You will be able to write a LinkedIn headline and About section that say what you do and what you want to do next.
Put the words recruiters search for into your LinkedIn headline and your About section. LinkedIn Recruiter matches search keywords across your whole profile, including the About section, your Experience entries and your Skills as well as the headline, and LinkedIn does not say that the headline and About section count more than the other sections. Use your role words in all of those places, and check LinkedIn's Recruiter help pages for how its search matching works. Draft the About section before the headline, because once it is done you will know which words matter most.
Your CV only gets read when you send it to someone. Your LinkedIn profile can turn up in a recruiter's search at any hour, whether you have applied or not. Arjun has taught at a secondary school for 8 years (an example figure) and wants a job in corporate learning and development. His headline says "Teacher at a secondary school". Nothing in it is wrong, but someone searching for a learning and development specialist would never come across him. His About section is blank, because he set up the profile years ago, added his job and left it.
Start with a list of role words for the job you want, meaning the titles and skills recruiters for that job type into search. Pull the job titles from the ads you read in module 2. Add the skills that came up most often on the market sheet you built in Lesson 2.4, "Build a market sheet for your target role". Keep this list next to you for both the About section and the headline.
The About section is near the top of your profile, and readers see just its first few lines unless they click to see more. Write those lines on the assumption that nobody reads further. You can use the first person and a warmer tone than your CV uses, so writing "I" is fine.
In the opening lines, say what you do, who you do it for and what results you get. Arjun begins with eight years of designing lessons for students at very different levels. He mentions building revision programmes, training new teachers in his department and running workshops for parents, and then says he is moving into corporate L&D, short for learning and development, to design training for adults.
Next comes a short evidence paragraph with two or three results lifted from your CV bullets. Arjun's are a revision programme that 2 other teachers adopted and a workshop series for new teachers that his department now runs every year.
Finish with what you are looking for. Most people skip this line, and it is the one most likely to make a reader send you a message. Name the contact you would welcome, whether that is roles, projects or conversations with people in a particular field. Arjun writes: "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." Recruiters can answer that, and so can people he would like to learn from. Those people will be useful to him in module 7, when he starts asking for advice.
If your employer must not see that you are looking, soften the wording. A line such as "always happy to talk with people working in supply chain analytics" invites contact without announcing a job search. Lesson 4.3, "Be found by recruiters without telling your boss", covers the settings that signal you are open to offers while keeping that hidden from your employer.
Recruiters often open your CV and your LinkedIn profile next to each other. When the two disagree, they raise questions you would prefer not to answer. Typical gaps are a project you "led" according to the CV but "supported" according to LinkedIn, and dates that do not line up. The tone of the two documents can differ, but job titles, employers, dates and results have to be identical. Go through all four in both documents before you start on the headline.
The headline is the line under your name. People see it in search results, next to your comments, in the list of who viewed a profile and in connection requests. Many recruiters decide whether to click on you from the headline and photo alone.
LinkedIn puts your current job title there by default, and most people never change it. That default only works when it is exactly what recruiters search for and also exactly the job you want next. For most people, and for anyone changing direction, at least one of those two conditions fails. Build your headline for search instead, using the role words on your list.
No single format is correct. Three patterns work well, and you should write one version in each:
Target role plus strengths. Open with the field you want and support it with skills recruiters in that field search for. Arjun's version reads "Learning and development | Curriculum design, facilitation and assessment | Educator with 8 years' experience". Who you help and how. This sounds more personal and suits work with a clear audience, though it holds fewer search terms. One example is "I design training that people finish and use | Curriculum design and facilitation". Current role plus direction. This is honest about your present job and clear about the next one. Wei Ling, an operations executive moving into supply chain analytics, wrote "Operations executive moving into supply chain analytics | Excel, SQL, dashboards".
Put each draft through two questions. Does it include at least one term a recruiter for your target role would search for? Does it tell the reader something about you that a job title alone would not?
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, then choose the one that uses words from your market sheet.
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