Leveraging LinkedIn profile can help career changers

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh of 12 columns on making a career change which appear the second Sunday of each month, from September through August. Last month’s column discussed resume strategies for career-changers, while the months before focused on the back-to-school decision for career changers; career change steps in your 60s; 10 ideas for choosing a new career; a sample timeline; and questions to consider when changing careers.

Are you changing careers? We need to talk about LinkedIn. As you probably know, LinkedIn is a social media platform geared to the world of work. Unlike Facebook or TikTok where you might share family stories or selfies, LinkedIn is where you post your vocational profile and then connect with others on work-related topics.

In the LinkedIn world, the pages that can be seen by others comprise your “profile.” The profile itself contains multiple elements, including your photo, a summary statement (called “About”), your work experience, education, volunteering — pretty much everything you might put on a resume, but in an online format. There’s even a place to post your actual resume to download.

You might be wondering, if the LinkedIn profile replicates and even includes your resume, why not just use your resume and be done with it? One word: recruiters.

LinkedIn is a favorite first stop for recruiters and hiring managers, even before they write a job posting. If they find a viable candidate online, they might be able to skip the formal posting process. Or, they may influence the outcome by reaching out to interesting individuals (you?) to encourage their application.

But they can’t do that if they don’t know you exist, which is why you need to be where they’re looking. This is especially true for career changers, who aren’t as likely to be found by other recruiting methods or even by word-of-mouth. When you’re changing careers, your old contacts may not be as helpful, simply because they’re embedded in your old field.

Which brings up additional reasons LinkedIn is important — it provides networking access to a new group, while also presenting job postings from its own platform.

There’s just one problem: If you’re working now in the field you plan to leave, you may not want your boss and colleagues to see you touting a new career plan.

Before we launch into possible solutions to this, here’s one thing you really should not do: If you have a LinkedIn profile already, do not create a second profile.

Besides being against the rules, having two profiles confuses anyone searching for you by name — which profile will pop up? Although you could game the system, it’s really not a strategy that’s worth that many brain cells.

A better approach is to lean into your LinkedIn profile as an evolving tool. Initially it will present more of the old career than the new, before reversing the propor- tions as your career change officially launches. Think of it as a living online document rather than a static page that you post and never revisit.

Last month’s Second Sunday column on careerchanger resumes used the example of a math teacher who becomes a statistician or business analyst. It’s fine for this resume to clearly state the new goal because it will be seen only by the select individuals directly receiving it from the career changer.

But the LinkedIn profile is accessible by all, and discretion may be needed. And yes — it’s possible to restrict access to one’s LinkedIn profile. But that’s hardly strategic for job seekers hoping to be found by employers.

To solve this dilemma, our teacher needs to scan relevant job postings to identify frequently used words and phrases. The next step is to pepper these key words into the LinkedIn profile, to become more “findable” by the search engine the recruiter is using.

Now it’s time to shift the emphasis of the profile to be less about teaching. Math, numbers, analysis, meetings, presentations, documenting, and any other skill shared in common between the two professions should be highlighted instead.

It’s also possible to experiment with the template, substituting for example “Math Instructor” for “High School Teacher” in the job title field, or forgoing the title altogether and simply listing the school district as the employer.

The About section is the best place to tilt the profile toward the new career, since this section can be used to describe applicable strengths and experiences without a template’s restrictions.