You will be able to write a LinkedIn headline and About section that say what you do and what you want next.
Arjun has been a secondary school teacher for eight years. His LinkedIn headline says "Teacher at a secondary school", which is accurate, and which guarantees that a recruiter looking for a learning and development specialist will never see him. His About section is empty. Like many people, he set up the profile years ago, added his job and forgot about it.
Your LinkedIn profile does something your CV cannot. Your CV only gets read when you send it. Your profile can be found by a recruiter searching at any hour for someone like you. This lesson covers the two parts that do most of that work: the headline and the About section.
Your headline is the line under your name. It appears almost everywhere you appear on LinkedIn: in search results, beside your comments, in the list of people who viewed a profile and in connection requests. For many recruiters, the headline and your photo are all they see before deciding whether to click.
LinkedIn fills the headline with your current job title by default, and most people leave it there. That works if your title is exactly what recruiters search for and exactly what you want next. For most people, and certainly for anyone changing direction, it does not.
So write the headline for the search, using the role words recruiters type. You found these words in module 2: the titles in the ads you read and the skills that appeared most often on your market sheet from lesson 2.4, Build a market sheet for your target role.
There is no single right format, but three patterns work well. Try all three, then pick one.
The first is target role plus strengths. Arjun's version: "Learning and development | Curriculum design, facilitation and assessment | Educator with 8 years' experience". It leads with the field he wants and backs it with skills recruiters in that field search for.
The second is who you help and how. "I design training that people finish and use | Curriculum design and facilitation". This reads more personally and suits people whose work has a clear audience, though it carries fewer search terms.
The third is current role plus direction. Wei Ling's version: "Operations executive moving into supply chain analytics | Excel, SQL, dashboards". It is honest about where she is now and clear about where she is going.
Whichever pattern you pick, check two things. Does it contain at least one term a recruiter for your target role would search for? And does it say something about you that a job title alone would not?
The About section sits near the top of your profile, and only the first few lines show before a reader clicks to see more. Write those first lines as if they were the only ones anyone will read.
Unlike your CV, the About section can be in the first person and in a warmer voice. "I" is fine here. It should cover three things: what you do, for whom, and with what results.
Arjun's opening lines: "I'm a secondary school teacher who has spent eight years designing lessons that work for students at very different levels. I've built revision programmes, trained new teachers in my department and run workshops for parents. I'm now moving into corporate learning and development, where I want to design training for adults."
Then add a short paragraph with evidence, two or three results drawn from your CV bullets. Arjun mentions the revision programme two other teachers adopted, and a workshop series for new teachers that his department now runs every year.
Finish the About section by saying what you are looking for. This is the line most people leave out, and it is the one that turns a reader into a message. Be specific about what kind of contact you welcome: roles, projects, or conversations with people in a field.
Arjun ends with: "I'm open to learning and development roles and would be glad to hear from anyone who made the move from teaching to corporate training." That line invites both recruiters and the people he wants to learn from, which helps in module 7 when he starts asking for advice.
If you do not want your employer to see that you are looking, you can phrase this more softly, such as "always happy to talk with people working in supply chain analytics". Lesson 4.3, Be found by recruiters without telling your boss, covers the settings side of this.
Recruiters often look at your CV and your profile side by side. If your CV says you led a project and your profile says you supported it, or the dates differ, it raises a question you would rather not have to answer. The two can differ in voice, but job titles, employers, dates and results should match.
Write your headline last, after your About section, because by then you will know which words matter most. In the activity you write three versions and choose the one that best uses the words from your market sheet.
Write three versions of your headline and pick the one that uses words from your market sheet.
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