Disclaimer: part of my side job is to help sales people figure out how to use LinkedIn. I've been doing so for the past 8 years, and I started doing with my teams first. To be very honest, they figured it out before I did and I learned from them. I just got obsessed with it later on and figured out how to make money with it :)
That being said, one of the things I crashed into first was also the "weirdest / most challenging / it can get personal" part of a LinkedIn profile, and that's the headline. You know, LinkedIn used to (it still does it you allow it to) populate that with your current job position, so if your current job says "Account Manager", that's what it'll say. You can thankfully change it now.
The way I think of Headlines is that it is the first space where you can actually pitch (other than you background image) something. So, if you could pitch something to someone (the ol' elevator pitch thing), would you actually start with: "John Doe, Account Executive", or would you rather well, pitch?
So I created this matrix that has 2 axises: vertical for clarity, meaning how clearly does the text in your headline describe what you can do for your customer, NOT what your paycheck says, and horizontal for creativity, meaning how original / creative do you get when pitching.
You will also notice a line called "Threshold of credibility", which is basically the limit between a great headline and BS. Let me put this it way: "Helping customers achieve their financial goals" is good. Maybe not great, but good. "Saving customers from wasting money while realizing they can live better by eating, praying and loving" is just plain BS. I'm sure you can think of a few people that do that in their profiles...
What you see below is an example I used on a training I gave to a bunch of sales people selling in the HR / Sourcing / Recruiting space.
Tell me what you think, I can always use the feedback! And more importantly, where do you think your profile headline fits? There's a poll too, go ahead and vote!
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