Lessons learned on linkedin profiles and resumes

2025-03-01

Lessons Learned on LinkedIn Profiles and Resumes

When it comes to building a career in tech, your LinkedIn profile and resume are your storefronts. They’re often the very first impressions you’ll make—on algorithms, recruiters, and hiring managers. After spending years refining both, and after plenty of trial and error, I’ve learned some lessons worth sharing.

LinkedIn: Playing the Algorithm and Adding Real Value

The logic of LinkedIn is simple: keywords and activity. Recruiters rely heavily on search, and LinkedIn’s algorithm decides who rises to the top. That means if you want to show up, your profile has to be optimized for those searches.

Headline

Your headline is prime real estate. Keep it short and loaded with recruiter-friendly keywords: Full Stack Developer, AWS Migration Specialist, Cost Optimization, SRE at Scale. These are the kinds of terms that align with what recruiters type into search bars.

About Section

Think of the “About” section as a hybrid between a resume summary and a keyword bank. It should tell your story in a compelling way while weaving in technical skills. LinkedIn’s search algorithm does consider keywords in this section, so use it to reinforce your skills and areas of expertise.

Activity

Profiles that look abandoned can hurt you. Posting even once a month is enough to show you’re engaged—share a blog post, a certification you earned, or progress on a personal project. Consistency is more important than volume here.

Experience

Your experience section should mirror your resume, ideally written using the “three this’s” rule: I did this, with this, and the outcome was this.
For example:

Implemented an AWS Lambda pipeline with Terraform, reducing build times by 30%.

Clarity and measurable outcomes stand out.

Licenses and Certifications

This one requires some judgment. Strong certifications (AWS, Kubernetes, etc.) add credibility. But fluff certs—especially those without exams or with little industry recognition—can drag your profile down.

If fewer than ~100 jobs list the certification by name, it may not be worth featuring. Also, if you already have a computer science degree, don’t dilute it by emphasizing a bootcamp unless the bootcamp adds a truly unique angle.

Skills

Endorsements matter. LinkedIn ranks candidates higher when skills are endorsed by peers. Don’t hesitate to ask colleagues to endorse you, and return the favor.

One underrated trick: use LinkedIn Premium’s “Am I a good fit?” tool on jobs you like. It highlights missing skills, which often reminds you of skills you already have but forgot to list.

Other Sections

Keep everything updated. LinkedIn has a built-in resume builder under Resources → Download as PDF. It’s worth checking once in a while to ensure your profile still tells the story you want. Its also a good way to have AI give you some competition. here are 10 candidates pick a person for the position. If your resume isnt chosen refine it till you are.

Connections

Be generous with connections. Recruiters move jobs frequently, and the one who contacts you today from a small company might be at a FAANG a year later.

For engineers, I like to follow people whose work I admire before sending a personalized connection request—something simple like:

“I’ve been following your work on Kubernetes scaling, and I’d love to connect.”

Recruiters

If a recruiter reaches out, don’t just accept the message or say “not interested.” Engage them. Ask questions:

Recruiters want to place candidates as much as you want to land a role, and they often provide insights you can’t get anywhere else.

Resumes: Writing for Three Audiences

A resume doesn’t have just one client—it has three.

  1. The Algorithm (ATS).
    Applicant Tracking Systems decide if your resume even makes it to a recruiter. They scan for keywords, not just technical terms like Python or Kubernetes, but also contextual ones like migration, distributed systems, or incident response.

  2. The Recruiter.
    Recruiters skim for relevance. If your resume says “.NET developer” but the last time you used it was a decade ago, they may rule you out. They’re also watching for red flags—like too much job hopping, or vague project descriptions that read like AI fluff.

  3. The Hiring Manager.
    Team leaders read more carefully. They want impact and clarity. The three-this’s rule works perfectly here: I did this, with this, and the outcome was this.

    Example:

    Built an endpoint in .NET to capture customer preferences in PostgreSQL, now serving 1,000+ daily requests and storing 10k entries in production.

A pro tip: if you’re using AI to optimize your resume, don’t just ask it to “make it better.” Instead, prompt it as each of these audiences. For example:

“You are an ATS. Rate my resume for the keyword ‘cloud migration.’”

This forces the AI to check for specific strengths and weaknesses.

Formatting Your Resume

I like to think of resumes as lines of value. Each line should communicate something meaningful about you. If a project takes two lines, it should deliver twice the value.

Suggested Sections

Nuggets

These are personal, unique details that might only resonate with 5% of people—but when they do, they can spark conversation.

For me, it’s listing Neovim (with a few supporting skills only true NVim users would recognize) and LaTeX (the formatting language I use to write my resume). These stand out to the right people.

Section Order

A lot of advice says to start with projects. They’re right that projects are the most important, but I think it’s better to place them last. Why? Because the hiring manager will scroll straight to them anyway, and on the way, they’ll pass your education, skills, certs, and awards. That ensures nothing else is skipped.

For entry-level candidates, the order should be:

Education → Skills → Awards → Certifications → Experience → Personal Projects