Don’t be this person on LinkedIn: Headline don’ts and dos

It’s a professional network, so professionalism is crucial. That doesn’t mean your profile should be dreary or trite. Here’s help in capturing your special brand of brilliance.

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Now I’d like to zero in on another area within LinkedIn that is ripe for exploration (and ultimately, exhortation to improve): the Professional Headline.

The mostly overlooked headline keeps growing in importance as LinkedIn keeps increasing the ways it lists us, specifically these sections that you see all the time on the site: You Recently Visited, People You May Know, People Also Viewed, and People Similar to.

Your headline serves as your working career one-line elevator speech. And let’s emphasize the adjective LinkedIn uses to describe it: Professional.

What a professional headline should not be:

Don’t be this person (or any of the following people) on LinkedIn.

The obscure reference gal

Please realize that to most (and by “most” I mean 99 percent) readers saying that you are “Always looking for ‘Purple Squirrels'” is just odd. We’re not sure what that means. I know Seth Godin wrote about purple cows, but I’m a little scared to Google your phrase of choice. Of course, nothing on your page clarifies the expression.

The quirky statement-maker

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