Your LinkedIn Headline is Your Personal Branding Tag- How to Create a Headline That Gets You Noticed

Your LinkedIn profile is your personal brand, your professional identity, and story. If your cover letter and your resume had a baby, your LinkedIn profile would be it.

For all career materials, our mantra is show don’t tell. The same goes for your LinkedIn headline. Breaking down your value and unique selling points into 120 characters can seem daunting. What we find is most people struggle to do this for themselves. They hit a wall when trying to create an overview of who they are and cultivate their personal branding.

For those who want to cut through the noise and break away from the generic, help is here! We’ve put together a short breakdown with some examples of how to find your niche and create a LinkedIn headline that makes readers dying to know more!

1. What do you do?

This should be the easiest thing to answer. What’s your job, industry, or field of expertise?

2. How do you do it?

What are you doing to serve your business or your clients? Think about some strategic keywords relative to your work. What are the things that you do that are critical to your job and your success as a professional?

3. What do you do better than anyone else?

Ask yourself, what makes you stand out, why have you been able to meet goals or accomplishments, what have you been recognized for professionally?

4. Who do you serve? Who benefits from your help? Who are your clients?

Get real specific here. Do you focus on helping millennials in the job market? Tutor high school students for the SATs? Do you specialize in commercial real estate with a particular dollar value? Do you work on Oracle Databases? Specialize in loans for small businesses? Think about the clients or companies you want to find you and make sure that’s where you focus. Your headline isn’t only what you do, but where you are going!

5. Supporting proof.

Experience, expertise, credibility. What kinds of certifications do you have, specific know-how or supporting quantifiable details? Stats from revenue numbers, customer service satisfaction rates, rankings, awards, etc. are great proof. Identify any numbers or data/concrete evidence that supports your claims. People like quantifiable, it helps them put your work into perspective and build trust in your abilities. Remember, show don’t tell!

6. Side note: Leave out your un- or underemployed status.

Your headline is not the time nor place to advertise that you’re unemployed or underemployed, part-time seeking full-time, or anything of that nature. It sounds desperate and is not compelling. If anything, it sets up a red flag. “Seeking opportunities” is also frowned upon and should not show up in your headline! Whether you are seeking a new role or are just starting your career, you want to get a fair assessment and for people to evaluate you on what you bring to the table instead of what you are lacking.
Now it’s time to tie it all altogether. You’ve done the hard work, now let’s boil it down to 120 characters.

Start linking together some of the strongest phrases from your list to develop your individual personal brand identity. Scan what you wrote down in response to the questions and think about how you want to be perceived and what about your work do you wish to draw attention? This is how you take control of the conversation and set the tone. Assert your value in a way that makes you feel empowered. It will likely require a few configurations before you land on one headline, so save your drafts. You could decide to tweak ideas later on and having some points to go back to is helpful.

Here are some examples of powerful headlines to get your creative ideas flowing:

Adolescent speech pathologist specializing in children with cleft palates and supporting their families on the journey

IT recruiting specialist focused on delivering top talent to Fortune 500 companies | Placed 250 pros in 2015

UX award winning web designer building responsive sites that attract maximum visibility for millennial-focused brands

Radio advertising sales exec producing results for clients in need of localized reach | $1M in sales this year

Customer service representative that find solutions to problems others miss | 95% excellent feedback score

Test it! Once you’ve selected your new headline, test it out. Post it on your LinkedIn profile. Examine if your profile views increase or if the type of viewer you are drawing is more in line with what you’d like to do, the people you would like to draw, the businesses you are looking to attract. If these numbers improve, you know you’re on the right track.

Those who take the extra step have the most success. Maximize every opportunity to stand out rather than blend in. There are plenty of generic profiles out there, don’t let yours be one of them. Make your headline memorable and watch the positive momentum change!