I first created a LinkedIn in 2010. Back then, LinkedIn was in its awkward teenage years. Most people didn't think of it as a social media platform. It was just your online resume, another record of your achievements.
So I forgot about it for almost a decade.
I came back to it when, suddenly, I was trying to transition careers from teaching to being a developer. But my mindset was the same as it had been in 2010: LinkedIn was just my CV.
Whoops.
How LinkedIn and a Resume Differ In The Job Search
Resumes are at their best a targeted message to the company which says “This is what you should know about what I have done that makes me the right person to work with for this job.” That’s why a good CV/resume is 1 page. It gets to the point quickly and efficiently, with no distraction.
LinkedIn on the other hand is an expansive record of everything you have done professionally, as well as your opinions around professional topics. It is of course more than this, but when you are looking for a job, this is its primary purpose.
In the job search, LinkedIn is there to quickly but more thoroughly answer the question; “What would this person be like to work with?” While there are overlaps with a resume, there are also major differences.
With that in mind, let’s dive in to 5 things you can do to customize your LinkedIn for greater success in the job search.
Disclaimer: My LinkedIn profile, which I’ll use as an example for this letter, is NOT perfect. But it serves me for my current purposes, and I’ll be updating it soon. So use it as a reference, not as the perfect template. Instead, follow the guidance I’ve written under each picture
Fix Your Headline
Under my name, you’ll see my headline.
The headline is often the first written statement you’ll see on anyone’s page. When you comment on people’s posts, they’ll see it there too.
Make sure this headline communicates what you want people to know about you.
For me, right now, that means making sure people at my company know I’m committed to my role first, and my own side project second. This will likely change in the near future.
If you are searching for a job, you want to write what job you want to have
Eg:
Customer Support Specialist
Product Manager
Marketing Manager
It’s okay if you don’t have this role yet. Recruiters are interested in know what you aim to do.
A few things you should avoid:
Aspiring, Junior, Striving. These words weaken you and give a bad impression. You’re not being humble, you’re being meek.
University student. There is no job title called university student.
Unless you are committed to staying a freelancer (which I fully support) do not mention the words “freelancer” or “my clients”. You want to signal you want FT work.
Make Your Activity Feed Shine
I’m proud of my activity feed. It’s been months of continuous hard work, writing daily, to get where I am today.
But it’s paid off, and if you work on yours, I guarantee you it will for you too. In fact, your activity feed might be the difference between landing a job and not.
See whenever I screened someone on LinkedIn, their activity feed could tell me many things about them. It told me:
Evidence of what they value (the things that they continuously posted about)
How well they communicate (not just their posts, but also their comments)
What they know (are they posting knowledge about the work they want to do with me)
Their influence (this isn’t a top priority, but if someone has gets a lot of likes and/or has a lot of followers, it means they know how to build influence)
Their consistency (if someone can post on LinkedIn regularly, I can trust they’ll be consistent in the job if they want to be)
The activity feed also gives savvy recruiters and hiring manager something to talk about in your interview. Believe me when I say it’s better to have something to ask a candidate than not.
To make your activity feed shine, start posting about the kind of work you want to do daily. Don’t spend more than 20 minutes, and try to keep your posts short. It’s okay if the content seems repetitive.
I’ll have a whole other series on how to write on LinkedIn, but you can get started with 0 guidance. If I can, I know you can :).
Make Your Relevant Experience Scannable
I wanted to show this specific slice of my profile to make a point:
It’s critical to show progress + skills on your latest positions.
You want to make sure people can see that you’ve grown from doing 1 thing to another, if possible. Most people don’t stay in 1 role or have 1 title the whole time they work, but this only matters for your most recent work.
In addition, you’ll see my 2 positions have overlapping skills, but there are some higher level skills in the more recent position. This shows growth.
Want to know a secret?
No one told me I was the Product Manager for Advertising. I decide that when my responsibilities at work shifted from the ones in the first description to the ones in the second description.
Did my boss care? Absolutely not.
You can do the same. Even if you haven’t officially switched roles, look for a way to honestly segment your role into 2 parts based around responsibilities and skills required.
What if you are a freelancer?
Let’s look at how we could do this:
Choose the employer as Freelance (Self employed).
Choose 3-5 of your best freelance projects.
For each project, make a new “role” (this requires a new title). If you have the same client and you’ve offered multiple services, you can say use this format {Project Type} for {Company Name}. For example: SEO Blog Writing at Fishing Company. If you have done the same kind of project for multiple companies, you can just write the project type, but as a noun, eg: SEO Blog Writer.
For roles with the title {Project Type} for {Company Name}, describe the results that your work generated. For the role SEO Blog Writing at Fishing Company, you could write something like “Ranked 5 articles number 1 on Google”.
For roles where you just wrote the project type as a noun, you’ll want to write multiple lines of experience like this: {Result you created} for {Business Name}. This would look like this “Ranked 5 articles number 1 on Google for Fishing Company” “Ranked 5 articles on page 1 of Google for German Bakery”.
Finally, make sure you mark the role as Remote in the location section.
Make a Great Banner
This banner is NOT perfect. I still have a lot of work to do (I am not a great designer).
But there are three key points made on this banner:
What I do (Coach and Product Builder)
What I am passionate about (Remote Work and Work From Anywhere)
When I regularly post
This gives a clear signal of what value I create, what I am passionate about, and that I have a reliable time for posting. It also shows clear colors, indicating a commitment to branding, something subtle but important to demonstrate a certain level of order in my thinking.
If you are looking for work, your banner should include the following information:
Quanitified results of the impact you’ve created. For example, if you focus on SEO, you could write “Helping Business Rank On Page 1 on Google, 50 Articles Across Industries”.
What kind of company you are looking to work with: start up, small to medium business, enterprise company? Whatever the case, make it clear on the banner.
A general area you want to work in “Marketing”, “Sales”, “Product”.
If you’re not sure what to use for you banner, check out canva.com. You should be able to figure it out easily.
Your Action Steps
Go back through your LinkedIn. Optimize your profile for searching for a job. I know from those of you that have subscribed that many have done some, but not all of these optimizations. Trust me, every improvement you make compounds the value of your overall LinkedIn profile.
Thanks for reading, this was a long one! If you liked what you read, please leave a like. If you have a question, leave a comment. See you tomorrow.