Can you guess the first thing I do when a woman gets in touch because she wants help to get ‘unstuck’ in her career? As a LinkedIn evangelist, yep, you guessed it, I check out her LinkedIn profile.
After coaching more than 400 women through my 10 Day LinkedIn Kickstart, I’ve noticed that ambitious women often make 3 silly mistakes on LinkedIn. The good news is that these mistakes are simple to avoid.
We keep hearing that women need ‘more confidence’ to get on at work; to get promoted; to get the right opportunities. And yet many of the ambitious women I meet at networking events, on LinkedIn Challenge or at my City Conversations events, well quite honestly they have bags of talent and loads of confidence.
However what I have learned (lived experience and research), is that women and men ‘tend’ to behave and communicate in different ways. The office workplace has ‘grown up’ to suit (and value) the male preferences for behaviour and communication. This means that female tendencies are not viewed and valued in the same way.
For example, our tendency for a more collaborative style is often perceived as a lack of confidence. Our ability to see the ‘big picture’ tendency frustrates others because we want to understand the interdependencies rather than just jump straight in. We want to be ‘liked’ and sometimes that means we overplay the team effort and underplay our own contribution. Again often viewed as a lack of self-belief or confidence in our own abilities.
As Inge Woudstra points out in her Gender Smart book, men compete on being the fastest, the biggest, the best …. whereas women
“compete on a mental level. They compete on ‘being nice’”.
As women progress in their careers, there are fewer female role models. When you look around and compare women to their (male) peers, often it’s felt that women don’t come off as well (because we are different but we’re not valuing those differences) or women find ourselves adopting a leadership style that is not playing to their strengths and or feels inauthentic.
Deborah Tannen explores the differences in how we communicate in Talking 9 to 5
“women often find themselves in a double bind. If they talk in ways expected of women, they are liked but underestimated. If they talk in ways expected of men in the same position, they are seen as too aggressive.”
It’s not that one style of behaviour and communication is right and one is wrong. Just different. It’s high time that we all started to value those differences.
Given these differences in the way that women and men behave and communicate, let’s look at three silly mistakes that ambitious women make on LinkedIn.
And by the way, these mistakes are backed up by the results of the analysis that LinkedIn conducted on 141 million profiles. Admittedly on U.S. members however I’d be surprised if the results didn’t translate to UK members too.
Three silly mistakes and how to avoid them on LinkedIn
1. You don’t ‘big yourself’ up enough
Bearing in mind what I told you about how men compete (biggest, strongest, smartest), you won’t be surprised to discover that women are not bigging themselves up in the same way as men do.
For example, women are more likely to have shorter profile summaries. Your profile summary, after your photo and headline, is one of THE most important sections on your LinkedIn profile.
Your profile summary is your golden opportunity to showcase your expertise. No-one else will do this for you. It is important that you tell your story and highlight your achievements. It’s not about boasting or bragging. You simply need to demonstrate and describe why YOU are the person that potential employer or client is looking for.
Women often have MUCH shorter profile summaries (the limit is 2000 characters). This a very clear indicator that you don’t ‘big yourself’ up enough.
Not sure what to include on your profile summary? Focus on what you can offer a new employer or client.
Be specific and quantify your achievements. Don’t just talk about taking responsibility for the hardware budget – be specific about the size of the budget.
Don’t just talk about increased engagement – specify the percentage increase.
Don’t be afraid to name drop significant previous employers. Yes, they’ll show up in your experience but only if the reader is curious enough to read further.
By the way, we spend lots of time on your profile summary with even more top tips in my free 10 Day LinkedIn Kickstart on Days 4, 6 and 7.
2. You include too much detail about your junior roles
LinkedIn discovered that “men tend to skew their professional brands to highlight more senior-level experience, often removing junior-level roles altogether” whereas what I notice in the women I often work with, is that every single role in your career, no matter how junior or insignificant, has been included.
Quite honestly if you spent 3 years working as a secretary more than 15 or 20 years ago, how relevant is that to your current work experience and to the opportunities you are now seeking?
You don’t need to include every single job you have ever had AND you don’t need to include the same amount of detail on the more junior roles and you include for your more recent and more senior roles.
Focus on the roles that showcase the skills, talents and leadership that you want to use today and next year.
Not only that, it is OK to change the job titles. Language changes. For example, 20 years ago, organisations had Personnel Managers. Then the trend moved to HR Managers and today more and more, I see the term HR Business Partner.
When I worked in IT at Arthur Andersen, one of my job titles was “Divisional Account Coordinator”. When a potential employer sees that on my LinkedIn profile, do you think she’s going to know what that means? NO of course not.
Nobody outside of Arthur Andersen (and quite frankly nobody outside my department) understood that the Divisional Account Coordinator was effectively an Internal Account Manager. In today’s parlance, we’d use Service Delivery Team Lead. And guess what, that’s the phrase I use on my LinkedIn profile because that’s what makes most sense to potential employers.
3. You don’t have enough skills
I don’t mean literally “you don’t have enough skills” but you are not talking about your skills. You are not listing your skills on your LinkedIn profile (again we spend a good amount of time on this on Days 6 and 8). You are not showcasing why a potential employer, recruiter or client should talk to you.
This comes back to being somewhat reticent and ‘polite’ about how good you are. Women don’t want to be seen as bragging or boasting about their skills and talents, because we compete on being ‘nice’. And being nice means not bragging.
However take note of this. The profiles of LinkedIn members with five or more skills are 17x more likely to be viewed. 17x. That’s HUGE!
The LinkedIn research tells us that “women on average include 11% less skills than men on their LinkedIn profile, even at similar occupations and experience levels”.
In my quick “let’s check if this correlates with my experience”, I found that the male Heads of IT / IT Directors (in law firms) had an average of 30 skills whereas the females in similar roles (still in legal IT), listed an average of 18 skills. WOW! I was really surprised at that significant difference (I checked out 15 profiles in total).
The message here is clear. Add more skills to your LinkedIn profile.
Not sure what skills to include? Look at your job description. Look at the job description for the next step on the career ladder. Look at job advertisements. Look at your profile summary and your previous experience. Talk to a friend and work together to boost your profiles. I’ve got more top tips for you on this on The Confident Mother website.
There is loads more I can share with you but if you stop making these three silly mistakes on LinkedIn (and they’re easy to fix, right), you will soon start to make a much bigger impact so that you attract more of the right opportunities:
1. You don’t ‘big yourself’ up enough
2. You include too much detail about your junior roles
3. You don’t have enough skills
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