Addressing Bad LinkedIn Advice
By Soozy G. Miller, CPRW, CDCC, CDP
People treat their LinkedIn profile like their very smart but very annoying colleague. You really need their help sometimes, but otherwise you prefer to stay away.
I get it. LinkedIn is a behemoth. More than one billion users in more than 250 countries means that it’s chaotic. People post annoying content about their difficult lives, their pets, and sick relatives and friends.
Further complicating the matter, and keeping people away more from LinkedIn is silly, unhelpful, and ineffective advice that’s posted for clickbait.
Consider when Business Insider/MSN had LinkedIn “experts” offer some really amusing nuggets of wisdom, which ranged from ineffective to downright contradictory:
“Having skills in the headline is one of the areas that can really help you show up more prominently in search.”
Nope. Skills go in your LinkedIn designated Skills section. They are totally findable there. Only put a tool or app if you’re an expert with that tool and you use it every day.
“Think of [your headline] as your 220-character elevator pitch.”
If your headline is your character pitch, why are you putting skills and tools? A pitch is about proving why a company should choose you instead of someone else. This advice makes no sense.
“Balance those keywords with a feel for your personality, to generate chemistry for you as a candidate.”
Chemistry? On LinkedIn? This is not a date. What does “a feel for your personality” even look like? Jokes? Sarcasm? Love notes about your dog?
Seriously, don’t worry about your personality on LinkedIn. Do you really think someone is going to choose you for a position based on personality traits they see online? That almost seems creepy. (“I think she seems easy to please and really flexible. We should talk to her.”) Ew, no. Your impact and results demonstrate why they should talk to you.
So, what do you do?
Fill your headline with impact and results (you have up to 220 characters to do this).
Fill your About section with Why statements; why do you do what you do? What drives you? Then add results and impact that prove this point.
Fill your Experience section with action, impact, and results.
If you don’t know to do any of this, we should talk.
Oh, and ignore LinkedIn’s AI proposed additions for your content. This could appear as:
“AI suggestions”
OR
“We recommend…”
OR
“Based on your profile….”
Instead, use my 3 steps outlined above. If you don’t know how, again, we should talk.
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Better job. More pay. More control.
For a free resume review, please contact us at Control Your Career!