Finding the dream job that matches your requirements can be a boon. But it is difficult to land jobs unless you are on the right platform, creating a personal brand, and showcasing your skills to the right audience.
Professionals looking for job opportunities or ways to expand their businesses can now do so with the help of LinkedIn. To get a day job interview, you need a formal profile with all your relevant experience and skills in one place.
While various segments in LinkedIn should be used for a practical approach to your target audience, adding your skills, a powerful bio describing you, and your valuable experience is crucial.
And this article will help you with writing tips on how to write the experience section of your LinkedIn to communicate effectively.
How your LinkedIn work experience section differs from your resume
It is crucial to ensure that the experience section of your LinkedIn profile is not a copy-paste from your resume. You must ensure your profile does not have the same content as your resume.
While you must ensure the facts remain the same on your LinkedIn profile and your resume, having both profiles showcase different views to the recruiter is vital.
The factual part of your profile, such as your current employer’s name, previous employer’s name, duration of past roles, and designation details, can and should remain unchanged.
However, the overall description of your resume should focus on a specific job, and your LinkedIn profile will need to be updated for a generic job search.
To simplify it, ensure the same information is presented differently, keeping your resume to the point, and LinkedIn profile briefly describing your work with relevant keywords for you to show up on the search results.
Writing your LinkedIn profile work experience section
Remember that your LinkedIn profile will be viewed more times than your resume and by various hiring managers and companies. Hence, you must have all your job experiences updated descriptively.
Potential employers find qualified candidates using LinkedIn.
Basic information in two or three sentences, a few highlights from their past employment, and the most significant accomplishments added by the candidates can attract potential employers easily.
Hence, recruiters and employers consider finding the right candidates through this platform as a helpful means with significant cost savings.
While your resume must have relevant information about all previous positions that match the new position you are applying for, you do not need to go with different positions and older job descriptions on your online profile.
As an online representation of your resume, your LinkedIn profile requires just a list of up-to-date work experience, irrespective of the job descriptions.
It is easier for a hiring manager to go through a LinkedIn profile and select the candidate based on certain positions or job titles mentioned and the companies where the candidate has worked.
Adding any professional achievements or special work responsibilities that help you stand out from other online profiles must be added. But remember to go as far back as 10 to 15 years when mentioning older jobs.
If you have been doing any work outside work hours, mention that on your LinkedIn profile to get the proper attention. It can include activities such as freelancing on projects or working as a part-time consultant with a LinkedIn company.
When creating a resume and an online LinkedIn profile, the tone of voice is a huge difference. Ensure your online profile written summary is in the first person perspective, does not use the past tense, uses pronouns, and has a storyline.
It helps readers see through your virtual personality but remember to avoid using this suggestion for resumes.
How to Add New Work Experience on LinkedIn
Always add any new professional experience or old work history to your LinkedIn profile. If not, it will become a boring profile for regular readers.
Here is how you can add new work experience on LinkedIn easily:
- To get started, click on the + icon hanging on top of the Experience section of your profile.
- Now, add more detail relating to your employment:
- Job titles
- Company names
- Company office location
- Joining date and last working date
- You can also add the employment type and confirm if you are working full-time, part-time or freelancing.
- You can also add job duties in the same section. Also, when adding a work description for the new employment, remember to add specific keywords relating to your job so that hiring managers can easily find you.
You must keep the new job details and other job experience information less specific and in fewer words. Avoid trying to fit it to your current job requirement as it can cause divert other job opportunities.
Be particular about what you want to mention in your LinkedIn work experience entries and keep it short. Also, keep the text as a paragraph to help build a storyline instead of bullet points.
Writing LinkedIn Experience vs. Resume Experience
Writing a LinkedIn summary section and a resume experience section can differ in many ways. Below are two examples to help you understand those differences.
Example of a Resume Experience section:
Here is a sample of the experience section written in a resume. If you wish to create a new resume, consider this sample to add your employment details to your resume.
Director of Communications, US & Latin America region– Adidas | New York
Responsible for a team of 20 content experts, social media executives, and graphic designers. My team was responsible for managing internal communications and digital branding for Adidas across the US and Latin America with over 7 digital platforms, 10m followers, and 20k internal customers.
- Offered a platform to new-age influencers to collaborate with us and curated a list of interactive online challenges. Successfully sponsored high-end events and international sports tournaments and reached more customers throughout the region.
- Launched the first-ever Instagram filter to help people access our latest collections and try them virtually.
- Introduced a segment to help people exchange their old shoes for a discounted offer at our stores. We were able to recycle and reuse over 10k pairs of shoes and set up a campaign to help people in need.
Example of a LinkedIn Experience section:
Below is a sample of the experience section in a profile with appropriate LinkedIn content:
We managed a team of 20 creative heads to handle content for internal customers and digital platforms while initiating interactive online challenges to market brands and campaigns to help people recycle old shoes. Have a market reputation as an expressive brand through our 10 million followers and a vast customer base.
Both above samples will help you understand the difference between what kind of content is required in the experience section. Remember to keep your resume detailed with all required information and your LinkedIn profile crisp and short.
Formula for changing your resume work experience for LinkedIn
Often job seekers ask for an easy way to write a compelling description in the work experience section of their LinkedIn profiles.
Below are some steps that you can follow to write an apt job description in the work experience section:
Step 1: Copy the information
Before you get into the formats and ways to design content on LinkedIn, copy all the content in the work experience section of your resume.
You might want to segregate it based on all the companies and designations you have worked as it helps with the profile readability.
Step 2: Reformat
Formatting the text after this is crucial. You must not leave the fonts as they were in the resume or copy the bullet points. Make sure to restructure it into paragraphs and delete any bullet points in the text.
Also, remember to add the accomplishments during your tenure and keep it short.
Step 3: Edit
Once you have formatted the text, try to rephrase it in a conversational tone that engages the target audience. You must write all the content in a first-person voice and let others know you professionally and personally.
These three steps will prove helpful in creating a work experience section that gives your LinkedIn profile the attention it deserves.
How to notify your LinkedIn network about LinkedIn Experience Section Update?
An interesting LinkedIn feature allows you to notify or not notify your connections about the changes you make in your experience section.
If you wish to inform your peers about your employment experience, you will need to enable notifications in your account. Here’s how you can do it:
- Click on the down arrow on the Me icon with your photograph in the top-right corner.
- On the drop-down, click on Settings & Privacy.
- Now, click on the Privacy tab on top.
- After this, you will be taken to the How others see your LinkedIn activity section. Under this, select the Change option next to Share job changes from your profile.
- Click on the toggle bar to the left for Yes if you want to share the changes or to the right for No if you don’t wish to share the profile edits. Accordingly, the app will save the changes you made automatically.
You also have the option to alter the notification preferences to share the job changes with your connections only by using selecting the toggle bar in front of the Share with network section.
Summary
LinkedIn is a great online platform that allows you to connect with like-minded professionals while offering you potential job options. So, if you want to kick start your career, remember to create a clear and positive profile.
Also, remember to add all your professional experiences in line with what is suggested in the article here. If not today, it will prove helpful in the long run and help you find your career interests.