---
title: Your LinkedIn Is Selling You Short
description: Women list 11% fewer skills on LinkedIn than men in similar jobs. Fix your photo, headline, skills and summary in one evening so recruiters find you.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-14T19:00:00.445Z
updated: 2026-11-14T19:00:00.465Z
canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/your-linkedin-is-selling-you-short
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-6972603.webp
categories: Female leadership, The Corner Office
content_type: Guide
publication: Rich Woman Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

It is Saturday evening, and a former colleague has just sent you a message about a role that sounds made for you. 'Send me your LinkedIn,' she writes, 'and I will pass it on.' You open your profile to copy the link, and you stop. The photo is from a holiday four years ago. The headline still shows a job title from two promotions back. The section about you is empty.

You know what you have done since then: the team you built, the budget you turned round, the client who stayed with you through a difficult year. None of it is on the page. The woman on the screen is smaller than the woman holding the phone, and the recruiter who opens that link will meet her first.

If a move is on your mind for the new year, one evening this weekend is enough to make sure your profile shows recruiters the truth about you.

## The Profile That Sells You Short

You are not alone in underselling yourself online. When LinkedIn analysed the profiles of more than 141 million members in the United States, it found that women listed 11% fewer skills than men in similar jobs with similar experience. Women also wrote shorter summaries. Men, meanwhile, tended to shape their profiles around their most senior roles and often removed their junior jobs altogether.

That gap costs you visibility. Recruiters find candidates by searching for skills, job titles and places, and a profile that leaves out a skill cannot appear in a search for it. Members who list five or more skills receive up to 17 times more profile views than members who list fewer.

Nobody else will add the missing words for you. The modesty that serves you well in a meeting works against you on a page that a recruiter reads in seconds.

## Your Photo, Headline and Location

Start with the three things a recruiter sees before anything else. Profiles with a photo receive up to 21 times more profile views and up to 36 times more messages than profiles without one. Choose a recent picture in which your face fills most of the frame, the light is good and you look the way you look at work. A colleague with a good phone and a plain wall will do.

Rewrite your headline next. It is the line under your name, and it follows you into every search result, comment and message. Your current job title alone gives a recruiter very little. Say what you do, for whom and with what result, in plain words: 'Finance director turning around mid-sized retail businesses' says more than 'Finance director'. Use the words a recruiter would type into a search for your next role, not the internal title your organisation gave you.

Then check your location. Members who list a location receive up to 19 times more profile views, and a recruiter filling a role in Manchester filters by Manchester. If you would move or work remotely, say so in the section about you.

## Skills, Story and Results

Add at least five skills, and add the ones you have been too modest to claim. If you lead a team, list leadership. If you negotiate contracts, list negotiation. If you have built a budget, list financial planning. Each skill is a search term, and every search term you leave out is a search you will never appear in.

Write the section about you in the first person and keep it short. Three paragraphs are enough. The first says what you do and what you are known for. The second gives two or three results with numbers. The third says what you are looking for next. Read it aloud before you save it. If it sounds like a job description, rewrite it until it sounds like you.

Under each role, replace the list of duties with what changed while you were there. 'Responsible for client accounts' gives a recruiter nothing. 'Kept 94% of key clients through a merger and grew the account base by £3 million' shows her why she should call. Your [Friday wins file](https://richwoman.co/article/51-days-to-new-beginnings-friday-wins-file) is the best source for these numbers, and the [three words you chose](https://richwoman.co/article/when-you-leave-the-room) for your reputation should be visible in the way you describe your work.

Finally, ask two people you have worked with this year for a short recommendation. A former manager and a client are a strong pair. Offer to write one for each of them in return, and mention a specific result you would like them to remember.

## Let Recruiters Know Without Telling Your Boss

If you are open to a move, LinkedIn lets you say so without announcing it to your network. In the Open to Work settings, choose 'Recruiters only'. Your profile then appears when recruiters using LinkedIn's hiring tools search for candidates, without the green frame on your photo. LinkedIn takes steps to hide the signal from recruiters at your own company, but it cannot guarantee it, so decide whether you are comfortable with that small risk.

Before you start editing, turn off the setting that alerts your network to profile changes. Otherwise every update you make this evening may appear in your colleagues' feeds.

You may feel uneasy reading your own achievements in bold on a screen. Many women were raised to let their work speak for itself and to see self-promotion as vanity. Your profile is not boasting. It is an accurate record of what you have done, written for a stranger who has a few seconds and a role to fill.

Set aside one evening this weekend. Change the photo, rewrite the headline, add five skills and write three short paragraphs about yourself. Then send the link to the colleague who asked for it.

Think back to the woman on the screen with the old photo and the empty section. When the recruiter opens your link next week, she will meet the woman who built the team, turned round the budget and kept the client. That woman was always there. Now she is on the page.