What Should You Put in Every Section of Your LinkedIn Profile?
Published on: Jan 18, 2026
Updated on: Oct 10, 2026
Put the job title you want in your headline, a real photo on your profile, and plain language everywhere else. Recruiters search by title and skill, then scan a list. Every section below has one job: make you findable, then make you obvious. Fill them in this order. This guide comes from the recruiters at Frontline Source Group, a staffing and executive search firm with 5,619 plus placements since 2004 and a 5-Year Placement Warranty on every direct hire.
TL;DR: The Short Version
- Photo: a real one, your face filling most of the frame.
- Headline: the job title you want, spelled the way people search it.
- About: three short paragraphs, first person, no buzzwords.
- Experience: what you did and what changed, not your job description.
- Skills: the ones you want to be found for, pinned to the top.
- Settings: custom URL, and Open to Work in recruiter only mode.
- Messages: two sentences, one specific thing about them.
This page covers the profile itself, field by field, and what to write in messages. If you want the wider plan, what to post, how to track it, and a four week schedule, that lives in The LinkedIn Job Search Playbook. Fix the profile here first. Nothing else works until this part does.
Why Does Your LinkedIn Profile Matter More Than Your Resume Right Now?
Because your resume only exists after someone asks for it. Your profile is working while you sleep, and it is usually the first thing a hiring manager sees after your name comes up. A recruiter running a search never sees your resume. They see a row in a list, and they decide from that row whether you are worth a click.
The competition is real. LinkedIn says it has more than 1.3 billion members, including more than 290 million in North America, and that roughly 8,200 job applications are submitted on the platform every minute. Recruiters cannot read all of that. They search, filter, and scan.
That is the whole reason this order matters. A brilliant About section cannot rescue a headline that keeps you out of the search results. Findable comes before impressive.
What Makes a Good LinkedIn Photo?
A recent one, taken in the last two years, where your face fills most of the frame. Shoulders up. Plain background. Look at the camera.
You do not need a professional headshot. A phone photo near a window, taken by someone else, beats a studio portrait from 2015. What you are avoiding is the stuff that reads as careless: sunglasses, a cropped wedding photo, a group shot where nobody knows which one is you, a logo instead of a face, or no photo at all.
The test: shrink it to the size of a thumbnail. If you cannot tell it is you, it is not working, because that is the size a recruiter sees first.
What Should Your LinkedIn Banner Say?
Something, rather than the default blue. The banner is the largest piece of space on your profile and most people leave it empty.
It does not need design skill. A photo of your city, your industry, or your workplace is enough. If you want it to work harder, put one line of text on it: what you do and who you do it for. It is free space that reinforces your headline, and almost nobody uses it.
What Should Your LinkedIn Headline Say?
The job title you want, spelled the way people actually search for it. This is the single most important line on your profile because it decides whether you appear in a recruiter's search at all.
If your headline says Finance Professional and a recruiter searches Controller, you are not ranked low. You are not in the results. Nothing further down your profile gets a chance.
The full formula and the weak versus strong examples are in The LinkedIn Job Search Playbook. The short version: what you do, plus who you do it for, plus the result. Avoid invented titles. Nobody searches for Growth Ninja.
What Should You Write in Your LinkedIn About Section?
Three short paragraphs, written in first person, in the language you would use out loud.
- Paragraph one: what you do and who you do it for. One or two sentences. This is the only part most people read, because the rest is hidden behind See More.
- Paragraph two: proof. The kind of work, the size of the team, the systems you know, the problems you have actually solved.
- Paragraph three: what you want next, and how to reach you.
Write it in first person. Third person reads like an obituary. Cut every sentence that could appear on anyone else's profile: results driven, passionate, dynamic, team player. Those words describe nobody, so they describe you least of all.
The test: read the first two lines out loud. If they do not say what you do, rewrite them. Those two lines are the entire preview.
If you want to see what good looks like, read what the LinkedIn About section is for and these examples of effective LinkedIn bios.
How Should You Write Your LinkedIn Experience Section?
Not as a job description. Your job description says what you were responsible for. Your Experience section should say what you did and what changed because of it.
Two or three lines per role is plenty for anything older than five years. Give the recent roles more room. For each one, use a real job title rather than an internal one. If your company calls you a Financial Analyst II, write Financial Analyst. Nobody searches for the number.
Include numbers where you honestly have them: the size of the budget, how many people, how long it took, what it saved. Do not invent them. A specific fact with no number still beats a vague claim with one.
Do not leave gaps unexplained. A short line covering a career break is better than a hole a recruiter has to guess at, and guessing rarely goes your way.
How Many Skills Should You List on LinkedIn?
Fill the list, but pin the right ones. Skills are a search field, which means they are not decoration. If you want to be found for a skill, it needs to be on your profile as that exact word.
Pin the handful you want to be known for to the top. Order them by what you want to be hired for, not by what you are best at, because those are not always the same thing. Endorsements matter far less than people think, and buying or trading them is obvious to anyone who looks.
How Do You Get LinkedIn Recommendations?
You ask. That is the whole trick, and it is why most people do not have any.
Ask people you worked closely with, not the most senior person you can find. A specific recommendation from your direct manager is worth more than a vague one from a VP who barely knew you. Make it easy: tell them what you would like them to mention, and offer to write one back.
Three good ones is plenty. Twenty generic ones look like a favor exchange, because that is usually what they are.
Which LinkedIn Settings Actually Matter?
Four settings do most of the work. Change them before you touch anything else.
Open to Work, recruiter only mode
This tells recruiters you are available without telling your current employer. Turn this on first. The green photo frame is a separate, public choice, and it is optional.
Custom URL
Change it from the string of numbers to your name. It takes thirty seconds and it goes on your resume.
Profile visibility
Make sure the public version of your profile is actually public. Some people quietly hide the thing they want found.
Job alerts
Set them for the title you want, not the title you have.
What Should You Put in Your Featured Section?
Two or three things, and only if they are actually good. The Featured section sits high on your profile and shows as tiles, which means it is one of the few parts people notice without scrolling.
Useful things to feature: a piece of work you are proud of, an article you wrote, a talk you gave, a certification, or a link to a portfolio. Useless things to feature: your company's marketing page, a link to a job board, or a document you have not opened since 2019.
If you have nothing worth featuring, leave it empty. An empty section is neutral. A weak one is evidence.
How Do You Job Hunt on LinkedIn Without Your Current Boss Finding Out?
This is the question most people are actually asking, and the answer is mostly settings.
Use Open to Work in recruiter only mode
It is visible to recruiters using LinkedIn Recruiter and hidden from your network. LinkedIn does try to exclude recruiters at your own company, though nobody should count on it.
Turn off activity broadcasts before you edit
Otherwise every change to your headline lands in your colleagues' feeds. Change this setting first, then edit.
Browse in private mode
Browse in private mode if you are looking at people at a target company and would rather they not see your name in their viewers list.
Skip the green frame
It is public. Everyone at your current job can see it.
What you cannot do is make yourself invisible and findable at the same time. Quiet is a setting. Hidden is a decision, and it costs you.
How Do You Use LinkedIn Job Alerts and Company Pages?
Set alerts for the title you want, not the title you have. This sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. If you are a Financial Analyst aiming at Senior Financial Analyst, alert on the second one.
Follow the companies you would actually join, not the famous ones. Following a company page means their openings and news reach you, and it costs nothing.
Applying through LinkedIn is fine, but understand what it is. Easy Apply is easy for everyone, which is why a posting can collect several hundred applicants in a day. It is a lottery ticket, not a strategy. The profile work on this page is what makes a recruiter come to you instead, and that queue is much shorter.
What Should You Say in a LinkedIn Connection Request?
Two sentences, and one specific thing about them.
Reference a post they wrote, a company they just joined, or something you disagreed with. That is it. The blank request gets ignored, and the copy paste pitch gets reported. There is no third option that works at scale, which is why volume is the wrong strategy here.
You do not need to ask for anything in the first message. Connecting is not a favor. Asking a stranger for a referral in the first message is.
How Do You Reply When a Recruiter Messages You?
Promptly, and with a real answer. Recruiters work several roles at once, and the shortlist usually closes long before the posting does.
If you are interested, say so and give them something to act on: your availability, what you are looking for, and your resume if they ask. If you are not interested, say that too. A clear no takes ten seconds and it keeps you on the list for the next one. Silence does not protect your options, it just removes you from them.
If the message is clearly a mass send with your name pasted in, you owe it nothing. But a specific message about a real role deserves a reply even when the answer is no.
What LinkedIn Mistakes Cost Job Seekers Interviews?
- A headline that does not contain the job title. The most expensive mistake on this page, because it happens before anything else is judged.
- No photo. Reads as an abandoned account.
- An invented job title. Nobody searches for it, so nobody finds it.
- No location. Most searches filter by it. Blank filters you out.
- Posting that you are looking and nothing else. It gets sympathy. Posting what you are good at gets forwarded.
- A profile that lists employers rather than work. A company name is not a skill.
- Going quiet after applying. The profile is the follow up.
Where Does This Fit With the Rest of Your LinkedIn Strategy?
This page is the profile. It is the part that has to be right before anything else counts, because posting into the feed with a broken profile just sends people to a page that does not explain you.
Once the profile is done, the next questions are what to post, how often, what to measure, and what to do in what order. Those are answered in The LinkedIn Job Search Playbook, which includes the 30 Day LinkedIn Plan and a section on what actually happens when a recruiter opens your profile.
Who Made This Guide and Why Should You Trust It?
Frontline Source Group, Inc. is a nationwide staffing and executive search firm founded in 2004 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with 32 plus offices. We have completed 5,619 plus placements with a 98.94% executive placement retention rate, every direct hire is backed by our 5-Year Placement Warranty, 20 times the 90-day guarantee that is standard in the industry, and we are rated 5.0 stars on Trustpilot across 678 plus reviews.
Our recognition includes Forbes America's Best Professional Recruiting Firms for 9 consecutive years (2018 to 2026, ranked number 158 in 2026), Forbes America's Best Executive Recruiting Firms (number 148 in 2026), ClearlyRated Best of Staffing for client service 9 times and talent satisfaction 9 times, the ClearlyRated Diamond Award, Inc. 5000, and Expertise.com Best Staffing Agencies. We are a member of the American Staffing Association (ASA). People. Process. Service.
Our recruiters read profiles like these every working day. That is where this list came from.
Frequently Asked Questions: LinkedIn Profile Tips
Do I need a professional headshot for LinkedIn?
No. A recent phone photo taken by someone else near a window works fine. What matters is that your face fills the frame, the background is plain, and you are looking at the camera. A studio portrait from ten years ago is worse than a good phone photo from last month.
Should my LinkedIn headline just be my job title?
The title has to be in there, because that is what recruiters search. Beyond that you have room to add who you do it for and the result. What you cannot do is leave the title out. Clever without the title makes you invisible.
How long should my LinkedIn About section be?
Three short paragraphs. Only the first two lines show before the See More link, so those two lines carry almost all the weight. Anything past three paragraphs is written for nobody.
Should I write my LinkedIn profile in first or third person?
First person. Third person reads like someone else wrote it about you, which is a strange note to open on when the whole point is sounding like a person somebody would want to call.
Do LinkedIn endorsements matter?
Far less than people think. The skill being listed at all is what makes you findable, because skills are a search field. Whether forty people clicked a button next to it changes very little. Recommendations carry more weight than endorsements, and there are fewer of them for a reason.
How do I explain an employment gap on LinkedIn?
In one short line, plainly. Caregiving, study, redundancy, health, a break. A stated reason closes the question. An unexplained hole leaves a recruiter to guess, and guesses are rarely generous. LinkedIn also has a career break entry type for exactly this.
Should I turn on Open to Work if I have a job?
Use recruiter only mode. It signals availability to recruiters without showing anything to your network or your current employer. The public green frame is a separate setting and a separate decision. Turn the quiet one on first.
How many LinkedIn connections should a job seeker have?
Fewer than you would guess, and the right ones matter more than the number. Two hundred people who know your work will do more than three thousand strangers who accepted a blank request.
Is it worth paying for LinkedIn Premium as a job seeker?
Only after the free parts are done. Premium shows you who viewed you and lets you message people you are not connected to. None of that helps if your headline keeps you out of the search in the first place. Fix the profile, then decide whether you still need it.
Should I put my phone number and email on my LinkedIn profile?
An email is reasonable if you are actively looking, and it belongs in the contact info section rather than pasted across your headline. Your phone number is a judgement call. Anyone who genuinely wants you can message you first.
How often should I update my LinkedIn profile?
Whenever the facts change, and once a year regardless. The trap is only touching it when you need something, which is the moment it is most obvious that you do.
Can a staffing agency help if my LinkedIn profile is weak?
Yes. A recruiter reads your resume and talks to you, so a thin profile does not rule you out with us. It only costs you the opportunities that would have found you on their own. You can apply with Frontline Source Group at any point, and there is never a fee to a candidate.
Want a Recruiter in Your Corner?
Frontline Source Group has been placing people in roles they keep since 2004, backed by a 5-Year Placement Warranty and 32 plus offices nationwide. There is never a fee to a candidate.
Next: read The LinkedIn Job Search Playbook for the 30 Day LinkedIn Plan and what to post. More on the Frontline Source Group blog.
