no photo will instantly make you less credible than you would’ve been otherwise. It doesn’t have to be a professionally taken headshot, either. You can have it taken on an iPhone. Really the only thing you don’t want to do is crop yourself out of a group photo from an event. This looks sloppy, and your career shouldn’t scream ‘sloppy.’ After all, would you wear a wrinkled shirt to work? One more tip: SMILE! People don’t want to reach out to someone who looks angry.
Header Image: This is something that will make you look a lot more put-together. Yes, LinkedIn gives you that generic blue header, but updating it will make you stand out. See what other people in your company have used for their backgrounds, or pick something that represents your personal brand. When in doubt, you want to look at people who have accomplished what you’re currently trying to do. Mimic what they’ve done, because clearly, it’s working.
#HIRING: Start with changing the header on your profile to something with your company’s logo- bonus points if you can get other colleagues to also use the same headers. Uniformity is a good look.
What Is Your Story
Curating your story is all about what you choose to emphasize or de-emphasize to convince the person reading your profile that they need to talk to you. . The choices you make should tell the person reading your profile about your career up until this point and where you are going next. Everything that you choose to share should directly contribute in some way to achieving the goal you’re currently reaching for.
The About section is key. Even the most casual LinkedIn recruiter will take the time to skim through the About section of someone who’s caught their eye. You want to make sure you’re highlighting the right thing. If you’re looking for a new job, is what they’re reading going to translate to a new opportunity they’re looking to fill? If you’re hoping to hire a new team member, is your introduction going to entice them to apply for your role? In addition, this is a great chance to put some keywords that will help your profile stand out in a search. For example, use the names of some of the technologies you frequently work with and would like to continue using, or talk about the topic you’re most passionate about and want to grow as a thought leader with.
Career Trajectory
Creating a story that will emphasize where you’re going in your career is dependent on how you detail your work experience. Looking at your previous titles and companies on your LinkedIn profile, what sort of story do you see?
Now, imagine you’re looking at my profile trying to learn more about me. What story does it tell you?
Everything on my profile is filled out yet minimal so the emphasis is on the progression of my actual career. I’ve moved up quickly from an individual contributor to the CEO of my own company within the sales and staffing industries. My activity, endorsements, recommendations, and interests all support my story with related content.
Whatever your career has been, your experience should show a succinct story. Small changes like re-wording your title, or adding a small description of your work can point to why you made the moves you’ve made and how they’ve enhanced your career.
If there is something that you don’t like as much, such as a gap in employment, don’t think you can fool anyone by cutting it out of your history. If there is anything left unsaid about a gap - or anything that may be negative - people will assume the worst. Instead, be open and address the issue- people appreciate honesty. There are certain points in time when people will almost expect to see a gap. If you lost your job in March 2020 during the pandemic or took off some time to care for a sick family member, nobody is going to hold that against you. Just be as honest as you can be and you’ll find people are more understanding than you expect. Recruiters and tech professionals are human beings too!
For Job Seekers -
Let’s say you fall into the middle two categories - #OpenToWork and Passively Seeking. You don’t want just any job - you have a specific role in a specific industry in mind to achieve the perfect next step in your career progression. . When most people decide to look for a new job, their first move is to update their resume. There are hundreds of articles online that will tell you how to update your resume and submit your applications, but most of these articles aren’t taking into account the changes in the technology industry that we’ve seen especially in recent years. The truth is, your potential employer has most likely made up their mind about you even before you’ve had a chance to interview, and it’s not because of your resume.
The way to impress employers in today’s job market is to have a LinkedIn profile with a strong personal brand, and a professional online persona. LinkedIn is not used to get a job in the way that your resume is, LinkedIn should be viewed as a branding tool to get an interview. This involves curating your LinkedIn profile to showcase your strengths and what makes you stand out from the competition.
As a leader in the tech staffing industry, my best advice to job seekers is to update your LinkedIn profile first, and worry about your resume later. This is probably opposite from what you’ve heard before, but let me explain.
I’ve placed tens of thousands of technologists in my career and helped dozens of companies hire. I can tell you that the old-school mentality of getting your resume to the top of the list is not going to cut it anymore. Nowadays, especially in a remote workforce where you now have to compete with talent all over the country, the best strategy is to set yourself apart from the crowd in every way. Anyone can apply to a job on LinkedIn, no matter if they’re qualified or not. The big question here - how do you separate yourself from the clutter?
I can tell you for certain that the best way to get where you want to go is through your network and people that you know. A referral would be a great way for you to get your foot in the door, but if not, being handpicked by a recruiter would be your next best bet. At this point in the article, I’m going to peel away the curtain and show you exactly how recruiters recruit and exactly how you’re going to get them to find you. As I write this, there are over 178 million people in the United States on LinkedIn. More specifically, there are over 5 million people alone who currently have C-suite job titles. How do you set yourself apart from that crowd?
Do you remember when we used to use business cards? How long has it been since you’ve shaken someone’s hand, let alone given them a business card? Years? I’ve hired multiple employees since the pandemic began, and I’ve never even thought about ordering them business cards. Instead, we immediately connect on LinkedIn. When hiring in a remote world, the likelihood you’ll never even meet your connections in person is pretty high. What else can you do but keep up with them digitally?
A remote workforce makes it very likely that your entire professional persona will be created and maintained online. There are perks to this - LinkedIn makes it much easier to keep up with connections once they move to a different role or company, and you never know how you’ll end up connecting with someone later on. For this reason, it’s best to always be prepared and to make sure your online presence is current.
Who Are You Curating Your Profile For?
If you want to connect with the right people, you need to think about who your audience is on LinkedIn. Try this: think about the next step in your career you’re looking to take. Close your eyes and picture your future boss in this new role. Now, open your eyes. The person that you pictured is not the person you should be targeting with your LinkedIn profile because that is not the person who will be recruiting for the job that you want.
So who is it if it’s not your potential boss? Your potential boss’ boss? The person creating the budget? A peer of yours? It's actually none of the above, because believe it or not, those are not the people deciding who gets an interview.
Typically, when a position opens up within a company, the people running the show are not the ones going out to find potential candidates. The people in charge of the hiring process are most likely to be someone in Human Resources, an internal recruiter, or a corporate recruiter. They’ll be the ones choosing whom to reach out to, and the odds are that it’s going to be based on a LinkedIn profile. Yours needs to stand out.
At the time I’m writing this article, the national unemployment rate is at 3.9%. The unemployment rate for the technology industry is around 2.6%. The low tech unemployment rate combined with the surge of tech professionals quitting their jobs for new ones (something experts are calling The Great Resignation) means that there are currently more open jobs than there are active candidates. Companies are competing with each other to get the best talent on their team. This is great news for you if you’re looking to take the next step in your career, but you still need to be smart about how you represent yourself. In this age of low unemployment and overwhelmingly passive candidates, LinkedIn has become the go-to recruiting tool for corporate recruiters. To impress a recruiter who is going through hundreds of profiles a day, yours must be maintained and kept up to date. This should not take hours and hours of work, but you should definitely give it some thought.
Looking for a New Job? Worry About Your LinkedIn. Update Your Resume Later.
Who Your LinkedIn Target ACTUALLY Is
After leadership has exhausted their current company’s internal promotions as well as their own personal network, they’ll put the pressure on their internal HR team or the internal/corporate recruiters to find the perfect candidate.
What do we know about these people?
As of writing this, on LinkedIn there are just over 320,000 people with the title “Recruiter”.
The average salary for a human resource worker in the US is about $65,218 according to Glassdoor.
Internal recruiters typically don’t make commissions.
The median age of an HR worker is 40.9.
Compare this to who you thought about at the beginning of the article. This recruiter or human resources worker is drastically different from the future boss you probably pictured earlier, if they’re a CTO whose average pay is $191,126 and 85.7% of which are men.
Curate Your Profile for Your LinkedIn Target
The overall appearance of your profile should be clean and easy to read so that a recruiter can have an understanding of your personality and experience quickly. Make sure you only have high-quality images. Your average recruiter reviews a hundred profiles every day, and you need to make sure yours is the one that they choose to look more closely at. They need a reason to pick up the phone and call you for an interview.
If your profile is aimed at the typical recruiter and not the CTO of a company, you should be focused on legibility for your audience. Be wary of:
Highly technical details
Coding samples
Industry jargon
Although there are many recruiters who are experts in technology, it is important to remember that not all of them are technical or experts in the industry of their employer. Most HR reps and internal/corporate recruiters are generalists. You do not want to alienate recruiters who don’t understand the technical details of your work. Your technical skills will be evaluated by the hiring manager after a recruiter has contacted you for an initial interview. Keep in mind that LinkedIn should be viewed as a branding tool to get an interview. The goal here is just to get the initial interview, and creating a LinkedIn profile that is specific but uncomplicated by details is what will help you reach that goal.
The competitiveness of today’s job market can improve career options for job seekers, but it can also make it much more difficult to actually be found and called in for a job interview. To increase your chances of being found and contacted by a recruiter, you need to help them find you. The best way to convince them that they should call you for an interview is with a really great LinkedIn Profile.
How Do Recruiters Find You on LinkedIn?
Recruiters Pay For Premium Search Engines To Find You
When recruiters are looking for talent on LinkedIn, many of them will utilize LinkedIn’s paid-for search tool, LinkedIn Recruiter. Think of this tool as Google on steroids. It is a search engine within the LinkedIn platform that allows recruiters to filter through every single profile on LinkedIn, using keywords. Top recruiters use this to find LinkedIn profiles that have their ideal search criteria. Within seconds, they can cut a list of millions of LinkedIn profiles down to a few hundred potential candidates. Just for context, there’s over ten million profiles just in the Greater New York City Area. This means that no matter how good your profile looks, if you don’t show up in these searches, recruiters won’t be able to find you.
How LinkedIn Recruiter Works LinkedIn Recruiter is like Google Search on steroids. The program searches with boolean filters that apply an exact keyword search to the different sections of a LinkedIn profile. There are dozens of search criteria that recruiters can choose from when narrowing down their search.
This is what it looks like.
To build a good candidate pool, recruiters look at certain qualifications or criteria. Most of them focus first on the following:
Current Title
Location
Keywords related to the job
If the information in these specific sections of your LinkedIn profile are out of date or have information that isn’t geared towards your current job search, you won’t even make the first cut.
How do you make sure you’ll be found?
The first thing you’ll want to do is find two or three job descriptions for jobs that you really want. You’re going to use these as guidelines for what you need to get across to any recruiter looking at your profile. Think of it as doing the maze backward from end to beginning. Your About section is a great place to focus on this objective. Your goal here is to tell a story that reads similarly to that of the job descriptions you found. You want the recruiter reading your profile to know without a doubt you’d meet all the qualifications of the job you’re looking for.
If all three of the job descriptions you’re using as guides mention “high integrity and a focus on diversity and inclusion,” make sure that makes an appearance on your profile. If two of the three jobs mention “built a team from scratch with a global presence,” make sure you write something about that in your About section. If the job description mentions any specific technology, make sure you mention any relevant technologies you have experience with on your profile. It’s very likely these will be some of the keywords the recruiter will use to begin their search.
Location On LinkedIn
With the transition to a fully remote or hybrid rule, your location on LinkedIn no longer has exactly the same bearing as it used to. While you should still make sure it’s accurate, it’s very likely that recruiters will be searching for candidates in the “United States” as opposed to just “Dallas, Texas.”
That being said, there is always the chance that you could be looking for a hybrid role that gives you some office face-time. If that’s the case, you want to make sure that your location on LinkedIn is the location where you want to work, even if it’s not the same as where you’re living. If you’re within commuting distance to a larger city, you should set your location to a wider range. For example, instead of using “Secaucus, New Jersey,” you can set your location to “Greater New York City Area.” This means you’ll now show up in any searches taking place in the wider metropolitan area, which gives you a much better shot of being contacted for an interview.
If you’re looking to relocate, one of the simplest mistakes you can make is not updating your location to where you want to relocate to. You will not appear on a recruiter’s list unless your LinkedIn location is within the boundary they’re looking in, so be sure to keep your location current.
Why Haven’t You Reached Your Career Goals? Check Your Keywords.
Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile With Keywords
LinkedIn Recruiter is able to look through every profile on LinkedIn that matches the keywords recruiters use in their search criteria. Keywords are the most important terms related to your career experience such as:
Technologies you use
Words that express your skill level (manager, leader)
Qualifications / Certifications
The keywords you use in your profile tell a story to the recruiters about who you are, what you do, and what jobs you may be interested in. Recruiters don’t care about your exact internal title or the exact timeframe you worked at a job- they care about what you did at the company you worked for and what skills you have.
Having a LinkedIn profile that is optimized for the wrong keywords is lethal to your job search. However, if you use keywords effectively within your headline, summary and work experience, you will put yourself in the right recruiter’s search and boost your LinkedIn profile to the top of their lists.
Using Keywords To Set Your Profile Apart
The keywords you use in your profile need to stand out to attract recruiters, rather than turning them off and repelling them by giving out too much information.
If you take a look at your LinkedIn profile right now, do you see any of these?
Paragraphs of details about the companies you’ve worked at
Bullet points about all of your previous jobs
Facts about projects
A fun anecdote or two
If you’re seeing these, your profile is not going to stand out to a recruiter. They don’t have time to spend reading paragraphs of information. If they can’t get what they need to know within a few moments of skimming your profile, they will move on.
Decide on the keywords you want to use to market yourself. Anything that is not related to these keywords can be taken out. Remember that your LinkedIn Profile should be used as a branding tool to get an interview, and using this mindset, write a short headline and summary that utilize your keywords.If absolutely necessary, you can add a quick sentence or two to your specific jobs within your work experience.
Choosing Keywords
Think about the technologies or skills that you use the most within your current position.
What words associated with your current skills, projects, and job experiences will get you on the list of a recruiter for your dream job?
When you’re gearing your profile towards your job search, it’s also useful to consider what skillsets or experiences recruiters want to see in their dream candidate. If you can identify the keywords associated with the next job you want, and they are true to your work experience, they will be the most impactful keywords and ones you should definitely use.
To Sum It Up -
I’ve explained to you a bit about how to identify your professional goals, how to structure your LinkedIn profile, how recruiters find profiles on LinkedIn, the secrets of staffing, and how you can best enable yourself to take the next big step in your career. However, all of the components I’ve written about can’t help you unless you can bring them together to curate your professional story.
Your professional story is the history of your career along with your professional personality that you have cultivated. Other professionals rely on how you sell yourself on your LinkedIn profile to decide if you will be a good fit for what they’re seeking for themselves.
Clean Up Your Profile
The details of your profile will make a huge difference in overall appearance and completeness. LinkedIn users are seeing hundreds of profiles, which may get narrowed down to just two that could be considered identical in skill-set and experience. If one profile is complete, neat, professional, and has a good profile image, while the other is incomplete and messy, the person with the better looking profile will get the best opportunity.
Every opportunity for an image or icon should be used; every company should have a logo, and your profile header should remain professional. It should go without saying, but spell check your profile- you don’t want to ruin what could be a fantastic professional collaboration with a simple spelling mistake.
Preparing yourself to take a risk professionally can often be a stressful endeavor. You're worried about many things: a history of job hopping, a previous company’s reputation, gaps in employment, finding the right person to work alongside you, but I’m here to tell you that those worries don’t matter.. What does matter is how you use the story of your career to get exactly what you’re looking for in your career.
Take A Step Back
After you’ve finished cleaning up your profile and creating your story, take a step back and look at your profile on desktop and on mobile. See if it looks professional and is telling the story you want it to tell. Ask a colleague, friend, or a professional to tell you what story they see. Keep these notes in mind whenever you update your profile or have a new goal in mind.
Remember, it’s your career. You’re the only one who can reach your goals, and you’re the only one who can tell your story the way you want it told. Take what you’ve read and apply it to your LinkedIn profile. Once you notice the difference it makes for you, pass along the knowledge and help someone else out. You never know who you could connect with and what you may be able to accomplish!
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