What Job Seekers Who Get Hired Do Differently on LinkedIn

If you haven't revisited your LinkedIn profile in depth in the last year or two, there's a good chance it's not working as hard for you as it should be. Recruiters are searching for your LinkedIn, filtering by it, and forming first impressions before they ever open your resume. A recent Wall Street Journal piece by Callum Borchers dove into exactly this, profiling real job seekers who made targeted changes to their LinkedIn presence and landed roles because of it. The patterns across their stories are worth paying attention to, as they highlight simple ways to optimize your LinkedIn to get hired.

One candidate in the WSJ article, Kevin Myhan, had a bare-bones profile until a layoff forced him to take his LinkedIn presence seriously. His job coach told him to start posting, so he began posting every weekday. Sometimes it was a reflection on an interview question he’d just been asked, and sometimes it was his reaction to something he’d read. The point of all of the posting wasn’t to go viral, but to stay visible. As a result, a former colleague saw one of his posts, flagged him to a hiring manager at her new company, and he got a conversation started before the job was even publicly posted. That’s the real value of being consistently present and visible. 

Two other candidates in the article made a move that felt counterintuitive at first: they removed things from their profiles. One job seeker stripped out unrelated experience that was confusing LinkedIn’s algorithm and surfacing the wrong opportunities. The other candidate spent weeks rewriting his ‘About’ section to translate nearly two decades at a major tech company into plain language that actually meant something to someone who’d never heard of his internal titles. The takeaway is simple: a profile that tries to show everything often ends up communicating nothing. Clarity wins. 

The candidates who landed roles weren’t simply refreshing their headlines and moving on. One job seeker that was referenced in the WSJ article added 56 skills that he pulled directly from job postings he was targeting, because recruiters filter by skills and not just titles. Another invested in a professional headshot and a polished banner. While these feel like small shifts, we know from the hiring side that they add up to a signal. And a well-put-together profile tells a recruiter that this person is intentional about how they show up. A neglected one, on the other hand, creates doubt in the recruiter before a single conversation happens – regardless of how qualified the individual may be. 

The through-line across every person listed in that article was intentionality. It wasn’t a magic trick or a perfect background, but instead knowing what to emphasize, what to cut, and how to translate their experience into something that resonates with recruiters. You also don’t know what you don’t know; if you’re struggling to see what needs to be changed or how to make the changes, we can help. That translation and expertise is exactly the edge we provide at Top of the Stack. If your LinkedIn profile feels like it’s underselling you or convoluting your narrative, that’s worth looking into. Check out our LinkedIn Revitalization and other services Here to get started today.

Read the full WSJ article, "The LinkedIn Makeovers That Actually Get People Hired," Here.