I’m Not Updating My Job on LinkedIn

Most employment laws around the world these days allows for a six month probation period. When you update your LinkedIn profile, you don’t know if you’ll still be at the company in six months. For all you know, you will part ways with your employer.

Updating your LinkedIn profile means that if you fail, it’s going to come up in your career history on LinkedIn.

Your LinkedIn profile tells someone a lot about you. For me, I don’t want to confuse people by trying to be too many things to too many people.

I have chosen (for now) to make my LinkedIn profile about my writing career only and not have any connection to my day job. This allows people to discover the writer Tim and not the sales version of Tim that you see during business hours.

When you tag a company as your employer, from that day forth, everything you say and do on LinkedIn can be curated by that company.

If you say something that you really believe in and the company you work for see it, they can legitimately ask you to take it down — which is fair enough.

LinkedIn used to be a resume platform and that has changed a lot. The days of people clicking your profile to see your online resume are long gone. Your profile is still looked at, but just not as much as you think.

People are spending more time on LinkedIn looking at what content you post, the comments you leave, and what posts you hit the like button on.

If you’re updating your LinkedIn profile like your career depends on it, it doesn’t matter — not anymore, anyway.

In some areas of my life, I like to be private (you might be the same).

The career situation this year has been a tough one for me and having my LinkedIn profile updated can cause people to treat my circumstances like a reality TV show waiting for the next episode.

It’s nice to know that not everyone knows what I’m up to in my career.

Now that my LinkedIn profile is solely focused on my writing career, it makes the clients I deal with curious.

When they look me up on LinkedIn, they see a different person to one they interact with. There’s this whole other side that they get to discover and so far, this has brought me closer with clients.

Using your LinkedIn profile to promote your hobby or side-hustle can help your clients see a different side of you that, in my case, has been really good for business.