At the senior and C-suite level, your LinkedIn profile is rarely how you get a job — but it is almost always how you get a conversation. Before a recruiter calls you, before a board member replies to an introduction, before an investor agrees to a meeting, they have looked at your profile. The question is what it told them.
Start with the headline. 'CFO at Company X' is a job title, not a value proposition. The strongest executive headlines communicate scope and impact: the size of the businesses you have led, the transformations you have delivered, the markets you know. You have 220 characters — use them to say what you are exceptional at, not just where you sit.
Your About section should read like the opening of a leadership story, not a list of responsibilities. Three short paragraphs: who you are as a leader, the results that define your career, and what you care about next. Write it in the first person. Executives who write about themselves in the third person create distance exactly where they should be building trust.
Finally, be findable. Recruiters search by capability — 'post-merger integration', 'market entry', 'digital transformation', 'P&L'. If the language of your expertise does not appear in your profile, you do not appear in the search. Audit your profile against the roles you want next, not the roles you have already had.
Written by Cejany De Aquino, Independent Executive Recruiter.
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