Leveraging Leadership

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Career Growth: A Comprehensive Walkthrough

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 194

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This episode is a hands-on walkthrough of how to update and improve your LinkedIn profile, especially if you're aiming for a Chief of Staff role. Emily shares practical tips, like making your top banner intentional, choosing a clear headshot, and adding personality in your byline. She also covers how to highlight relevant experience, include memorable details (like a surfing photo or fun tagline), and make your profile easy for recruiters and hiring managers to scan.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

00:33 Why You Need to Update Your LinkedIn Profile
02:45 Starting with the Basics: Above the Fold Section
03:29 Crafting an Effective LinkedIn Banner
05:48 Perfecting Your Headshot and Name Field
07:10 Creating a Compelling Byline
12:28 Optimizing the About Section
15:49 Showcasing Your Experience and Achievements
19:14 Highlighting Education and Certifications
20:26 Adding Skills, Endorsements, and Recommendations
21:36 Including Publications, Languages, and Interests
23:02 Final Tips and Encouragement

Speaker:

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this, Emily. I haven't touched my LinkedIn profile in years. What should it say? Can you help me update it because I have a dot, dot dot and it might be a interview coming up or I'm about to apply for this job and I know they're gonna look at my resume and my LinkedIn profile. I need to update it. Or Emily, I'm just, Opportunistically casually looking and seeing what's out there. Or I'm just starting to have networking conversations and I know people are gonna look at my LinkedIn profile, and I wanna make sure that's up to date and putting my best foot forward and really putting all of my experience and background into the light I want it to be in. And a lot of people have this inflection point in their careers where. They've built up their career to this point and they're kind of taking a breath and saying, okay, for this kind of second chapter of my career here, I. I wanna be more intentional and deliberate about what I choose to do. And so I want to craft it and frame my experience in a certain way. So I have loads of people saying, Emily, how do I get my chief of staff role or my next chief of staff role, or a similar type of role under a different title. It's kind of. Amorous is kind of nebulous. It's not really a straight line to a chief of staff role. How do I bring my background and experience together and present it as a shoe-in for a chief of staff role? So when I'm speaking with these folks, I often say, well, let's bring up your actual LinkedIn profile and walk through that together, and I can point out anything that might be helpful. And many of the things I say I, I say over and over again to different people in different ways, in slightly different angles. But it seems to be really helpful for them in a kind of new information. So for this episode, I thought, let me go through an actual LinkedIn profile and share those things with you in case they're helpful. And you can take obviously the pieces that are relevant and make sense for you and, and do what you want with them. And if something's like me, not for me, doesn't apply, then go ahead and discard those. Okay? If you are on YouTube, you can see the video version of this and the share screen, and if not, then I will talk you through as we go. I'm going through my own profile here, just just because that's easy, but you can obviously apply, lift and shift this concept and ideas to your own profile. Alright, so LinkedIn profile is broken up into sections and they have these kind of rectangular squares or rectangles, these blocks and I'll call'em sections. And then there's different components within those sections. So the first section on top is what I call the above the fold section. And that means that everyone who comes to your LinkedIn profile is gonna see this. They don't have to scroll, they don't have to do anything when they come to your profile, if they get to your profile, they're gonna see everything in this section. Therefore, consider it prime real estate and take some care. If you're gonna do nothing else, if you're gonna only do one section on your LinkedIn profile, make sure this top one is given time and attention. Alright, the first component within the top section is that upper banner, so the very top uppermost banner. Image and it's the rectangle shape. And so I would highly encourage folks to use this intentionally, and there's lots of different ways to do that. So I have a graphic, a custom graphic here, and I have my books that I've written the cover of them, and then I have these words, they're like, not even sentences, they're just little phrases. There's optimizing chief of staff and navigating private equity. And that's the gist of what I do and what I'm about. So they, it brings people into my orbit. It's like, oh, okay. She generally deals with something around chief of staff and optimizing that, and then private equity space and helping people navigate something. And that's all I need them to know at that point. it brings them into, kind of like, okay, what are we talking about here? What is she about? What does she do in general? Boom, right away you get that. I also try to convey a very minimalist. Feel to it. It's not cluttered. It's, uh, very easy to read. Some people have fancy font and that works for their brand and what they want to convey, but for me it's like very boom, boom, boom. Here you go. So that's the very first component in that top section. Other people, I've seen quotes that are meaningful to them. people have, oh, one person I just spoke with recently. She had a very serious job, like the title and the work she was doing was, was very serious and it was good work she was doing, but she kind of wanted to add some personality to that. And so she was really into surfing. That was her main hobby since she was a kid. And she had this really cool picture, like an action shot of her surfing and she had that on the top banner and it kind of threw off the perception of like, oh look, this is a very. Serious kind of maybe uppity, pompous person doing this type of work? No, no, no. Like she's a surfer girl. Cool. So I've seen that. What else have I seen? If there's, I've seen a lot of people with like the name of their company or the website, like right up front there. You could have that, but lots of different, causes or issues that you are passionate about. If you wanna put that right up front to show people that you are. Associated with that cause or issue, I've seen that, but use that top banner intentionally. The next component in the top section is your headshot. So this is like the money shot. I would highly, highly encourage you to have a headshot at all. And then if you wanna get really technical about the headshot, there's been studies about the best kinds of headshot and the studies have shown that close up headshot work best. How close Emily, you wanna be able to see the whites of your eyes. That close. People who smile with their teeth. Studies have shown are more appealing or inviting or open, or like, oh, I trust this person when they're smiling with their teeth. And then it might be true or not, but people with glasses tend to be perceived as smarter. So if you want to like, Hey, I need to be perceived as the smartest person possible, then where are some glasses? And if you're like, I don't care about that. I actually wanna be playful and super, whatever, then have a picture of you like. Like jumping off something and like that jump shot that people do, in the freeze frame. So I would highly encourage you to have a headshot of some kind at all. And if you wanna get really technical about it, you can make it up close, smiling with your teeth and have having glasses. I. All right, then we've got your name, which is just what you have pre-populated in the name fields. One quick trick on this, so I tend to get spammed a lot on LinkedIn and I don't like that, and I, in the first name field put Emily, I. Then L period for my middle name. And so when people just do like a spam autobot type of thing, it'll be like, hi Emily L period. And I'm like, ah, I see what you're doing. I might still read the message.'cause sometimes that's how people have to communicate to a bunch of people and maybe their message is still relevant, but I automatically know like, okay, you've kind of put me on a list. and so I can, I can wait that accordingly. Whereas if someone types. Hi Emily, and actually has a custom message that's like, oh, you've actually read my profile, or you actually, you're saying something that you can't say to anyone else. I know that as well, right upfront. you can also have the credentials. So I have CP, C and A C. C. Those are my coaching credentials. You might have MBA, or PhD or whatever else is relevant in your field or for folks who'd be looking at your profile. Next component here is the byline. This is where it can get really cool guys. Uh, okay. So this, these are the words right under your name and there is a character limit, but you have quite a few to play around with. So couple thoughts here. So let me just first read what I have. So former chief of staff on a mission to elevate the role showing the world that it's a high level strategic executive, not a glorified assistant. So what I went with there is a sentence version of what I do, like who I help, what I'm about. I have a lot of founders who have a sentence version of what their company does, like why it exists, who it helps, how it helps them, and the result it has in the world. And so if you can encapsulate that in a punchy, kind of memorable quippy sentence, that's really good to have in this byline. Then in the next line of my byline, I have author. Podcast host, leadership junkie and aspiring superhero. And each of those are separated by, I think it's called a pipe, like the vertical line that separates those words. So it's kind of easy to read, like these are separate ideas, but you can just kind of scan your eyes across them. I see a lot of people do those as well. And that just is telling people about who you are and what you do. And again, any causes you want or personality traits you wanna convey. So for me. Firing superhero is just playful. And people who know me well and or have been to my website on the about page know that I have, like Superman is my favorite superhero. I have a whole backstory about why, et cetera, et cetera. sometimes these can just be conversation starters. So I've had several people over the years, numerous people over the years. Ping me and be like, you know, what type of superhero are you aspiring to me? Or like, my favorite superhero is Batman. Like, what is your favorite superhero? And it's just like a conversation starter, so it can be used for that as well. Here. I would encourage folks in your byline and honestly, and across all of your LinkedIn profile, but especially in this byline, write for humans, but also keep in mind algorithms. So write for humans to be like, okay, what is this person about? Former chief of staff on a mission to elevate the role. Got it. But then also put in things like author, podcast host, leadership, chief of staff, that might be helpful for the algorithms. To pick up on as well. Algorithms aren't bad per se. When people are searching for certain types of individuals, they can, they can put in keywords, they can put in filters, they can say LinkedIn search for these types of folks, and LinkedIn will do its best to find these types of folks. And if you have the keywords to help with that search and filter, then you're gonna be pulled into the right kinds. So just right for humans, but also keep in mind the algorithms. All right, then you have the option. So. If you are listening to this, think about. The name on the LinkedIn profile and the byline blurb right below that to the right of that are two icons. So icons and names. You can pull your most recent professional experience from the experience section of your LinkedIn profile and an education. So a school you went to, I have chosen to list these here. This is a setting you can do. So let me just show this on this, on the share screen. Um, you click the pencil in that section. And then scrolling down here. Here it is. It's a checkbox. You can check or uncheck, and it says, show current company in my intro. And then this one says, show school in my intro. So if you wanna show your school or your company, then you can check those boxes. And if you don't want anything there, you can uncheck those and maybe you're like. My school and my most recent experience isn't that relevant or impressive or whatever, and I'd rather not have them. And it kind of frees up some space in that top section and makes it look more aesthetically, visually pleasing. You can go that route if like, hey, like I graduated from a, from like a very recognizable school name and I wanna put that front and center. you can put those icons here as well. Okay. Then you've got your location. I have greater Seattle area technically. I'm in a, in a place called Anacortes, Washington, which is just north of Seattle. But since I work with people across the US and across the world, most people know Seattle and so they can kind of place you there. Then if you have, I believe this is just for LinkedIn Premium, but if you have premium, you have an option for this custom button right here. And I use that to send people to, my free resources page. So like there's downloads and chief of staff toolkit and communication blueprints that are all for free. And I just say like, this is my main CTA, this is my main call to action. If you have a website or your, like, maybe company website or your personal website or a white paper you wrote, or a personal project you're passionate about or any assets or anything you wanna send people to. I would include that here. And again, this is Prime real Estate. It's in your top section, so everyone who comes to your profile will see that. So it might be a good opportunity to let people know you have a, you have something to send them to. Alright, Analytics section, that's just for me, that's just for you on your own profile. Next main section is the about section. Few notes here. There's a sentence or two or or a line or two, a certain amount of characters that are shown to everyone. And then if you wanna see more, if you wanna see the expanded version of what's in the about section, you have to click see more. So just know that whatever you put in, in my case, of the top three lines here, everyone will see, but most people will not see the rest of the about section. But if they do click see more, bam. I have my whole story here, so about, and I've tried to make mine, easy to read both in content and actual, like visual format, easy to read.'cause I know people are like, oh, I don't wanna read a great wall of text. As a general rule, I would stay away from great walls of texts where it's like. Oh, this is paragraph upon paragraph. Let me scroll. I'm scrolling. I'm still scrolling. Is this all one paragraph? Holy cow. So I have mine broken up with short lines and short sentences, and I have some emojis as bullet points just to keep it playful and kind of colorful and different, uh, different visual aspects. And again. Tailor this for your target audience. If you're in a very, like, serious kind of buttoned up field, you might have longer paragraphs and no emojis and you might be more sounding like a dissertation. Whatever's gonna appeal to your target audience. I would go with that. Oh, I have like this when I'm not coaching, so you could, you could put like, when I'm not into your profession, I am and I list some just. hobbies and things I do outside of work. So I'm traveling, I'm podcasting. I'm hitting the gym or yoga mat. I'm reading a book, watching movies, or rooting for my Seattle Seahawks. And it just again, gives you some different personality and color to who you are. Just know that most people will not read your full about section. That's just how it goes. It doesn't mean you should, you shouldn't spend time on your full about section.'cause the people who read it actually probably wanna know a lot about you. And that's a good thing. And you wanna make the content good and relevant and easy to read. But just know that most people will see the top few sentences or lines. So make sure those ones count. Next main section is this featured section, and for me, I have some of the, the free downloadable assets I mentioned before. I also have some posts on LinkedIn that. our good ones, like the, um, I have this one, which is the launch of our latest book. I co-authored that with my former CEO and CFO was a lot of fun. So it's a cool, fun post of like, there's pictures of us holding the proof copy of the book in our hands for the first time. All that good stuff. I have a link. To some of the YouTube videos that people have found helpful. Again, if you have written papers or if you've been interviewed or, if there's anything you wanna feature from your company that would go in the featured section here. Next up is the activity section. So this just shows your activity on LinkedIn, and if you're active on LinkedIn, people might kind of peruse this and say, oh, like she's posted a few cool things, or she's commented on a few cool things on other people's posts. Oh, that's kind of interesting. Or like, oh, that's like an interesting take on that. So it just kind of gives you, gives folks a flavor for what you're interested in, what you comment on, what you post, all that good stuff. Then. What LinkedIn is probably best known for is this experience section, which is kind of like the LinkedIn version of your resume. And so here you've got your different experiences, your different companies you've worked for, what you did at those different companies. Uh, a few notes here. I would make the titles. What you did as clear as possible. again, both in the content and words you use and also the formatting. I've seen some super long titles, which are legit, the people's actual titles, but it's just formatted really bad. Like there's slashes with spaces and then dashes with no spaces, and it's like, what is happening? I don't, I, these are words, but it's not clear what you did. So make that as clear as possible Also. You can have like an actual formal full title, and sometimes you put a truncated version of that just for clarity. You're not trying to lie, you're not trying to say you did something you didn't, but you're just trying to get across the general gist and title of what you did. Maybe using three words instead of like eight other notes here, I would have. So, okay, so I have bullet points about what I did in each job. Some people go with a short paragraph, I have also seen, I think I do this somewhere down below. I have the description of what the company does, so just like a one sentence description of what the company does. And that just helps people go, oh, like if they don't know the company name and they're not quite sure what the company does, you can give'em one little sentence and primer on that. And then the following bullet points of what you did at that company are in context and make more sense, and they can kind of place it Oh, oh, oh. She was doing that or he was in charge of that. Oh, that would be big for that type of company. That type of thing. people often say, Emily. I don't wanna be seen as job hoppy. Job hopping. And so I have these sequence of roles where it looks like I was, I was only there for four months, for seven months, but I got laid off. Or, um, my family needed help or whatever. And I just, I, I want people to know that I. One option is you can put like that top sentence of why you left that role. So part of the layoff, round of, you know, April of 2026 or whatever it is. So you can, you can preempt those questions if you think you're going to get them now. Sometimes some people overthink that and they're very cognizant and worried and concerned about that. And people looking at this don't even like register that. Like, whoop. Yep, yep. There she was there. Then she went to there, she went there. Got it, got it. Good. So. You can choose to have a short sentence there if you want, and if you're like, uh, like maybe it's fine, maybe leave it off and see if you get questions around that. And then if you do, then go ahead and preempt that with that sentence. Okay. So that is that. What else? You can put media within the experience section. So for instance, for, for my Leveraging Leadership podcast, I'm creator plus host. leveraging leadership podcasts. And then I have a brief description. I have some links, and then I have some links to the act, some actual episodes. So if people wanna get a sense of those, they can go right to them from my LinkedIn profile. Same with Creator plus co-host of Private Equity Experience podcast. I have a brief description of that, and then a few links to some actual podcasts. All right. Next couple sections here would be education. Pretty, pretty straightforward and licenses and certifications. also straightforward. I put my main school, which is University of Washington, and then I also took some. Community college classes. And so I listed those as well. So when I first became a manager, I took some classes when I first wanted to learn more, about finance.'cause I moved into roles where I had p and l responsibility. I took some classes on that. So I mean, it's all education. So I put the community college ones as well. Licenses and certifications. I've got my coaching ones here. Uh, a disc facilitator, so anything relevant in your field would go here. And I think that if there's any way to show continuous learning and growth, that's good. So if you have any evidence, so to speak of that, then I would put that here. A lot of the LinkedIn courses and like Coursera courses and things like that, you can put little badges. On your LinkedIn profile to show that, um, volunteering again, gives folks a sense of who you are and what you care about. So I have my volunteer position here, helping to end homelessness in my local town. So anything you have like that. next section is skills. So this is where you get endorsed by others for skills you have like leadership, executive management. Account management, CRM, editing, risk management, proofreading marketing. Let's see, digital marketing, business strategy, strategic partnerships. Wow, there's a lot of these. Okay. All right. So there are seemingly endless. There we go. Okay. So there's a whole bunch of those that people can select and you could actually ask people to endorse you. For certain things through the LinkedIn platform, so you can rack up some of those endorsements and that's a good thing to have. And then you've got the recommendation section, which like it sounds, are recommendations that people have given you and then also ones where you have given other people recommendations. So it's kind of nice to see both. Again, you can ask people, there's a way in the platform to ask people for that and or you can ask for the blurbs or paragraph outside of the platform, and then I believe there's a way to post them. But I think the cleanest, easiest way is to actually ask them through the platform so it can post their. Profile, to it, their LinkedIn profile to it. Okay. Next section here. Publications. So I have my books. Again, if you've written any books or white papers or dissertations or anything else like that, then you can put that here. Languages, I only have one, barely English. I speak English sometimes, but if you've got language capabilities, I would absolutely list that here. It's a huge advantage. And then there's the interest section where you have your interest in top voices, companies, groups, newsletters, schools, et cetera. Okay, so those are the section overviews. And what I would say here, let me scroll back to the top here. again, take time with that top section. Everyone's gonna read that and then understand how people read your LinkedIn profile and how people don't read your LinkedIn profile. Here's how most people read your LinkedIn profile. They go to your profile, they take in the top section and they scan the rest of it. They just scan and kind of a continuous scroll down the rest of it, maybe some short pauses to see this thing. Okay. That thing. Scroll, scroll, scroll. That thing. Scroll, scroll, scroll that thing. Oh, that's interesting. What does it, how does that say, okay, scroll, scroll, scroll, and we're done. That's how most people reach your LinkedIn profile. it doesn't mean don't do a good job, it doesn't mean pay attention to all the words you're using, but just realize that's how most people read it. And so tailor it for how people read it and how. People's eyes. Move through your profile. Make it easy for someone to read. Make it easy for someone to consume the information both in content and formatting. Another common question I get is, Emily, I, I'm not publicly or officially looking for work, so how do I do that? I would say accurately describe the work you do now, and then if you are. Interested or passionate or learning about something else. That's more expanded. That's more aspirational that you can incorporate. there's ways to incorporate that in your LinkedIn profile without setting off alarms for your current employer. Or if your boss were to read your LinkedIn profile, they wouldn't be like, oh my gosh, they're looking for new work right now. So there's ways to kind of crosswalk that and overlap that. Depending on your situation, like maybe your boss is super sensitive to that and is looking at everyone's LinkedIn profile every day, but most of the time they're not. So just kind of be aware of what you got going on. But like obviously if you're, if you're wanting to keep your job search under wraps, you're not gonna put like the open to work banner around your headshot and things like this. alright. For the chief of staff role, I get questions around how do I tailor my LinkedIn profile for that? First of all, I would have the word chief of staff somewhere in your profile. And if you're not currently a chief of staff, the byline might be a good spot for that. Another place would be the about section, and I would also highlight in the About section, and certainly in your experience section, the types of. Duties and responsibilities and projects and initiatives that our chief of staff like. So even if you're not officially a chief of staff, if you can demonstrate and show, Hey, I've been involved in these, cross department initiatives, or I've been involved in these strategic planning, or I've been the right hand person to a key executive. Bring all those things to the forefront, and so maybe. Before your resume and LinkedIn profile were geared towards something else, you might need to revamp and repurpose all that information and through the lens of chief of staff. And so, okay, instead of this, this, and this, I'm gonna highlight these aspects of the role. I would go through your entire resume and your entire LinkedIn profile with that in mind and. Again, you're not lying about the experience you had or did not have or the companies you were at or did not have, or the roles you'd had or did not have, but you're just swizz them and adjusting them to your target audience now. So the about section is good for that. Certainly the experience, descriptions, the bullet points, the sentences you have there are all key for highlighting those chief of staff like roles. A smart recruiter and that's like a mixed bag there, but a smart recruiter. We'll also pick up on titles that aren't officially chief of staff, but kind of mean chief of staff. and you can say that in your byline or about section in so many in words like, I've been a chief of staff, just I haven't been called that. So you can allude to that if that makes sense for you as well. I get asked all the time. Should I add. Personality and like personal stuff and all things being equal. I would say yes. I would say a resounding yes because it. Clues people in on the type of person you are, not just the experience you have, which in many cases is more important to the recruiter, to the hiring manager, to the founder of the company you're trying to get into. sure, they're gonna look at hard. Skills and technical experience, but it's more so like the person that we're gonna have to, or hopefully get to interact with every day. And so like the surfing picture or the hobbies or the volunteering or the assets that you're pointing people to or the links that you're providing. All just paint a picture of who you are, what you're about, and hopefully what you like to work with. I try to add a little personality into. A LinkedIn profile, again, like aspiring superhero or just different things you have in other areas in the about section, add some personality, like, oh, this person is a little bit humorous and not super serious'cause they have this kind of stuff in their profile. Oh, memorable things. Conversation starters. Anywhere where you can add memorable thing that's, that differentiates you. So if it's like, oh, like it, I'll just keep using that surfing example. Like, oh, that's so and so, they have this technical knowledge, so do hundreds of people, but she's the one, she's the surfer one. Like the surfer one. Anything you can do with that is good. Anything you can do to stand out and be memorable is good. Um, there's this famous salesperson, I'm forgetting the name right now, but he wears a red hat and people are like, he, he, you know, he always wears a red hat on sales calls, on sales meetings in internal meetings. On the car, in, in the plane, wherever he's going, he wears a red baseball cap. And people go, why do you wear a red hat? Like, does that help you sell stuff? Like, is that your lucky hat? What is that? And he goes, I wear this red hat so people can say he's the Red hat guy. And they remember me as the Red Hat guy, that sales guy who came in and there were 12 of'em, but there was that Red Hat guy and he was like, da da da da da. And that's the only reason he wears his red hat. So anything you can do to have something memorable and maybe you have a special trademark saying or something in your headshot or your banner image or whatever, that can be your memorable thing. Okay. What else do I get? Oh, I get the, oh my gosh, this is gonna take forever. There's so much to do and think about, and there is a lot to think about. I would say if you're. Overhauling your LinkedIn profile and you haven't touched it for years and years. Start small. Start with the top section or start with your most recent experience sections, or just add sections that you don't have, like one thing a week or one thing a month or whatever kind of timing you're on, but don't try to boil the ocean. Just kind of touch it up and make it a project here and there if that works best. If you're the type of person where it's like, Emily, I just want this done, then block off a weekend or block off an evening and just go through it and go through some of the notes we have here. And, uh, go through all the sections and knock it out. I would also say that people ask, is it bad if my resume on LinkedIn profile are exactly the same in places I would say no. Many people will only see one and a lot of people aren't gonna like, compare side by side and, and dock you for having something be the same. I think there's opportunities for your LinkedIn profile to be different. I think there's enough opportunities for your LinkedIn profile to be different with the links and the media and the headshot and the banner image, et cetera, et cetera. That make it different enough from your resume to still be interesting to look at. But a lot of people will kind of look at one, maybe look at the other. They're going through dozens and dozens if not hundreds of these things. So getting that same information twice might not be a bad thing. It might confirm and reinforce like, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. That's, that's the one she is. Okay. Got it, got it, got it. so I don't think it's a, a bad thing. You should be overly concerned about. Okay. So. Hopefully this has been helpful. Um, I get loads of questions on this, so if you have a particular question, please let me know and you can DM me on LinkedIn or drop it in the comments wherever you're watching this. But I would be happy to help on your job search or just updating your profile or getting the message and brand you want out there. I think that is important in, in today's, world because most people will go. To a website or a LinkedIn profile immediately to validate, you know, is this a real person? Like what is this person about? So I would have these things up to date as much as possible. Alright, hopefully that was helpful and I'll catch you next week on leveraging Leadership.