LinkedIn profiles that convert

Greg Wyatt • February 21, 2024

This is an article in four parts:

  1. An analogy to help you understand how people with hiring responsibility consume your content

  2. How this relates to your LinkedIn profile and other documents

  3. An exercise you can do now

  4. Practical takeaways

This has a bit of danger of overwhelm; however, it’s important to understand the context and mindset behind searching for candidates so that you can help a hiring process make the right decision.

By hiring process, I mean anyone from recruiter and hiring manager, to agency, to a peer who can advocate for you, to a fellow job seeker that happens to know about a vacancy you are suitable for.

Help us help you through your content.

Part 1 - an Amazon (job) search

When I buy a commodity item on Amazon there are two stages to my buying process.

I know what I want, and I have to find an acceptable shortlist of possibilities, and then decide on what to buy.

As a sweaty runner that clocks up 60-70km a week, I go through Bluetooth Headphones like you wouldn’t believe.

I’m also deaf in one ear and can’t tell the difference in varying sound formats.

So my context is a little different to the normal buyer, although likely no more different than most are to another.

A search on “Bluetooth headphones” brings up over 2,000 results, which is hardly manageable, so I change the search to “waterproof Bluetooth headphones” and filter by:

£15-£30; in ear; Prime; running.

125 results. Much better.

Now I scan down the list and I ignore Sponsored, I’m not sure why.

Click on the first one with a relevant headline, promising 50hrs playtime, and skim past all the marketing twaddle. Who cares what they say - what do their buyers think?

I go straight to the three-star reviews (my hack for avoiding paid reviews) because they are generally good with caveats, then click away.

One of the three-star reviews says they were offered a discount to change it to five. That’s BS that turns me right off.

I click through a few more products and buy one. The decent guarantee swung it for me.

I didn’t get past the first 40 results.

Now think about your own commodity purchases, where you have to do a differing levels of research to get what you need.

What kind of search criteria do you use?

How do you filter?

What informs your decision to buy?

Perhaps you already know what you want to buy, having researched buyers’ guides, YouTube videos and users’ forums, and are just sourcing the best price.

Or maybe you just need something adequate, and literally anything above an acceptable threshold will do - 5 minutes and done.

These are examples of a buyer’s journey across a transactional process.

Which isn’t far removed from how recruiters might search for candidates.

Not just on LinkedIn, but through other channels too.

Part 2 - bringing it back to your job search

LinkedIn and Amazon - what’s the difference?

In a hiring process, they are both volume, transactional marketplaces that allow searches and filters to create an appropriate shortlist to read through.

As with a product on Amazon, your LinkedIn profile is one of many that fit broadly similar criteria and might be found at any stage in a recruitment process.

  • From a search through the Recruiter Licence

  • Out of curiosity from a comment or post you wrote

  • Checking it out on receipt of an application

  • Because you were recommended

  • Because you worked at a certain company

In the same way customers might visit a product page on Amazon, so too might someone hiring visit your profile.

This means that it doesn’t have to just stand on its own merits, it has to corroborate and support any other documentation a reader might have come across:

  • Your CV or application

  • Your LinkedIn posts and comments

  • Something you did that’s in the public domain - an interview, video, article

Where there’s a conflict, such as an overly customised CV that contradicts your LinkedIn profile - that can be a problem.

Assuming your contents all support each other, the aim is to prompt an action.

Unlike an Amazon purchase, you aren’t expecting a sale, simply for the right people to start a conversation that meets your goals.

But to convert interest into an action, first, you have to be found.

Think about an Amazon product page and the process you go through to buy - what do you typically read and in which order?

It’s probably something like <home page - search - list of product headlines>. Then my reading journey on a product page is <headline - price - delivery - three star reviews - buy now>.

How does your profile page cater to the reading psychology of a recruiter?

While a recruiter likely has access to the Recruiter Licence, you probably don’t, so I’ll write this in a way you can emulate, as a standard or Premium Member. (You can look at public user guides if you are interested, such as here )

A standard search might go across <home page - search - list of profile headlines>. Then the reading psychology of someone who wants to read everything (!) is:

  • #Open to Work banner (your choice and no discussion today on its merits)

  • Headline

  • Banner

  • Location / Contact details (depending on connection and privacy settings)

  • Activity / Featured Section / About (the order depends on whether you have Creator mode or not)

  • Experience

  • Education

  • Projects

  • Skills

  • Recommendations

Unlike Amazon reviews though, I rarely look at recommendations, as if I’m still interested by that point I’ll just get in touch.

You can also download your profile as a PDF, which looks like a CV / resume with contact details, headline, summary and experience.

In both your profile and the downloadable PDF, your headline and summary/About are going to be read before your experience (career history) is.

It goes to follow that’s where a lot of the decision to contact you will come from.

While the career section is important, if an attention-short reader doesn’t get that far, it won’t help convert interest.

Part 3 - an exercise to guide your approach to updating your profile

Imagine you’ve been promoted and you are tasked with recruiting your replacement.

The rules are that you are only allowed to search for candidates on LinkedIn through your standard membership.

You only have 10 minutes to run a search, and 20 minutes to form a shortlist of 3 top candidates from the results.

Location and salary don’t matter for now.

It’s likely you’ll search on your job titles, job specific skills and qualifications.

What do the results look like?

Pick your three favourite profiles from the results.

Now compare them against your own profile, step by step through the points in part 2.

Would you make your own shortlist based purely on the content?

If not, what is it about their profiles that is preferrable and how can you emulate the same in your profile?

What is it in their content that has converted you from being a passive reader to having them on your imaginary shortlist?

Part 4 - actionable points to update your profile (and CV too)

You want people with hiring authority to look at your profile and from there want to contact you.

And you should assume the people doing so are the weakest link in the chain.

Because if you cater to them, you also cater to more competent people in process.

How can you help them see you as a candidate of choice?

4.1 a punchy headline that says what you do and how you can help. The first four words count - think about those Amazon product headlines. If you don’t read further than the first four words, you’ll never know what you missed. Check out how other people’s headlines look on your mobile phone, when on their profile or if they are replying to a comment on a post - lead with relevance.

Scrap “I help companies by” because it’s meaningless. Start with your job title, then add a flourish or context. “CTO - scale-up deep techs. Equity backed and privately owned. £20m to £120m in three years”

4.2 banner - it’s free advertising real estate! Use canva; include your contact details in case a reader doesn’t have access through your account

4.3 make it really easy to contact you by phone or email, put it in multiple spots

4.4. About section - who do you help and how? What are your key skills and achievements? Keep it concise and focused on your ideal audience - move away from the ‘responsibilities led’ approach to CVs that get copied onto LinkedIn. Show context.

4.5 While your career section is further down, and may not even be read, it should still be fully populated and credible.

4.5 How can you highlight posts, videos and articles to support your candidacy? The Featured Section is a great facility in Creator mode.

4.6 Key words. Recruiters search on key words. Think about all the job adverts and required skills you’ve read - does your LinkedIn profile show these suitably? Of course these need to be true, but think about how differing acronyms and terminology may mean the same thing.

4.7 Personal branding. How can you showcase your personality in your words? Your about section is a form of elevator pitch. While it highlight your professional credibility, you can also show your personal qualities. What your most passionate about and best at? Lead with that.

4.8 It’s not about you. It’s about the needs of your reader - tell us what we need to know to make an informed decision on your candidacy. Answer the questions that we should have through your content.

4.9 Keep it simple and authentic.

4.10 If there’s something you want us to know, make it clear. This could be anything from the job you want, to part-time status, to highlighting a recommendation you are proud of.

I've mentioned ‘CV too’ as the same principles that let you get found apply here.

Principles that are used in SEO - read up on how Google prioritises expertise, experience, authorativeness and trustworthiness and they apply to how readers consume your content too.

Googling isn't just about key words, nor is your own LinkedIn profile.

As with the previous articles, this is both long and not detailed enough, but I hope is a good lens through which to think about what your readers need from your profile.

You are unique, even if your role is common. Help us see why you are the one person for the job, and you’ll get more interest for that one job you need.

Thanks for reading.

Greg

Introduction to personal branding

By Greg Wyatt • March 30, 2026
What follows is Chapter 39 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's 10 months old, so surely the algorithm has moved on right? Indeed, my own content performance has tanked if you compare 2026 to 2025. Around 12 million views of my content last year, while if I extrapolate my year to date performance, it looks like a little shy of 640,000 views. My LinkedIn feed is quieter, yet real life relevant conversations go from strength to strength, many of which stem from my content. Look, I don't love the term, but I am a fan of putting your message out there, across multiple means, so that your most relevant audience might become aware of you. And perhaps your relevant audience is an audience of one, a person who can put you nearer that job. Which is the only algorithm you need. This is a three part series, with part 2 on " Content strategy and philosophy " and part 3 on " A flair post ". Click on the links for the unedited versions on Substack. 39 - Introduction to personal branding Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a free marketing platform, where you can build a reputation through the words of your posts, comments and messages. Personal branding is a viable tactic as part of a multi-channel approach to your job search and it can bring opportunities to you. I'll start off by saying I'm not a fan of the term personal branding. It can lead to make-work which can even get in the way of what you should be doing. Writing and using content to create experiences that support a job search is a great idea and calling it personal branding - as a discrete activity - isn’t a bad thing. I expect there are many mediums through which you can build a personal brand. I'll focus on LinkedIn because of how entrenched it is in other job search activities. What a personal brand is For businesspeople the idea is that by building awareness of your personality, lifestyle and what you're promoting, you also build trust. So that when people are ready to buy, they'll buy your products. The brand might be personal. The goal is sales. When you see personal branding on LinkedIn it’s often a business that promotes their services through the account of the author. ‘Here’s my puppy, buy my stuff.’ Take note that the target audience for these advice posts is the businesspeople above. And these posts often seek to part them from their money. Your goals are similar. If there’s a commercial outcome you want, it’s likely a single job, not a throughput of leads. You’ll also see that controversial content gets huge engagement and can also repel readers. If you need a job, what’s the danger of writing overly spicy content? Could a reader make a decision against you based on your words? How much you need any job should inform the experience you want to create for your readers. How it sits in your wider job search Publishing content is about raising awareness and starting conversations with the right people. This can be your profile, written posts, newsletters, (bestselling) career breakdown kits, videos, you name it - anything you can become known for. In many ways the hierarchy of relationships your content appeals to is the same as with networking. Content can be publishing posts, commenting on the posts of others, sending direct messages. I’d argue even your applications and interviews are part of your personal brand. I think of LinkedIn posts like a plumber’s van driving around town. Most of the time you’ll disregard the van unless it cuts you up with noxious fumes. When you have a leaky pipe, you’ll surely take note of their number. It can support an application if a hiring manager decides to surreptitiously stalk your profile. And it can work against you if it suggests problem behaviour. A good balance for content is the poster in my daughters’ primary school from a few years back: THINK. Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Achieve those five points and content will rarely work against your job search. Content should be consistent with your wider activity. Which means that everything people (potential employers) experience of you is a complementary and non-contradictory message. Content that contradicts your CV or cover letter may lead to red flags, whether that’s fair or not. Content should be intentional. HOW TO GO viral, and why you shouldn’t Anyone who writes content will enjoy the sweet, sweet flow of dopamine when you see reactions and comments trickle in. Such as that first flair post announcing you are available to help your next employer with examples of your achievements and what you are looking for. Do that and you’ll get loads of engagement. Why haven’t you done it yet? Tag me in and I’ll support you. Or you can do what most people do and say, ‘I’m sorry to announce I’ve lost my job, please help’ and that will get loads too. Because it is relevant and relatable to fellow job seekers, recruiters and sympathisers. Then you feel the soul-crushing defeat of a well-thought-out post, highlighting a problem in your industry, with tumbleweed to follow. Both types of content have a place. That tumbleweed post is relevant and relatable to a niche audience. I try to take a land and expand approach to content - job seeker advice, recruitment advice and stories, ponderings and satire, which I use to tackle topics from different directions. Over the past three years I’ve had between 3m to 11m views of my posts and I’ve gained a bit of business through them too. What I don’t do is try to go viral anymore. Because when I have gone viral with a few 1m impression posts, it’s taken weeks to extricate myself from them and there hasn’t been real benefit. I find my tumbleweed posts start better conversations from lurkers - those that never engage publicly. I promised you I’d show you how to go viral. Here you go. Relevance + relatability + readability + entitlement. Maybe add a selfie. If that seems too simple, search for this sentence on LinkedIn: “An employee asked me if he can WORK from HOME permanently.” You’ll need to use the double speech mark to search on the phrase, and rank by Posts. ‘Does it really work?’ asked Charles. I told him to try it as an experiment. He rarely got more than a few hundred impressions per post. 170,000 impressions, 2,000 reactions. Pretty viral for a first timer. It is the wrong path. What do these posts actually say? Who are they aimed at? And if they don’t appeal to people who can help you reach your objective, what’s the point? 

Nothing but the truth. Innovation from Iteration, pt 4

By Greg Wyatt • March 26, 2026
I was tempted to use another Tom Cruise AI image for this article, but his hands ended up looking like feet, which wasn't a true representation of him. Probably not fair to use AI in this way either, stealing copyrighted material without permission. And so I use this AI 'stock image' instead, which is probably also highly unethical, but feels more suitable and sufficient . Anyway here's an article about why the same principles are crucial for good recruitment: ‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment. Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance. The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition. Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with. HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts. Can something be true and not fair? In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US. Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards. However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had. Poof! Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash. How about fair but not true? This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy. An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty. What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to? Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere): The job description. The job advertisement. The CV. If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer. With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, if you remember last week's edition. Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview. Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”? Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process? What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation? I think it has to cover three points. 1/ factually correct 2/ shows context suitably 3/ describes sufficiently An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case. If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context? If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role? Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited? A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”. Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for? Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire? It feels strange writing my name like this. There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so. The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live. You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis is too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy. “Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”. But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time. If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall. And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes. For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order. Get it right and everything flows from there. It’s a key reason behind my nearly 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires. These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process. If you've forgotten why suitability and sufficiency is the other pillar, here's an example that isn't suitable: Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming. See you next time. Regards, Greg p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services: - commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies) - manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. This can be a large as end-to-end delivery of a programme of vacancies, or as small as writing one job advert for a key hire- recruitment strategy setting - outplacement support