{"title":"Experience and Featured","description":null,"content":"Many people copy their resume bullets into LinkedIn's Experience section and stop there. That is understandable, but LinkedIn can do more than repeat your resume.\n\nYour resume has to be short. LinkedIn gives you more room to explain the work, add useful links, and show a few public examples near the top of your profile. You do not need to write a long story for every job. You just need enough context for a recruiter or hiring manager to understand what you worked on and why it mattered.\n\n---\n\n# Where LinkedIn Goes Beyond the Resume\n\nA resume is limited by space. LinkedIn is more flexible. On a resume, you may remove a useful detail because there is no room. On LinkedIn, you can keep the strongest points and add a short explanation of the team, product, project, or technical environment.\n\nThe writing should still be clear and specific. Lead with useful results, name the technologies when they matter, and include numbers when they are accurate. LinkedIn should feel like a clearer version of your resume, not a copied-and-pasted version.\n\nThe Featured section sits near the top of your profile. It lets you pin items such as a GitHub repo, portfolio, case study, article, demo, talk, certification, or useful post. It is not required, and you should not fill it just to fill it. But if you have public work that supports your target role, Featured makes it easier for someone to find.\n\n---\n\n# Building Experience Entries and the Featured Section\n\n### Add context, not length\n\nKeep the strongest bullets from your resume, then add a small amount of context your resume may not have room for. Mention the team, product, scope, users, or technical environment when it helps the reader understand the work.\n\nOne or two sentences before the bullets is usually enough. Do not turn each role into a long essay.\n\n### Attach media to roles and projects\n\nLinkedIn lets you add links, images, documents, and videos to experience entries. Use this only when the item adds real context: a public project link, portfolio page, demo, article, slide deck, or approved screenshot.\n\nBe careful here. Do not upload confidential work, internal dashboards, private documents, customer data, private repos, or anything that would make a past employer or client uncomfortable.\n\n### Keep useful numbers\n\nThe metrics you wrote for your resume can work here too. \"Reduced API latency 40%,\" \"served 1M daily requests,\" and \"reduced incidents 30%\" are clear on LinkedIn as well.\n\nDo not make the work vague just because LinkedIn feels less formal. If you have accurate numbers, keep them. If you do not, explain the scope in plain language.\n\n### Fill Featured with your best public work\n\nIf you have public work that reflects your ability, pin two to five items that support the roles you want. Good Featured items can include a solid GitHub repo, portfolio site, case study, demo, technical article, talk, or respected certification.\n\nQuality matters more than quantity. Two useful items are better than five weak ones.\n\n### Order Featured items by impact\n\nThe first item usually gets the most attention, so lead with the strongest evidence. If your best signal is a project people can inspect, put that before a certificate. If you are early in your career and a certification is your strongest signal for now, it is fine to lead with it until you have stronger work to show.\n\n### Include non-traditional experience\n\nLinkedIn has room for experience that may not fit on a one-page resume: freelance work, teaching, mentoring, volunteering, student leadership, community work, or substantial side projects.\n\nInclude this work when it is relevant to the roles you want. Describe it the same way you would describe a job: what you did, who it helped, what tools you used, and what changed.\n\n### Keep media current\n\nA broken Featured link or outdated project page creates friction for the reader. Check your links every few months, the same way you check resume links. Remove anything that no longer represents your work well.\n\nHere is how Featured helps a viewer find evidence faster.\n\n\n```mermaid\nflowchart LR\n A[Profile viewer]:::viewer --> B{Featured
section filled?}:::q\n B -->|Empty| C[Has to search
the profile for
evidence]:::no\n B -->|Useful items| D[Sees project,
portfolio, or demo
quickly]:::yes\n\n classDef viewer fill:#00ceff,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef q fill:#ffd43b,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef no fill:#ff8787,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef yes fill:#69db7c,stroke:#000,color:#000\n```\n\n\nFeatured saves the reader a little work. That matters because recruiters and hiring managers often scan quickly before deciding whether to read more.\n\n---\n\n# Experience and Featured Before and After\n\nA LinkedIn experience entry that only repeats a thin resume version misses the chance to add useful context. Here is a weak version, followed by a stronger one.\n\n**Bad:**\n\n\n```javascript\nSoftware Engineer, FintechCo\n- Worked on the payments team\n- Improved system performance\n- Used Go and Kafka\n```\n\n\n**Better:**\n\n\n```javascript\nSoftware Engineer, FintechCo (2023 - Present)\nWorked on the payments platform team, focused on settlement reliability and\npayment retries.\n\n- Helped replace a nightly settlement batch with a Kafka-based pipeline,\n reducing delays for finance and support teams.\n- Improved failed-payment handling by adding idempotency checks and safer\n retry logic.\n\nStack: Go, Kafka, PostgreSQL, AWS.\n[Attached: public engineering blog post]\n```\n\n\n**Why the better version works:** The first version is too vague to help a recruiter understand the work. The stronger version explains the team, gives clearer examples, names the stack, and includes a relevant public link someone can open if they want more detail.\n\nNow compare an empty Featured section with a small, useful one.\n\n**Bad:**\n\n\n```javascript\nFeatured: (empty)\n```\n\n\n**Better:**\n\n\n```javascript\nFeatured:\n1. github.com/marcus/ratelimiter - open source rate limiter\n2. \"Lessons from rebuilding a payment retry flow\" - engineering blog post\n3. Portfolio: backend projects with short writeups and demos\n```\n\n\n**Why the better version works:** The improved version leads with inspectable work, then adds writing and a portfolio. It gives a recruiter or hiring manager a few useful ways to understand the candidate's work without searching through the full profile.\n\n---\n\n# Pitfalls in Experience and Featured\n\nThe added room these sections give you only helps if you avoid the habits below, which mostly come from treating LinkedIn as a place to dump the resume rather than expand on it.\n\n- **Copying the resume word for word.** LinkedIn gives you room for a little more context. Use it, but keep each role easy to scan.\n- **Removing useful numbers.** The format may feel less formal, but clear metrics still help. Keep accurate impact numbers where you have them.\n- **Leaving Featured empty when you have good work.** If you have a strong project, article, portfolio, demo, or certification, make it easy to find.\n- **Featuring weak items.** A random certificate or unfinished demo can weaken the section. Pin only items that support the role you want.\n- **Sharing work you should not share.** Do not post confidential screenshots, private repos, client documents, customer data, or internal company material.\n- **Ignoring relevant non-traditional experience.** Mentorship, volunteering, freelance work, and serious side projects can show useful skills when framed clearly.\n- **Letting media go stale.** Broken links and outdated project pages create a poor impression. Check and refresh them.","pageType":"job-search"}

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