If the word Professional is in your LinkedIn headline, you need to consider removing it.

If you are a professional singer, dancer, actor, sports figure, OK, you can leave the word in your headline. But if you have any level of notoriety on a professional level, you probably aren’t using LinkedIn to help you advance your products and services.

One of the things that I advise in my LinkedIn workshops and one-on-one coaching is to remove the word professional from your headline. It is a dead give away that you are in job search mode. My thought pattern is this – if you were employed and were using your job title as your headline, does your job title say “National Sales Representative Professional”? If you are currently employed are you no longer a professional at what you do, when you were a professional when you did not have a current position?

Instead I suggest that you employ the keyword tactic. If you want to read more about this, read this article that I published. Using keywords helps you in the search algorithms and doesn’t make you look like you are looking for your next opportunity.

Other words that you should consider removing from your headline, especially if they are the majority of your headline, include:

• Seeking next opportunity
• Targeting XYZ Roles
• Actively “anything”
• Seasoned
• Determined
• Experienced

All of these words are a dead give-away you are in job search mode.

I also recommend that you don’t use them in your summary until, at the very most, if at all, the last sentence.

Participants ask, what do they do about having a current job. Put it in your profile so that your profile gets to All-Star status, but grab and drag it below a job that is in your career field.

Remember that when you do land your next position and update your profile that you don’t lose all the effort you put in to update your headline with keywords.

If you need to work on your profile, give me a call. We can work in-person or via a webinar.