When I open someone's profile to suss them out I go from the top of the page down, and there are three things I'm checking before I read a single word of their experience.
Have you got a profile picture? I've got a proper headshot now but I didn't for years and it never stopped me. It just needs to be you, recognisable, and not the grey avatar silhouette, cos a profile with no photo reads as abandoned.
Have you got a cover image? That's the banner sitting behind your photo. Most clinicians have never touched it so it's still the default blue, and it's the easiest thing on this whole list to fix. And can help show more about you.
Does your headline tell me what you do? This is the line under your name and it's the one that matters most, cos it follows you everywhere, every comment you leave, every search result you turn up in, every connect request you send. Most of us have it set to our job title or nothing at all.
Mine currently says "Founder - Sacked Mate 🐻 | Marketing generalist 🌀 | Sensible adventurer 🛶 🥾 🏕️", which tells you what I'm building and what I'm good at, plus the fact I'd rather be outside. Go have a look, it's the fastest way to see what I mean.
Three other profiles worth a look to draw inspo from, and they're each doing something different with it:
Dr Amandeep Hansra has "GP | Digital Health | Entrepreneur | Company Director". She's kept the clinical credential and put where she's headed right next to it, which is the closest of the three to where most of you are sitting.
Milly Tamati finishes hers with "Built a 150K-person movement from a Scottish island with 191 people", which is the same move as the CV line with the data in it, just squeezed into a headline.
Dickie Currer-Ganguli opens with "Building and Connecting Startup ecosystems across Asia-Pacific" instead of a job title, so you know what he actually does before you know what his job title is.
Next up is your posts/comments which tells me what you care about and more of your personality. As a physio I don't think I ever posted so don't sweat that too much just yet.
And finally it's your experience section, and this is where the CV post actually pays off. Remember that CV line I asked you to write a second version of? The one that had the data in it? That version goes on your LinkedIn too, the 63% to 93% one rather than the working party one.
Most people write their LinkedIn experience like a job description, which is the thing your employer wrote about the role before you ever did it. What you want in there is what changed cos you were the one doing it.
So don't rewrite anything yet. Just go and look. Open your own profile on a laptop if you can, and look at the top third of it the way a stranger would, photo and banner and headline, and see whether any of it tells them who you are and what you're moving towards.
Then have a look at mine and connect if we're not already.
This first went out to Post-MDT subscribers on 6 September 2026. You can read the original edition in the archive, or get the next one in your inbox.