LinkedIn Profile Refresh

Recruiters don't read LinkedIn profiles — they SEARCH them. LinkedIn Recruiter filters on title keywords, skills, and years; your profile either matches the queries run for the jobs you want or it doesn't exist. Meanwhile the profile most people have is a resume graveyard: title-only headline ("Senior Manager"), About section written in third person in 2019, and bullets that list duties instead of outcomes.

This skill is a section-by-section rebuild with the mechanics in mind:

1. Audit — score each section against what recruiter search and the 6-second human skim actually reward
2. Rewrite — headline formula (role + scope + domain keywords), About structure (hook line, proof paragraph, skills paragraph, CTA), bullet converter (duty → outcome + metric + tool)
3. Stealth sequencing — refresh WITHOUT broadcasting "job seeker" to your current employer (settings order matters; the wrong toggle pair announces you)
4. Scripts — connection requests that don't get ignored, recruiter-response templates, follow-up cadence

When to Use

• Actively job hunting (refresh BEFORE applying — recruiters cross-check every application against the profile)
• Quietly open to opportunities while employed (the stealth sequence is the whole point)
• After a promotion/role change (the "employed but stale" profile costs interviews silently)
• Career pivot (re-weighting keywords toward the TARGET role so you appear in ITS searches, not your old one's)
• Returning from a gap (About section framing + experience sequencing)
• Layoff (public story line, #OpenToWork settings decision — with the employer-visibility tradeoff spelled out)

Don't use for: resume writing (different format, different truncation rules — though the bullet converter helps both), or content-creator LinkedIn strategy (posting cadence is a different skill; this is profile-as-search-target).

The Mechanics (why each section matters)

• Headline (220 chars): indexes for recruiter title search. "Senior Manager" matches nothing useful; "Senior Product Manager | B2B SaaS | Platform & API Strategy | Team of 8 | Series A-D" matches "product manager" + "SaaS" + "platform." Current title keywords first, then domain, then scope proof.
• About (2,600 chars): first 3 lines show before "see more" — the hook lives there. Keywords index here too. Structure: hook (what you do + for whom + the number), proof (2-3 outcome sentences), skills paragraph (natural-language keyword load), CTA (what you want next).
• Experience bullets: outcome > activity. Formula: [Action verb] + [what] + [metric: %, $, time, scale] + [tool/method]. Convert "Responsible for reporting" → "Built automated weekly reporting (SQL + Looker) cutting prep time 6 h/week for a 12-person team."
• Skills (top 50): order matters — top 3 pin to your headline keywords. Recruiter filters run on exact skill tokens; if "SQL" is buried at #47, the filter never sees it.
• Custom URL + photo + banner: hygiene, 5 minutes, affects profile credibility scores recruiters admit to using.

The Stealth Refresh Sequence

If employed, do IN THIS ORDER:

1. Toggle "Open to work" ON with "Recruiters only" — never the green banner if stealth matters (LinkedIn shares recruiter-only signals with recruiters using LinkedIn Recruiter — which can include YOUR company's recruiters; accept that residual risk or skip)
2. Turn OFF "Notify network about profile changes" (Settings → Visibility) BEFORE editing anything
3. Make edits spread over 3-5 days, not one hour (activity bursts surface in feeds even with notifications off)
4. Do NOT follow a burst of company pages / like job posts — the algorithmic tell is real
5. Update photo/banner quietly — network still sees profile visits to your refreshed page, which is fine

Bullet Converter (duty → outcome)

Run your current bullets through scripts/profile_refresh.py bullets — it detects duty-language patterns ("responsible for", "worked on", "helped with", "managed the") and emits a rewrite scaffold: [verb] [what] [SCALE?] [TOOL?] [RESULT?]. You fill the bracketed metrics — the script can't invent your numbers, and invented numbers torpedo interviews.

Pitfalls

1. The #OpenToWork green ring while employed. Visible to EVERYONE including colleagues. Recruiter-only mode exists precisely for this; the banner is for unemployed search.
2. Keyword stuffing. Algorithms rank, humans skim. A headline that's 15 comma-separated terms reads as spam to the 6-second human pass. 5-7 load-bearing terms max.
3. Third-person About. "Jane is a results-driven..." — nobody writes about themselves that way; write first person, drop "results-driven" (show the result instead).
4. Bullets with no numbers. Every bullet needs at least ONE of: %, $, count, time-saved, team-size. No data? Use scale ("across 4 markets", "for 40+ clients").
5. Old title keywords when pivoting. Your last title indexes hardest. If pivoting, headline = target role (truthfully framed: "Product Manager (transitioning from Data Analytics)").
6. Endorsement theatre. Collecting 99 endorsements for skill #40 does nothing; 3-5 endorsements on your TOP skills from colleagues who saw the work is what reads as signal.
7. One-and-done. Re-audit quarterly; skills tokens and recruiter search terms drift.

Verification Checklist

• Headline: role keywords + domain + scope, ≤220 chars
• About: hook in first 3 lines, proof with numbers, keyword paragraph, CTA
• Every experience bullet has a metric or scale marker
• Skills reordered: top 3 = headline keywords
• Stealth sequence executed in ORDER (settings before edits, recruiter-only, spread over days)
• Custom URL set, recent photo, non-default banner

Quick Recipe

python3 scripts/profile_refresh.py audit --headline "Senior Manager" \
    --about-first "I am a results-driven professional..." \
    --bullets-file bullets.txt
python3 scripts/profile_refresh.py rewrite-headline \
    --role "Product Manager" --domain "B2B SaaS" \
    --keywords "platform,API,strategy" --scope "team of 8"
python3 scripts/profile_refresh.py bullets --file bullets.txt
python3 scripts/profile_refresh.py scripts-list