Is your LinkedIn profile helping you… or quietly working against you?

I ask this question a lot.

And it usually lands uncomfortably.

Most people set up their LinkedIn profile once, update it occasionally, and assume that’s enough. For a long time, it was. But LinkedIn has changed. How people read profiles has changed. How recruiters search has changed too.

More than half of LinkedIn traffic now comes from mobile. Recruiters are increasingly using AI tools before they ever read a profile. Some candidates have adapted to that reality. Many haven’t.

Recruiters aren’t just reading profiles anymore — they’re filtering them first.

So it’s worth asking: what story is your profile actually telling today?

What does your profile look like on a phone?

This matters more than most people realise.

Your banner is often the first signal someone gets about you. If it’s still the default background, it’s not doing much. A simple custom banner is enough. Canva works perfectly well (1584 × 396), as long as it’s intentional.

One detail people often miss: mobile crops the left side. Anything important needs to sit on the right. Always check how it looks on your phone before you publish.

Would you actually show up in a search?

Your headline and About section don’t just introduce you. They determine whether you’re even seen.

If someone searched for the role you want next, would your profile appear? And if it did, would the language feel current, or slightly dated?

Keywords matter here, but only if they’re real. Job descriptions are a good guide to what’s actually being searched for. AI can help too, especially if you’re exploring more than one possible direction and want to understand where the overlap is.

One quiet filter many people overlook is location and role alignment. Recruiters filter by both. If either is vague or outdated, your profile may never be read at all.

Does your About section sound like you?

This is where profiles often start to blur together.

If you use AI to help draft your About section, try not asking for a LinkedIn summary. Just describe who you are and the problems you work on. The tone usually shifts immediately.

Keep it in the first person. Open with something real. You’re not writing for software alone. A person is reading it.

A useful check here is simple: does this help someone understand why you’re useful, or just what you’ve done?

Are your experience bullets doing any work?

This is one of the biggest missed opportunities I see.

Many profiles list responsibilities. Recruiters scan for outcomes.

• What changed because you were there?
• What decisions did you influence?
• What scale were you operating at?

You don’t need perfect metrics. Directional numbers and scope are often enough. Size of team. Size of budget. Reach or complexity of impact.

Have you made it easy to trust you?

The Featured section is underused and surprisingly powerful.

A short article, a presentation, a case example, or a media mention can build confidence much faster than text alone. You don’t need many. One or two relevant pieces is enough.

Do your skills reflect where you’re going?

LinkedIn weights skills more than most people realise, especially in recruiter searches.

Reorder them so the most relevant ones sit at the top. Remove skills you no longer want to be hired for. Add the ones that reflect where you’re heading, not just where you’ve been.

Endorsements matter far less than alignment.

Do you actually need to be posting?

Not everyone does.

Visibility doesn’t only come from publishing content. Thoughtful comments on other people’s posts often do more. Ten minutes a week, consistently, is enough.

One thing recruiters do notice is responsiveness. Even a short, polite reply signals engagement. Silence quietly works against you.

Are you applying… or showing relevance?

Before clicking “Easy Apply,” pause.

What problem is this role really there to solve? And which parts of your experience actually show you can solve it?

Running the job description through AI and asking those questions often changes how people approach outreach entirely. LinkedIn also limits how many “Top Job” applications you can submit each month, which makes being deliberate even more important.

It’s also worth checking your “Open to work” settings. Many people set them once and never revisit them.

A few tools that quietly help

There are a few tools worth knowing about, simply because they save time.

• LinkedIn’s Career Explorer is useful if you want to understand how people actually move between roles.
• FollowUpThen can help with keeping track of follow-ups without adding another system.
• Yoodli can be helpful for interview prep, not because it’s perfect, but because hearing yourself back is often more revealing than advice.
• And if visuals are holding you back, Canva, Pexels, or Snappr are more than enough. Nothing fancy. Just intentional.

One last question.

If the right person looked at your profile today, would they start a conversation or quietly move on?

Shannon Houde is an ICF-certified coach with over 20 years as a recruiter and trusted advisor to evolving change leaders from Managers to CSOs. She has mentored and trained 1,700+ change leaders over 5,000+ hours in ESG and corporate sustainability and is the author of Good Work: How to Build a Career That Makes a Difference in the World. Apply for a trial coaching session here!