Episode Notes

On the eightieth entry of Tristan’s Tips, our amazing host Tristan Layfield discusses one of the critical components of your LinkedIn profile and building your professional brand – your LinkedIn headline. Check out the full tip to find out how to create a headline that will catch the eyes of recruiters, hiring managers, or even potential clients!

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TRANSCRIPT
Tristan: What’s going on, Living Corporate? It’s Tristan back again to bring you another career tip. Today, we’re going to discuss one of the critical components of your LinkedIn profile and building your professional brand.

Your LinkedIn headline is one of the most visible portions of your profile. It follows you across the platform from the my network section to even the comments you leave on other people’s posts. So you definitely want to take the time to craft a LinkedIn headline that makes you stand out and is enticing enough to make people want to click through to your profile.

LinkedIn’s default headline is your current job title and company. Leaving it like this is a sure-fire way to ensure that you are overlooked on the platform. LinkedIn does have a character limit for your headline, which used to be 120 characters, but now it seems they’ve raised that limit to 219 characters. So you have plenty of space to build an engaging headline that speaks to your professional abilities.

When I work with my clients, there’s a little formula that I like to use to help build their headlines; it’s called PEAD (P-E-A-D). First is the P, which stands for Position. You want to list your job title, so people know exactly what you do. Next is the E, which stands for Expertise. What’s the thing you do best in your field? What do people always come to you for? You want that to be front and center. Next is the A and the D, they sort of go together, and they stand for Action and Difference. You want to write an action statement that highlights what makes you different or how you make a difference. This is the thing that showcases how you’re different than everyone else doing this work.

When writing each section of the formula, make sure to break them up using a symbol or emoji to make them easier to read, if you’re confused on what that may look like, check out my LinkedIn profile or review the transcript of this episode for an example.

Here’s an example from a recent client I helped who is in education. Her headline used to simply say Teacher at XYZ School, now it says Social Studies Teacher & Educational Consultant | Curriculum Development | Coaching and training teachers on transitioning from theory to practice. As you heard, we touched on each part of the formula position, expertise, action, and difference.

Remember, LinkedIn is about establishing your professional brand, and your profile’s headline is a critical piece in doing that. Now that you have a formula take some time to create a headline that will catch the eyes of recruiters, hiring managers, or even potential clients.

This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @LayfieldResume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn.

Find out more at https://living-corporate.pinecast.co