LinkedIn “Experience” Section
By Soozy G. Miller, CPRW, CDCC, CDP
In my seminal newsletter, I noted the differences between your resume and your LinkedIn profile. Now we’re going to dig a bit deeper into the Experience Section of your LinkedIn profile.
Your LinkedIn profile Experience Section is going to be similar to the Experience & Achievements section on your resume, but they have different purposes. So they are similar, but they are not the same.
Your LinkedIn profile is a public tool that is meant to attract interest for opportunities. While you are networking on LinkedIn, whether you’re looking for a job or not, if people like what you say during a conversation, they will go to your profile and check you out. Maybe they’ll glance at your headline and skim your About section. If one of your peers is interested in working with you, they will probably go straight to the Experience Section and see what work you’ve done.
So that is what the Experience Section on your profile does: It offers information about all of your experience. And the type of opportunity that you want next determines what goes in this section. If you work in a niche specialty, then your Experience Section should reflect that focus. If you’re open to a wider range of possibilities, then your Experience Section can be a bit more general.
A TIP: In the Experience Section, each job title entry can take up to 120 characters (not letters), so if you have a shorter title like IT Director then you have space for a few extra characters. I recommend that you use those extra characters for value-add searchable words. For example, you can say “IT Director: Reduce process time, expedite queries, chair scrum meetings”
As fast as recruiters will review your resume, they take even less time to look at your LinkedIn profile. They know that most LinkedIn profiles are neglected, so the LinkedIn profile is often not helpful. As a recruiter, I usually don’t look at the LinkedIn profile. Resumes are tedious enough to read!
Therefore, because your profile is a quick read, where you have a lot of bullet point accomplishments and value-add statements under positions on your resume, you might want to bring that down to two to four per position on your LinkedIn Experience Section. You want each position to be a quick but impactful read.
And, for the job description part, try to be a little more conversational. Yes, your experience is the same as your resume, but you have a little bit more room to express yourself here, so try to talk about your expertise in a way that entices people.
Remember, the Experience Section could mean the difference between someone wanting to work with you and someone moving on. Give it attention!
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