Episode 339 - I answer the seven LinkedIn questions my career coaching clients ask most often, from headlines and About sections to recruiter visibility, skills, posting, and making your profile support your next career move.

Today I want to talk about LinkedIn again, but not in the usual way. This is not an episode about hacks. It’s not an episode about beating the algorithm.

And it’s definitely not an episode about turning you into a full-time LinkedIn content creator. Because most of my clients don’t want that. They are experienced professionals, they are executives, senior managers, consultants, board directors, specialists and leaders,

and many of them have built careers over twenty, thirty years and they are not short on experience. They are not short on capability, they’re short on time.

they have often had one problem. Their LinkedIn profile does not show to the market who they are now and what they’re known for and where they’re going next. And that really matters because before someone speaks to you, they may look you up on LinkedIn. Before a recruiter contacts you, they may find you on LinkedIn and do a search. Before a hiring manager decides whether to interview you, they may check your profile.

Even before someone refers you, they may look you up on LinkedIn and ask themselves, can I confidently introduce this person?

That is why LinkedIn matters. Not because it’s fashionable, not because everyone says you should be active there, but because whether you like it or not, LinkedIn has become part of the professional trust system. Today I want to share the seven LinkedIn questions my clients ask me most often. I will count them down from number seven to number one, and number one is the question I hear all the time.

And it is the one that sits underneath every LinkedIn audit that I do. So let’s begin.

Alright, beginning with question number seven: what should I post on LinkedIn? This is a question that clients ask me when they know they should be more visible, but they feel super uncomfortable being being visible. And I understand that many experienced professionals did not build their careers by posting online. You know, I’m a generation X. I find it super awkward to be on LinkedIn as often as I am. But remember, I’m a career.

coach seeking client. So I have to post more than my usual client who is a corporate professional with a full time job.

But we built our careers by doing the work, didn’t we? We delivered on things, on projects, on leading teams, on managing crises and chairing meetings and building relationships, all of that. So we did not need to write posts about every thought we’ve had before breakfast. So when we hear that LinkedIn matters, we often feel really resistant.

And my clients say things to me like I don’t want to sound self promotional, I don’t know what to say, I’m not looking to become an influencer, I don’t want my employer to know that I’m job hunting, that’s very common.

and I don’t want to post something and not have no one respond to it. So all of that is very understandable. But here is the shift I want you to make.

Posting on LinkedIn is not about performing. It’s about signaling. It’s about signaling what you care about, what you understand. You are signaling the problems you can solve and you can help a new employer solve. You are signaling what you are still actively doing and relevant for and the thoughts and ideas you had about your your

area of expertise. And

you are still engaged in your profession. You don’t you do not need to share everything, you don’t need to post every day. You actually shouldn’t, if you are like many of my clients. And you do not need to turn your career into content. For many professionals a better starting point is to simply become visible through a thoughtful engagement process. For example, commenting on other people’s posts from the same industry as yours.

Sharing a useful article with a short reflection, writing about a trend that you are noticing, sharing a lesson that you learned in the field without breaching any confidentiality issues. So this could be from a previous work experience, this could be from attending a conference, from gaining a certification.

supporting other people in your network with nurturing comments when they achieve a milestone and get a job or leave a job. The purpose is not to become viral. The purpose is not

necessarily engagement, it’s reputation, right? So the purpose is to become easier to remember because when people remember you, they are more likely to refer you, to introduce you, to recommend you, or think of you when they have an opportunity coming up.

So if you are wondering what to post, start with these questions. What do you read? what are you interested

What do you want to be known for as well? And what do you want to announce? Not what do you want to sell, but what do you want to be known for? That’s the difference. That is where LinkedIn activity should begin.

Okay, next question. Number six. What should I include in the featured section of my LinkedIn? The featured section is one of the most underutilized

parts of LinkedIn. I think it’s a really important one because it really does sit right at the top. And I think that happens, you know, the the underutilization of it because many people don’t know what to do with it and what it’s meant to do for you. They either ignore it completely and don’t even have featured boxes on their profiles or they add something random and forget about it.

But the featured section can be very useful. Think of it as your proof section. It is where you can show evidence of your expertise without making someone scroll through the entire profile.

For some of my clients, that might be a media article that they wrote or they were quoted. For others, it might be a podcast interview where they were a guest, a report that they wrote or again they were quoted, a presentation that’s publicly available. There are several ways of doing this. But here’s the important part: the featured section should support where you are going next. If you’re trying to move into board roles,

For example, featured content that supports your governance and strategy and risk or sector experience is important.

If you’re positioning yourself as a transformation leader, feature something that shows complexity, change, delivery, or leadership through uncertainty. If you are a consultant, then feature something that demonstrates your thinking and your credibility, like an article that you have written or a report. If you are a speaker or a facilitator, then feature a video or an event page.

is not what can I put here, the better question is what would make someone trust me faster.

That is what belongs in the featured section. And please don’t overload it. Three strong items are usually better than ten disconnected ones. You want the reader to understand your value quickly. Too much information can create confusion, and confusion is the enemy of opportunity of everything that you’re trying to do with LinkedIn.

Alright, number five, which LinkedIn skills should I add?

The skills section does not feel exciting. It I know that most people scroll past it, and that’s fine, and they should. Many people filled it with skills from years ago and they have not looked at it since. But the skills section still matters. It matters because it gives LinkedIn, the platform, more information about how to categorize you with all the other people that exist on LinkedIn. It matters.

because recruiters may still search for specific skills when they’re looking for people. And it matters because skills are attached to jobs, to job ads and candidate matching.

And it matters also because it reinforces your professional positioning. The mistake I see is that many senior professionals list skills that are either too generic, like leadership, or too outdated. They have things like communication, teamwork, Microsoft Office, Excel, customer service, or leadership. now there’s nothing wrong with those skills, but if you’re

Applying for executive roles, senior management roles, specialist roles, consulting roles, etc. Those words may not be enough for people to understand you. Your skills need to match the level and direction that your career has taken now. If you want to be found for let’s say transformation roles again, your skills should reflect transformation, change program delivery, operating models, stakeholder engagement.

business improvement and so on. If you want board roles, your skills need to reflect governance, risk, compliance, audit, sector experience. And if you are looking for executive leadership roles, your skills should reflect the scale of your work.

PL, people leadership, strategy and execution, growth, mergers and acquisitions, and so forth. This is where many people go wrong. They list what they have done, but LinkedIn needs to support what they want to be found for, right? What you want to be found for. So my simple tip for skills is this: look at five roles you would genuinely consider. Study the language in those job ads.

Look for the skills that are listed in the job ads and then ask yourself which of these skills do I genuinely have in my background and are they on my LinkedIn profile? Which ones are central to my next move? Which ones should be visible on my LinkedIn profile right now? That is a good starting point. But but don’t turn your profile into a keyword dump. Keywords help you get found.

Clarity helps people understand you, okay? And you will need both.

Number four.

Is my LinkedIn profile aligned with my resume or my CV? Well, this question comes up often, and it is more important than many people realize because your CV and your LinkedIn profile do not need to be identical. In fact, they shouldn’t be, but your CV is usually tailored to a specific role whereas your LinkedIn profile is broader. It needs to position you for the type of opportunities that you want to attract.

But they must tell the same professional story and have a through line between the two of them. And this is where I see problems. A client CV says they are a transformation executive, for example example, but their LinkedIn profile does not. It reads more like, let’s say, operations.

Their CV includes board roles and awards and volunteering media mentions or advisory work, and then I go to their LinkedIn and there’s nothing there. So their C V has strong achievements, but the LinkedIn doesn’t. Their C V has up been updated recently, but the LinkedIn was updated maybe five years ago. And this creates doubt and discrepancies. And when somebody

Is reviewing you quickly, that doubt can cost you a lot. The reader may not consciously think there is a mismatch, but they may feel that something is unclear, and unclear profiles are easier to overlook.

So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to open your resume or CV and your LinkedIn profile side by side and ask yourself these three questions. What is missing from my LinkedIn and what is missing from my resume? What is inconsistent between the two? And what no longer reflects where I am going? That exercise can be really important because sometimes the issue is not that you lack experience, the issue is that you’re

experience has not been properly translated in your documentation and that is a very different problem.

Number three, what should my about section be about? This is the question that often brings up the most discomfort because writing your about section can feel strange, especially if you are experienced. You have too much to include, you don’t want to sound arrogant, you don’t want to sound like everyone else, or you don’t want people to think you’re looking for work. Sometimes that is an issue with the about.

section and you don’t want to reduce your career to a few paragraphs and that’s why sometimes some about sections are too long or they don’t exist at all. And people are not usually sure how to explain your next move or sh should it be in the about section. And it the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. It really depends. So many people end up with

one of these two problems. They write an about section that is too short, that says nothing at all, or they write a long biography that starts decades ago and tries to explain everything. So neither of those is ideal. Your about section is not your life story, not your resume or cova letter. It’s a positioning section. It should help the reader understand who you are professionally, what you are known for and

Where your value sits. For experienced professionals, which is most of my clients, I usually want the about section to do a few things for them. It needs to give people context. What level do you operate? What sectors or environments do you understand? What kinds of problems do you solve? It needs to show credibility.

And what have you led and improved and changed? Usually we use those action verbs into dot points in a good about section. And it needs to create direction. What kind of work

Role, sector, or contribution make sense for you. That does not mean that you need to say, I’m actively looking for a job. Most of the time, my clients don’t have that information in their about section. You can be more subtle than that. You your profile should not leave the reader guessing, though. There is a simple way to think about this. Your about section should answer this question for the reader: why should the right person keep reading this?

profile right scroll down to the profile and read more

And the answer is not everyone, right? Not everyone should be reading your profile, but the right people should be reading your your profile. Those that are recruiting for roles that you’re interested in, the hiring manager that might be looking for somebody like you and so forth, a potential client, right? So that is a really important way of thinking about the entirety of your LinkedIn profile.

When that person, that special person, lands on your profile, your about section should help them quickly understand the value that you add, right? So make it readable. Short paragraphs, clear language, dot points, strong nouns and verbs. I really like action verbs, less corporate language. So many times I’m trying to make my clients’ about sections.

less generic and take away a lot of the jargons that we tend to utilize for those types of drafts and and statements. It’s important to be more specific. A profile that’s easy to read and easy to remember is usually more specific.

Question number two.

What should my LinkedIn headline say? This is probably the most common tactical question that I receive, and I understand why. The headline is very visible. It’s visible everywhere. It appears when you comment on other people’s posts, it appears when you post, it appears in search results, it appears when somebody is deciding whether to click on your profile or not.

And it’s the first thing together with your photo and the banner that people see. So your headline really truly matters. The biggest mistake people make is using only their job title and employer. I mean there are cases when that’s probably the only thing you should have, but most of the time

it’s best to include a few more things. So for example, if you are a general manager at X, Y, Z company, that is accurate. But it does not tell me enough. General manager of what? Right? So it’s very generic. It does not tell me your core expertise. It does not tell me the type of work you want to be known for.

And it doesn’t contain any keywords to support recruiters that are searching for people on LinkedIn. And headlines are important in terms of keyword searchability. If your current title does not reflect your next move, it may hold you back. That’s the other thing of having just the title as your headline.

The second mistake I see with headlines is going too far in the other direction. So some headlines become packed with keywords that lose meaning. You see a long list of words separated by those vertical lines, and by the end you still don’t know what the person actually does. I think that a strong headline needs to be a balance between those two. It should be searchable but still human. It should include your current and most recent professional identity.

It should include the keywords that really truly matter for your target roles. And it should make sense to the people you want to reach. So, for example, depending on the client, a headline might include words like transformation, strategy, operations, commercial leadership, governance, risk, and policy, stakeholder engagement, change. Not all of them, by the way, I’m just giving some examples.

digital, healthcare, education, you know, in terms of sectors that they may have worked for, infrastructure, government. But the right words, they depend on the person. The CFO, a policy executive, and a transformation leader, should not have the same headline.

Right? This is why generic headline templates can only take you so far. And the better question is what should someone understand about you in these three seconds that takes them to read the headline? That is the job of your headline.

The number one most popular question people ask me when they’re doing LinkedIn audits or when they’re being coached by me is this. Why are recruiters not finding me on LinkedIn? This is the number one question, and it is the one that sits underneath everything else that I do on LinkedIn. And when clients ask this question, there is often a frustration behind it.

Is it a question of you not having the right experience? Is it a question of having worked for organizations that are not being considered as the right pipeline for for future jobs?

and you have done complex work and you have been open to opportunities on LinkedIn. So why are are you not being contacted? When I say open to opportunities is you probably know this, you can be open to opportunities publicly with the green banner or open to opportunities recruiters only, which means the banner is not going to show on your profile picture but recruiters platform on LinkedIn. R LinkedIn has a recruiters platform,

And there is this expectation that if you are available, that you will be contacted should an opportunity arise. And the answer is often uncomfortable. Being good at your job does not automatically make you easy to find. LinkedIn is not reading your career the way a human would in a deep conversation that you’re you would be having with somebody. Recruiters, when they search using keywords like job titles and industry.

location, skills, skills like I said before.

Sometimes it’s functional expertise or sector information. They are using those as signals and those signals might be missing or unclear or outdated or maybe inconsistent in your profile. You may not appear in the right searches, or you may appear, but the recruiter may not understand your fit quickly enough when they land on your profile. And that’s a real issue, and this is why the LinkedIn

As a service that I provide is so important for my clients. You don’t just need to be found, you need to be understood. You need to be understood quickly, by the way. This is where many experienced professionals struggle with LinkedIn. Their careers are so rich, their profiles are vague. There’s a discrepancy there. Their experience is impressive, but the language that they’re using is too broad.

Their value is clear in conversations, but not clear on paper or on a profile like LinkedIn.

Your past is visible, but sometimes the future direction that you want to take is not, if you’re sort of keen to change that. So when I review a LinkedIn profile, I’m not just asking, is this well written? Because many times it is. I think especially these days with the help of AI, there’s a lot of well-written profiles out there. What I am usually asking is, can the right people find this person? And when they find it, can they understand this person?

quickly by reading their profile and can they see the level at which this person operates?

And then connect this profile to the roles this person wants next. Right? So that’s about trust and about credibility signaling. and it’s about having the right keywords, but without feeling like the profile was written by a machine, right? That’s the real work of frankly the LinkedIn audit that I do. And of course, you can DIY that as well. That’s why I’m doing this podcast for you. So

It’s an outcome of an alignment of things, right? So your headline, your about section, the experience section, the skills, the location, the industry that you choose, open-to-work job titles that you add to your profile, the featured section, and the activity in general. They all need to point in the same direction. If I see a discrepancy between those sections, that’s where the recommendations come in.

and when they don’t aligned, your profile becomes harder to find and harder to understand. So if you’re wondering why recruiters are not finding you, start with with this question. What would a recruiter search if they were looking for somebody like you for a role like the one that you want next?

Right, not the role that you had 10 years ago. Not every role you could possibly do, but the role that you want next. That is the important question that can really change your entire profile. So, those are the seven LinkedIn questions I hear most often from my clients, either private coaching clients or in consultations, and of course during my LinkedIn audits.

These questions, I am assuming if you’re still listening, resonated with you. And underneath all of these seven questions and others that I won’t have time to discuss today, is this bigger one. Am I positioned clearly for what I want to do next? That is what LinkedIn is really helpful and really good at. And it is not about looking busy on LinkedIn, it’s not about posting daily, it’s not about copying

What everyone else is doing with their headlines or whatever. It’s about making it easier for the right people to understand your value. For the experienced professionals, that matters even more than for other people that are on LinkedIn, like myself, you know, trying to find clients. Because for experienced professionals in the corporate world, your career was really complex. You may have worked across

many different issues and sectors and expertise. You may have held different types of leadership roles, moving from one sector to another, one industry to another.

And that complexity is real and hard to qualify and to express. But complexity should not become confusion. Your job is not to tell people everything, your job is to help them understand what matters about your career. So here’s what I want you to do after this episode: open your LinkedIn profile.

Look at your headline, look at your about section, all with fresh eyes, you know, your skills. Do you have a featured section? And ask yourself if someone found my profile today, would they understand what I want to be known for? Would they understand the level I operate? Would they understand

what I want to do next. And the answer to any of these questions is no, that is your starting point. And if you need help with this, this is exactly the type of work that I love doing for my clients.

Like I said, through LinkedIn audits, private coaching, and my career programs, there is a LinkedIn webinar in all of my courses. You can find more information at renatabernarde.com. That’s R-E-N-A-T-A-B-E-R-N-A-R-D-E.com. Thank you so much for listening to the Job Hunting podcast. Please make sure that you’re subscribed and I hope that you enjoy the newsletters as well.

newsletters just add a little bit more content and humph and strategy and reflections from me to add value to your job search and your career planning and keeping touch I’ll see you next time. Bye.