Brent M. Jones - Connected Events Matter

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What about the LinkedIn “About Statement” Section?

The “About Section” can be presented in various ways, and just one way is not necessarily the right way. You could use the About Section Space to:

Describe who you are and what makes you tick. Explain your present or last job, leave titles out, and describe your past career path and successes. You could include your passions and show your outside interests. These traditional approaches are found in writings on LinkedIn in this section.

The approach presented here has made a difference to those many candidates I have coached on this over the last few years. In most cases, it attempts to create a “general job title” that sometimes crosses over to more than one job focus and then states what the candidate can do with that title or label. Examples of this would be:

Enterprise Performance Manager, Software Engineer, and Development Specialist: able to establish market differentiation, enhance customer experience and improve product quality and safety.

Strong Engineering Professional skilled in Business Process, Requirements Analysis, Enterprise Software, Enterprise Architecture, Agile Methodologies, and Functional Safety: able to create efficiency and enhance the performance of……….

These statements show how the experience within the general title it begins with can lead to accomplishing the things found in job postings for those jobs.

If your past job experience has been in multiple areas, you could summarize them in a title. For example, you could say you were an

“Experienced Business Operations & HR Professional”: with a strong focus……

This general title allows you to claim credit as not just an HR person but as able to fit available management positions.

If you know what job you want, then you will need to show in this type of “About Statement” that you know what the functions and challenges of the job are, and then state how you can accomplish those things using relevant vital words trade jargon.

The LinkedIn Headline under your name at the top usually carries your current job title. Some like to add a passionate statement about something in that place. Still, since my focus here is to view this as someone trying to help people find the best job, the most effective approach is to list the job titles you qualify for and would like to get in the headline under the name.

Enterprise Performance Manager | Software Engineer | Development Specialist | Director of IT | VP Technology

This approach reinforces the opening line of the About Statement. The headline and the About Statement opening line should generally point to the job titles you are applying for, and,n the About Statement, you follow the title labels“able to do” statements showing in more detail your abilities.