How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out
- Jun 9
- 3 min read
With over a billion people on LinkedIn, standing out sounds like a tall order. Most of those profiles aren’t actually optimized, though, and are just “filled in”. There's a difference between a profile that exists and one that works, and for senior professionals especially, that gap costs real opportunities every day.
Before any recruiter reads your profile, an algorithm decides whether to surface it at all. Recruiters run strategic searches through the platform to find potential candidates. Most often, they are typing a job title and a couple of skills into LinkedIn Recruiter, applying filters, and getting a ranked list of potential fits. If your profile isn't built to rank on that list, it doesn't matter how impressive your background is. You simply won't show up. So how do you make your LinkedIn profile stand out and show up in recruiter searches?
A few things that consistently make the biggest difference:
Your headline is doing more work than you think. Most people use their current job title as their headline and stop there, and that's a missed opportunity. Your headline is one of the highest-weighted fields in LinkedIn's search algorithm and the first thing anyone reads when they land on your profile. It should go beyond your title to clarify what you do, who you do it for, and ideally hint at the value you bring.
As an example, "VP of Operations" is a job title. "VP of Operations helping scaling companies build the infrastructure to grow without breaking" is a reason to keep reading.
Your About section is your opening argument, not your biography. Most professionals either leave it blank or fill it with a third-person biography nobody asked for. Neither works, and neither moves the needle for you. Your About section is 2,600 characters of prime real estate; use it to make a clear, compelling case for who you are as a professional and the impact you can bring to the table. Write it in first person, make it specific, and don't bury the most interesting thing about you at the bottom.
Skills are how recruiters filter, not just a section to fill in. LinkedIn's AI-powered matching engine now weights skills alignment heavily, and verified skills boost your chances of getting hired by 30%. Go through your skills section with intention. Add the specific tools, disciplines, and areas of expertise that match the roles you're targeting. Pull language directly from job postings you're interested in. This isn't keyword stuffing, it's working with the algorithms in play and maximizing your ability to get noticed.
Sweat the small stuff. On LinkedIn, aesthetics are part of the message. Your profile photo and banner image are the first things someone sees on your profile before they read a single word about you, and they form an impression faster than you’d think. A professional, high-quality headshot makes you 14 times more likely to be found on LinkedIn. The same standard of professionalism should be applied to your banner. Most people leave it as the default provided by LinkedIn, and that’s a missed opportunity. Your banner is free real estate to reinforce your professional brand - whether that’s a clean, simple design, an image relevant to your industry, or something that reflects your personal brand. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it should be intentional.
Here's the honest bottom line: you don’t need to know how to game the system to have a strong LinkedIn profile. Your simple objective is to ensure the platform accurately reflects what you can bring to the table and makes it easy for the right people to find you and understand your value quickly. That translation from career reality to compelling profile is exactly what we help with at Top of the Stack. Learn more about our LinkedIn Optimization service to get started today.
Learn more from professionals we trust:
LinkedIn's Own Guidance: "Create a good LinkedIn profile"
Cognism: "100 Essential LinkedIn Statistics and Facts for 2026"
