LinkedIn Profile Tips for Job Seekers

To optimise your LinkedIn profile, work through it one section at a time: a clear photo, a headline that says what you do and who it helps, a first-person About section, experience written as achievements, and skills worded the way job ads word them. Nothing here needs a fancy design or a big network.

Most people set up a profile once, then leave it alone for years. That is a shame, because recruiters search LinkedIn every day using the exact words they see in their own job ads. If your profile uses those words and reads like a person wrote it, you get found.

Here is the whole profile, section by section.

Your photo and banner

A profile photo is the fastest trust signal you have. You do not need a studio. A phone photo works if it follows three rules: your face fills most of the frame, the light comes from in front of you rather than behind, and the background is plain.

Wear roughly what you would wear to an interview in your field.

The banner is the wide strip behind your photo. Most people leave it as the default grey pattern, which is a wasted slot. Swap it for something simple: a plain colour, a photo of your city, or a strip with one line of text naming what you do.

Two small things that help:

• Crop the photo so your head and shoulders fill it, not your whole body from across the room.
• Keep the banner low-contrast in the bottom-left, because your photo sits on top of it there.

What should your LinkedIn headline say?

The headline is the line under your name. It follows you everywhere on LinkedIn: search results, comments, messages, invitations.

Most people write their job title and stop. That is a label, not a reason to click. A stronger headline names the role and the value, so the reader learns what you actually do for an employer.

Customer Support Specialist | Cutting response times for busy SaaS teams

Junior Data Analyst | Turning messy spreadsheets into decisions people trust

Warehouse Team Leader | Safer shifts, faster picks, lower staff turnover

Keep the job title in there in plain words. If you are hunting for "Marketing Executive" roles, the phrase "Marketing Executive" should appear, because that is what a recruiter types into the search box. Clever titles like "Growth Ninja" are invisible to search.

If you are between jobs, you can lead with the role you want rather than your last one, as long as you are honest in the experience section below.

How do you write the About section?

The About section is your summary. Write it in first person, the way you would explain your work to someone at a friend's wedding. Third-person writing ("Abdul is a designer who...") reads oddly on a personal profile.

Two things kill an About section: vagueness and modesty. "Passionate professional seeking new opportunities" tells a reader nothing. Be specific about what you do, who you do it for, and what tends to happen as a result.

Open with a sentence that could only be about you:

I spend my days making sure 4,000 orders a week leave the warehouse on time, and my evenings figuring out why the ones that slipped, slipped.

I write the help articles people read at 2am when something has gone wrong and they are already annoyed.

Then use three or four short paragraphs: what you do now, a concrete example or two of results, the tools or methods you work with, and a closing line about what you are looking for next.

Only the first two lines or so show before a reader has to click "see more", so put your best material at the very top.

Make your experience achievement-focused

Your experience section should not be a copy of your job description. A job description says what you were told to do. An achievement says what actually changed because you did it.

Under each role, add three to five bullet points. Each one starts with an action verb, says what you did, and ends with the result. Numbers help, but only real ones: how many, how much, how often, how quickly.

• Duty: "Responsible for social media accounts."
• Achievement: "Ran three social accounts and grew the combined following from 2,000 to 9,000 in a year by posting a fixed weekly schedule."

Fill in the role details LinkedIn asks for — company, dates, location, and whether the work was on-site, hybrid or remote — because recruiters filter on those fields. Our guide on how to list work experience on a CV uses the same achievement-first approach, so you can reuse the thinking across both documents.

Which skills should you list?

Skills are a searchable list, so treat them as search terms rather than as decoration. Open three or four job ads for the role you want, note the words that keep appearing, and use those exact words if they are honestly true of you.

Put your strongest and most relevant skills at the top of the list, since only the first few show without a click. Mix hard skills (software, languages, techniques) with the handful of soft skills your field genuinely cares about. If you are unsure what to include, best skills to put on a CV walks through how to choose them.

Endorsements are the little confirmations connections can add to a skill. They are pleasant but light. A colleague clicking a button says far less than one writing you a paragraph.

Recommendations are worth asking for

A recommendation is a short written reference that sits on your profile permanently. Two or three good ones do more for you than fifty endorsements.

Asking feels awkward, so make it easy for the person. Send a short note naming the project you worked on together and the one or two things you would love them to mention. People rarely say no; they just stall when they do not know what to write.

Aim for a mix: a manager, a peer, and if it fits, a client. Offer to write one back.

Line it up with your CV, without copy-pasting

Your LinkedIn profile and your CV should agree on the facts. Same job titles, same employers, same dates. Mismatches look careless at best, and they tend to surface late in a hiring process.

The tone can differ, though, and it should. A CV is tightly edited for one specific job. A profile is public, permanent, and speaks to everyone. So the profile can be warmer, can run a little longer, and can include the volunteering, side projects, courses or portfolio pieces your CV had no room for. If you are rewriting both at once, how to write a CV covers the CV side in detail.

Tidy your URL and contact details

By default your profile URL ends in a string of random numbers. Edit it to your name (something like linkedin.com/in/abdul-rahim-writer) so it looks clean at the top of your CV and in email signatures.

While you are in there, check your contact details are current, add your portfolio or personal site if you have one, and set your location to the area where you actually want to work. Recruiters filter heavily by location, and an out-of-date city quietly removes you from searches.

Key takeaways

• Write a headline that pairs your target job title with the value you deliver, not just the title on its own.
• Use the words real job ads use, especially in your headline, About section and skills, because that is what recruiters search for.
• Make the About section first person and specific enough that it could only describe you.
• Turn every experience bullet from a duty into an achievement with a real, honest number where you have one.
• Keep the facts identical to your CV, but let the tone and the extra detail differ.

Do the profile and the CV in the same sitting while the wording is fresh in your head. You can build your CV free with CVify AI, let it draft achievement-led bullet points from your experience, and then lift the strongest lines straight into your LinkedIn profile. One afternoon, two things recruiters will actually find.