Introduction
“There is no better way than LinkedIn to curate your personal brand,” says the blogger Dana Albert, “though I can’t tell you how tired I am of the word ‘curate’ and the phrase ‘personal brand.’” Do you like how I referred to myself in the third person just now? That was to sound more important. Speaking of which, here are five surefire tips to improve your LinkedIn profile, whether you’re looking to change jobs or just want to impress people.
Tip #1: Post a better profile photo
Ageism is real, and unless you’re literally a twelve-year-old who has somehow infiltrated corporate America, it’s time you started looking younger. No, I’m not hawking lotion or plastic surgery; you only need to look younger on your LinkedIn profile. The easy way to do this is with a really outdated photo, but that’s bound to backfire. Either your hairstyle will be outdated, or you’ll be wearing an “Alf” t-shirt or something. As with every problem these days, the real solution is A.I. Just take your existing profile picture and have ChatGPT enhance it for you.
Case in point: I did this myself today. And while I was at it, I modernized the picture to bring it in line with our new, angry, ultra-masculine America, following the lead of major league rabble-rousers like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s how I did it. First, I uploaded this photo to ChatGPT today as the baseline to work from:
I told the chatbot, “The attached photo above is not right for my profile photo because it’s too friendly and nerdy. I need a photo that shows me as a strong man who can handle tough decisions, and who maybe isn’t too happy about how things are going in corporate America and wants to fix it. Kind of a bad boy who moves fast and breaks stuff.” Note that I didn’t even have to ask ChatGPT to make me look younger. As detailed here, it always does that.
The chatbot (version ChatGPT-4 Turbo, and no, I am not making that up) replied, “Got it! I’ll generate an enhanced version of your photo with a stronger, more decisive expression, giving off a ‘moves fast and breaks things’ energy while keeping it professional.” To be clear, ChatGPT didn’t produce the perfect picture right off the bat, and I had to coach it a bit, but eventually it announced, “Here’s the latest version—lighter blond hair, a thick goatee with no sideburns, and a much angrier, more intense expression,” and served up this excellent picture:
Granted, it still needs a bit more work, such as making me look even younger, but you get the idea. One more thing: if you’re a woman you obviously don’t want to look more masculine, and you certainly don’t want to look angry. Instead, ask for something like a mashup of yourself, the girl next door, and a younger Lauren Boebert.
Tip #2: Rework your “Headline” section
It is now considered a rookie move to put only your job title in the LinkedIn “Headline” section. A brief description of your current and past roles frankly isn’t much better. Nowadays, LinkedIn CVs are almost never seen by a human; instead they’re scanned by A.I. bots on behalf of the hiring companies. Thus, it’s not enough to highlight your skills—you need to present the kind of idealized employee that recruiters are actually looking for, and basically graft that description to your own profile. Pro tip: use the “pipe” symbol (|) in between items because it looks really cool. Here is an example of a good Headline:
Growth | Digital | Generative AI | Culture Cultivator | Mentor | Advocate |Outside the Box | Clarity Bringer | AI/ML | Driving Innovation | Flawless Executation| Podcaster | Olympian | Frontends | Evangelist | Stakeholdering | C++ | pDOOH | Rainmaker |Delivering Scalability| Solutionist
I’m not just supplying that as an example of what a tech worker would list; I’m telling you to literally copy and paste the above into your Headline (except “Executation” which was to make sure you’re paying attention). What’s that, you say? You don’t do anything with Generative AI? You don’t even work in tech? Look, you’re missing the point. Nobody is hiring outside of tech, and if you don’t have “Generative AI” in your Headline, your CV will never get past the bots. It doesn’t matter if your Headline entirely misrepresents you. You can clear that up during the interview.
Still skeptical? Let me explain how this works. The bot reads all the LinkedIn profiles in existence—which is over a billion of them—and when it finds a profile with all the right keywords, etc. it forwards it to the human who launched the query. That human will then read your entire CV and—so long as you’ve acted on all five tips presented here—will be totally impressed and invite you in for an interview! On the other hand, if the bot doesn’t find what it’s looking for, no human will ever see your CV. True story: none other than Albert Einstein filled out a LinkedIn profile and for his Headline put, “Creator, General Theory of Relativity” and yet never got a job. The bot didn’t know to look for “General Theory of Relativity,” because that obviously didn’t exist yet. (This was in 1914.)
I have my own experience with these keyword triggers. As you can well imagine, I get far too many comments on this blog to read them all, but of course I want to be made aware of the important ones. Some time ago, the Blogger platform zeroed in on a particular comment and emailed it directly to me. It was from jianbino311 and read, “nike air max michael kors outlet 2024 rolex watches camisetas futbol baratas giuseppe zanotti outlet wallet sale kobi 9 tods outlet.” Even though this comment was obviously generated by a bot, I was duly impressed and hired the bot on the spot. It’s been my albertnet fact checker ever since!
Tip #3: Create an entrepreneurial vibe
Let’s face it: rank-and-file employees, be they wretched
“individual contributors” or pathetic “middle managers,” just don’t get any
respect. They’re as despised as tourists. But people love entrepreneurs. The trouble is, we can’t all be entrepreneurs, and if we were, we probably wouldn’t bother
to fine-tune our LinkedIn profiles … we’d be whispering right into the ears of
angel investors. But there’s another way forward: figure out what other type of
–preneur you might be. Choose from the following or invent your own:
- Intrapreneur – has the attitude of an entrepreneur but works for an established company (i.e., is basically in denial)
- Solopreneur – entrepreneurial, yes, but apparently never dreams bigger than a sole proprietorship; still, has that -preneur cachet
- Hellapreneur – like an entrepreneur but better
- Contrapreneur – has a startup that bucks current trends; for example, launches a new flip phone to corner the digital detox market
- Epipeneur – this person is launching a startup despite having a severe peanut allergy
- Codependepreneur – spins his wheels on yet another doomed startup because between him and his partner they’ve convinced themselves this thing is viable
- Omnipreneur – has a startup specializing in EVERYTHING
- Retropreneur – has bold idea for a startup manufacturing fax machines
- Saagpaneur – wants to open an Indian restaurant
Just add your –preneur to the Headline section, and watch your inbox fill up with interview requests!
Tip #4: Refine your Experience section and make it data-driven
All too often, the Experience section of a LinkedIn profile simply lists the duties you carried out at this or that job, without emphasizing the achievements you can rightly claim credit for. Just listing duties isn’t nearly as impactful. (By the way, you should try to use the word “impactful” in your profile. It’s perfectly attuned to our modern business zeitgeist.) Whenever possible, make your achievement descriptions data-driven. There’s no room for subjective opinions on how you did; you need to be extremely specific.
For example, instead of just saying, “Performed software QA testing,” put, “Via disruptive and visionary software QA testing, reduced operating costs by 37%, saving $2.3 million in one year while improving CSAT scores by 24%.” The recruiter reading this, whose BS detectors will be lighting up like crazy, will think, “Oh, good, he’s also a storyteller! We can always use more of those.”
Tip #5: Revise all the dates
I cannot emphasize it enough: ageism is real. Nobody wants to hire anyone over the age of, like, thirty. It’s widely known that anyone over that age is basically falling apart completely—physically, mentally, and emotionally—not to mention is totally out of touch with every industry. Never mind that the person who would be your boss is oven older than you are … that person is grandfathered. (And why do you think they call it “grandfathered”? QED!)
Some career counselors therefore advise that you remove all the dates from your LinkedIn profile. Then nobody can tell your age, so they’ll automatically assume you’re really young … right? Of course not! They’ll figure you’re older than George Burns! Plus, there’s something inherently suspicious about simply removing dates.
Other counselors will say just jettison all mention of the first ten or twenty years of your career, and then delete the dates from your Education section. Alas, this is no silver bullet either. If there’s no date listed for your college, the recruiter will assume you dropped out … or worse, that you only went on campus to party and were never even enrolled. Besides, what if you did really impressive stuff long ago, like founding America Online? Who would want to leave that off?
The solution, my friend, is as simple as it is ingenious: just change the dates. There’s a basic formula you can apply: subtract 30 from your current age to produce the “required delta” (RD for short). For example, if you’re 50, your RD would be 20. Then, for the first role listed on your profile, add 20. As you approach the present day, adjust the dates more granularly, compressing the span of your various roles as needed. This will bring your chronology in line with what recruiters want.
Here’s a real life example. Steve Case is 66 years old. From a career standpoint he might as well be dead. He has the unusually high RD of 36. Applying that to his CV, he founded AoL in 2021. So he gets credit for launching one of the most important Internet companies in history, but still reads as young. (Would the recruiter remember that AoL was actually founded in the ‘80s? Not important. Mr. Case could clear that up during the interview.)
I know, this might sound like a drastic measure, but believe me, it’s important. Do you know how Daniel Craig got hired to be the new James Bond for “Casino Royale” at age 38? He lied! He said he was only 28! What’s more, his portfolio photo wasn’t even of him … it was of Jude Law’s head grafted onto Chris Hemsworth’s body! (It’s a good thing actors don’t use LinkedIn … so many movies just wouldn’t get made!)
A final thought…
I really, truly hope you understand that this post is 100% facetious. (Well … maybe 90% facetious.) I had a little fun here, and of course I would never recommend that you lie about anything on your LinkedIn profile (or anywhere else). Meanwhile, some of the information presented herein is just plain inaccurate. What can I say? My fact checker is a bot! (And that’s not even true … I fired my actual fact checker for lying on his LinkedIn profile! Which is also a lie! Stop reading this, I’ve gone completely off the rails! Besides, you’ve reached the end!)
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