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So many people willingly hand the primary real estate for communicating their personal narrative over to their company.
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It's a risky move, and here's how you know you've done it.
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Your current title and company name are your LinkedIn headline.
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Is that you?
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If that describes your LinkedIn headline, I'm here to tell you that there's a better way and it's an easy, easy fix, I promise.
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Your LinkedIn headline, which appears directly under your photo in your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn search results, is the primary real estate for communicating your positioning in the market and conveying your personal narrative.
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And in so many profiles, people have willingly handed that prime real estate over to their company.
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My first concern with using your title and company name as your LinkedIn headline is that titles are often inadequate when it comes to describing what you actually do in your job and in conveying the impact of your work.
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And many company names are similarly challenged.
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The average person, or even a recruiter, might be clueless when it comes to the industry a company is in or the product or service it provides.
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So even if your job title makes your skills and responsibilities clear, your company name may offer few clues as to the context in which you do it.
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Second, what happens if you lose your job to a change in corporate strategy, a budget cut, or even an inevitable change in leadership?
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What will you use as your LinkedIn headline then?
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Based on my experience working one-on-one with well over a thousand MBA alumni, the absolute worst time to think about removing your title and company name from your LinkedIn headline is immediately after losing your job.
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Once you've been notified that you're terminated and have gone through the indignity of clearing out your office, whether that's a real or virtual office, and you said goodbye to many of your colleagues, removing your title and company name from your LinkedIn headline is the final and very public insult.
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It's tough to do even with the hard feelings you might have about your company, especially if you're unsure about what comes next and you're feeling adrift.
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And not to put too fine a point on it, but I will, let's say your company's reputation takes a big hit, for whatever reason.
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If that happens, do you really want your company name immediately under the photo of your face on your LinkedIn profile and when you show up in LinkedIn search results?
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Probably not.
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But if and when that happens, it might be too late to change it.
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You'll look or maybe feel like a turncoat if you make the change after the bad news about your company comes out.
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So, have I convinced you yet that including your title and company name in your LinkedIn headline, or worse, relying on it to the exclusion of all else, is too big a risk to take and that it might not be an effective way to advance your personal narrative?
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If I haven't convinced you, maybe you need some time to think about it.
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But if I have, here's an alternative approach.
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As an executive recruiter, I realized that I needed to know just three things about someone to determine if it made sense to be in touch with them for a role I was working to fill.
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And those three things are: What you do, the context you do it in, and the impact of your work.
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If I knew these three things, I could at, a minimum, determine which roles I might place you in, the types of clients I could potentially present you to, and the challenges you could potentially help a client overcome.
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It's not especially complicated.
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So what could that look like in real life?
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Here are a few examples of imaginary LinkedIn headlines to get you thinking.
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Now, I'm going to read these to you and you'll have to use your imagination.
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Here's one example.
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It starts: Brand Transformation Leader | Revitalizing Legacy Products for Gen Z | $100M+ P&L Leadership.
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And each of those sections is divided from the others by the pipe symbol.
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Here's the second: Healthcare Tech Innovator | Connecting Providers with Patients | 15+ Years Scaling Digital Health Solutions.
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And a third: Product Leader Solving Enterprise-Level Problems | Intuitive UX for Financial Services | Driving Business Outcomes.
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In each of those examples, a recruiter would actually have an idea of what the person who owns that headline does, the context they do it in, and the impact of their work.
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Not necessarily in that exact order.
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I'll read the first one again just to drive the point home.
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It starts with: Brand Transformation Leader.
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That's, let's say this is you, that's what you do.
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You're a senior leader in marketing.
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And here's the rest: Revitalizing Legacy Products for Gen Z | $100M+ P&L Leadership.
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That gives a reader, maybe a recruiter, an idea of the impact of your work in the context in which you do it.
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You're essentially turning around old, reasonably sized brands by repositioning them for a younger consumer.
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If these headlines, again, are hard to picture, I'll link to the original Substack post on this topic, and you can actually see them.
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So what could your LinkedIn headline look like if you took this approach?
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Give it a try.
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It's not that complicated.
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You just need to incorporate three ideas: what you do, the context you do it in, and the impact of your work.
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Maybe throw in a few more keywords and phrases for search, and you're done.
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You might just feel more risk-adjusted and confident once you do.
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If you'd like to dive deeper into how you might communicate your positioning and personal narrative through your LinkedIn profile, you can listen to Episodes 8, 9 and 10 of this podcast, the Career Narratives Podcast.
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In those episodes, I share my philosophy for writing a compelling LinkedIn headline, an About section and Experience entries, all informed by my experience as an executive recruiter.
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I also suggest a few other things you could incorporate into your LinkedIn headline to clarify your positioning and be more visible and potentially relevant to recruiters.
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If you'd like to work on your LinkedIn profile together, consider signing up for a Career Strategy Session with me.
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We can put our heads together and figure out the most effective way to communicate your personal narrative.
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See you soon.
