8: How to Communicate Your Narrative in Your LinkedIn Headline

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Are you still using your job title and company as your LinkedIn headline?

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Do you even know what your LinkedIn headline says?

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For many people, and maybe you too, your LinkedIn headline, it's an afterthought.

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Or if you have thought about it, it describes what you currently do but doesn't give the people reading it much sense of where you're headed.

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Does that sound like your situation?

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If so, stick around and we'll make sure your LinkedIn headline points towards the future and the aspirations you have for your career.

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And who knows?

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The next person who reads your LinkedIn headline might be the executive recruiter holding the keys to your next big career move.

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The primary place to communicate your career narrative these days, it's on LinkedIn.

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It's the first place people look when they're trying to figure out your story or, in other words, figure out who you are and where you're headed.

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And that's where many LinkedIn profiles fall short.

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They're not much more than a resume that describes where you are and where you've been, but they don't give the reader, and that could be a potential employer or an executive recruiter, they don't give that reader a sense of where you're going.

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We'll fix that in today's episode.

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And the solution, or at least the first step in the solution, is pretty simple.

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You need to rewrite your LinkedIn headline.

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Your LinkedIn headline is at the top of your profile, of course.

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If visitors to your LinkedIn profile read anything, it's going to be that headline.

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And if you post or comment or you appear in search results on LinkedIn, the first several words of your headline appear right there along with your photo and your name.

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What could be more important than that?

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And yet, many people, too many people, just go with their current job title and company as their LinkedIn headline.

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That's actually the default if you choose not to customize it.

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So let's think for a moment about why someone would be reading your LinkedIn profile in the first place.

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It's always good to consider your reader.

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Here are the potential audiences that come to mind.

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The first is people who want to sell you things.

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Let's not worry about them, because, you know what, they'll find you no matter what.

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The second is people who want you to hire them or maybe help them get a job.

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Again, let's not worry too much about those folks.

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They'll also find you no matter what.

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So, who are we really writing this for?

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That's the third group.

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People who might consider hiring you or people in your own company who are thinking about promoting you or maybe even supporting your promotion.

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In this third group, you'll find potential hiring managers, executive recruiters, corporate recruiters, or an HR or talent rep in your own company.

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And what they all have in common is that they're probably asking themselves the same question about you.

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Some version of "what's your story?" And yes.

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If you list your job title and current company, that's a piece of your story.

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It's where you currently are at this particular point in time.

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But that leaves them on their own to figure out the rest, which is where you're headed.

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And that's a big risk, because they might come up with the wrong destination.

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If you've listened to episode one of this podcast, then you know that the question "what's your story?" is really a stand-in for three questions that define your narrative.

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And those questions are: What do you do?

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What context do you do it in?

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And what's the impact of your work?

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And if someone in that third group, someone who is considering hiring or promoting you, is asking these questions, then they're mostly thinking about where you're going.

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So that's the connection your LinkedIn headline needs to make for them.

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It needs to accurately address those three questions when considering your current job and the next one.

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Before we move on, I want to say a few more things about using your current title and company as your LinkedIn headline.

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First, job titles can be vague, ambiguous, or even inaccurate.

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And their meaning can vary wildly from company to company in terms of experience, seniority and what you actually do on a day-to-day basis.

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And company names, they're kind of variable too.

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Some are well-known like Apple, Google or McKinsey, and some less so.

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If you work for a lesser known company than it's even riskier to use your company name in your headline.

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It may confuse more than it helps or convey no context at all.

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But I'd say that even using a well known company name is wasteful.

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If the reader or target audience in that third group we talked about, the people who might consider hiring or promoting you, if they're reading your profile because of where you currently work, then they've already included your company name in their LinkedIn search or they already know where you work.

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Putting your company's name and your headline doesn't add anything.

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It's a waste of some of the most valuable real estate you have on your LinkedIn profile.

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And if you look just to the right of your headline, your company name and logo, your current one, it's probably there.

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So what do you put in your headline instead of your current job title and company?

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You put the answers to the three questions, of course.

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What do you do?

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What context do you do it in?

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And what's the impact of your work?

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That way, the person reading your headline and the rest of your LinkedIn profile, we hope, can figure out if you're the right person to help them or the people they're working for overcome whatever challenges they're currently facing or anticipate facing in the near future.

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So let's start with what you do.

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If someone asked you to describe what you do in your job from day to day and week to week, what would you say?

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Are you a product manager or head of product?

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Well, that can mean a lot of different things depending on where you work and what industry you're in.

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Why not be a little more descriptive?

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Maybe you bring advances in wearables to market.

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In other words, you develop and launch wearable technology.

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A lot of people I've coached over the years have been on teams that develop things like the Apple Watch.

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Putting that in your title is a lot more helpful to your readers in that third group than just including a title, like Product Manager or Head of Product.

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And you may have noticed that there's even some context baked into the phrase "bringing advances in wearables to market." Your reader may assume that you're talking about health tech, but just in case they don't, let's give them some help.

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Let's talk about impact, too.

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Maybe the health tech you work on drives growth for your company and helps people live healthier lives.

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There's impact or benefit there for an employer and a consumer.

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So let's put it all together and you get "introducing advances in wearables to drive growth and help people live healthier lives." It answers the three questions.

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You launch new products in health tech, specifically wearables, and your work adds to top-line growth, maybe some profit, too.

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And consumers are healthier as a result.

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We now know what you do, the context you do it in and the impact of your work.

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Assuming you still want to do that in the future, then your headline helps those readers in that third group I talked about understand where you're headed and what you'd be open to.

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But just in case, let's assume you don't want to be limited to wearables, but you still want to be working on cutting edge tech that helps people live healthier lives.

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No problem.

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Let's generalize a bit.

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You could adjust your headline to be "introducing cutting-edge advances in consumer tech that drive growth and help people live healthier lives." That wasn't too difficult, and you've increased your options a little if that makes you a little more comfortable.

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Both of those headline options are going to be of more value to you and your readers than just a job title and a company.

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Before we wrap this episode up, I'd like to address a question you may have about the keywords and phrases you often see in people's LinkedIn headlines.

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They often appear in groups, separated out by the pipe symbol.

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If you don't know what the pipe symbol is, that's the vertical line you get when you hit shift while typing a backslash.

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I'm a proponent of using keywords and phrases separated out by the pipe symbol for things like job titles you'd consider in your next role, let's say VP of Marketing or CMO, or words that help clarify the context or industry you want to work in, like tech or health tech or wearables.

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These keywords and phrases can help your reader as long as they're future focused, and they can also help you appear in search results.

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And that's important if you're like many of the mid-level and senior-level MBA graduates I work with.

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You want opportunities and the executive recruiters who have them to come your way.

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Why not make it easier for them to find you?

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So write a LinkedIn headline that addresses the three questions they're always going to have in their minds.

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And while you're at it, make sure your headline includes some of the keywords and phrases that they'll be searching for.

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So my challenge to you is to revisit your LinkedIn headline.

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Would a reader who might potentially be interested in hiring or promoting you understand where you're headed?

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Can they read your headline and determine what you actually do, the context you do it in, and the impact or benefit of your work?

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They'll need to know those things before they can determine if you're the right person for their client or for that promotion.

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If not, then consider a rewrite.

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And if you need a thought partner while you're doing it, consider signing up for a career strategy session with me at careernarratives.com/strategy.

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We'll spend a little time thinking about where you're headed and how you can communicate that most effectively in your LinkedIn headline.

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See you next week.