Get your LinkedIn profile ready before you apply

When you apply, you send a CV and a portfolio link. The person reading them often opens your LinkedIn profile too, and sometimes it is the first thing they see. Many designers update the CV before applying and leave the profile as it was two jobs ago.

This guide goes through four areas of the profile: the headline, the About section, the experience entries and the first impression the whole page gives. For each one you will know what to check and what to rewrite before the next application goes out.

Headline: say what kind of designer you are

The headline is the line under your name. It shows up in search results, in comments and next to every message you send. Plenty of designer headlines contain only a title and a company: “UX Designer at Acme”.

That line tells the reader your current job. It does not tell them what you work on. A stronger headline adds your focus area in a few words:

• Before: “UX Designer at Acme”
• After: “Product Designer · Payments and onboarding flows”

If you are looking for work, “Open to work” on its own is not enough. Keep it if you like, and put the focus area next to it. The reader should know what kind of problem you solve before they open the rest of the profile.

About: position yourself with evidence

The About section is where you explain how you work and what your work changes. Most About sections I read are a list of adjectives: passionate, creative, user-centred. Every candidate can write those words, so they do not separate you from anyone.

Replace the adjectives with three concrete things: the domain you work in, the way you work and one result you can point to. Two or three short paragraphs are enough. End with a link to your portfolio, because this is the place a reader goes looking for it.

A sentence like “I design checkout and onboarding flows for fintech products, and I start every project from support tickets and funnel data” says more than a paragraph of adjectives.

Experience: show your part and the outcome

Experience entries on LinkedIn tend to be either empty or a copy of the job description. Both leave the reader with the same question: what did you do here, and did it work?

Write each entry the way you would write a good CV bullet. Name the problem, your part in the work and what changed afterwards. If you have no metric, a concrete observation still counts: fewer support tickets, a step removed from a flow, a decision the team made because of your research. I wrote about this in more detail in the post on how a design CV gets read.

Entries with only a title and dates are worth filling in, even with two lines each. A reader who sees four empty roles assumes there is nothing to say about them.

First impression: does the profile tell one story?

The last area is the whole page read in a few seconds. Do the headline, the About section and the experience point in the same direction? A headline about payments, an About section about branding and experience entries about internal tools read as three different people.

Then put the profile next to your CV. The most common problems are small and easy to miss when you wrote both documents yourself:

• dates that differ between the two (2021–2024 on the CV, 2022–2024 on LinkedIn)
• different titles for the same role (Senior Product Designer on one, Product Designer on the other)
• a result that appears in only one of them

The profile can be longer and more personal than the CV. The facts should still match. To read your profile the way a stranger does, open your profile, click “More” and choose “Save to PDF”. Reading the PDF next to your CV makes the differences easier to see.

If you want an outside read, Folioverse scores a LinkedIn profile on these same four areas. With a free account you can score your profile and see the score, the four areas, every fix title and the full text of the most effective fix. After you fix the profile, you can score it again and see what changed. Comparing the profile with your CV is part of the Application Prep package. The CV side is free: the CV score needs no signup.

Before the next application

Pick one area and rewrite it today: the headline is the fastest. Then save the profile as a PDF, put it next to your CV and fix every date, title and result that does not match.

The job application, step by step

LinkedIn is the second step in the application series. It comes after the CV, and the next step is a case study that fits the roles you want. The overview post covers all five steps.

1. Check your CV
2. Get your LinkedIn profile ready (this post)
3. Get your case study ready for applications
4. Use your portfolio in the application
5. Present your case study in the interview

FAQ

Does my LinkedIn profile need to match my CV word for word?

No. The profile can be longer, more personal and written in a looser tone. Dates, titles and the results you claim should be the same in both, because a reader who checks both will notice the difference.

Should I add a list of keywords to get found?

A list of terms with no context reads as filler to the person who opens the profile. Write the terms you actually use to describe your work inside the headline, About and experience sentences.

Does the profile photo or banner matter here?

They are part of the profile too. This guide looks only at the text on purpose, because all four areas above are text.

Can I score my profile again on a free account?

Yes, within your daily score limit. CV and LinkedIn scores use the same daily limit. The details of the other fixes and the CV comparison are part of the Application Prep package.