Latest / The Marketing Career Podcast with Fexingo: Marketing Jobs, Skills, and Career Growth / How Mid-Career Marketers Use the Career LinkedIn Audit
Transcript
- Lucas: There is a difference between having a LinkedIn profile and using one. And I think a lot of mid-career marketers discover that difference the hard way — usually after they have been laid off and suddenly need to look active. Luna: Right. The panic edit. Suddenly you are rewriting your headline at 11 p.m. on a Thursday. Lucas: Exactly. And what I want to talk about today is a prophylaxis against that panic. It is the career LinkedIn audit — and I mean a structured, quarterly review that takes about an hour, not the daily scroll where you glance at notifications and call it networking. Luna: So you are saying we should treat our profile like a product landing page that gets a quarterly optimization sprint? Lucas: That is exactly the frame. Your profile is a landing page with one conversion goal: get the right recruiter or hiring manager to message you. And like any landing page, it decays. The keywords shift. Your recent work changes. The audience's expectations evolve. Luna: I have definitely had the experience of looking at my own profile six months after I updated it and thinking, 'Who wrote this?' Lucas: Right. And that is the audit trigger. But most people skip the audit because they do not know what to look for. So let me give you a concrete framework. Four sections. One hour total. First section: headline and about. Fifteen minutes. Luna: Headline is interesting because LinkedIn gives you that little tagline real estate right under your name. So many people just list their current job title. Lucas: Which tells me nothing about what they actually do or want to do next. If you are a mid-career marketer, your headline should include three things: the role you want, the industry or vertical you serve, and one measurable outcome you drive. Something like 'B2B Content Marketing Manager — Help SaaS companies generate 40 percent of pipeline from organic.' That is a signal, not a label. Luna: That is so much more specific than 'Marketing Manager at Company X.' And I bet recruiters search on those outcome phrases. Lucas: They absolutely do. LinkedIn search is keyword-driven. If your headline says 'Marketing Manager' and fifty thousand other profiles say the same thing, you are invisible. But if you include 'B2B' and 'pipeline' and 'organic,' you surface for the searches that matter. Luna: Okay, so headline is part one. What is the About section audit? Lucas: The About section is where most people write their autobiography. They start with 'I graduated from...' and then list every job chronologically. That is a resume, not a narrative. The audit fix is what I call the 'so what' test. Every sentence you write, ask yourself: so what? If the answer is just a description of a task, cut it. Luna: So instead of 'Managed email campaigns for a B2B SaaS company,' you write 'Managed email campaigns that generated $2 million in attributed revenue over 12 months.' Lucas: Exactly. Numbers and outcomes. That is the single highest-leverage change you can make. I worked with a senior brand manager — let us call her Sarah — who had a perfectly fine profile. She was getting maybe one recruiter message a month. We did a one-hour audit. Rewrote her headline with her target role and her core metric. Rewrote the About section using the 'so what' test. She did not change her experience section at all. Within six weeks, she was getting three to four recruiter messages a week. Luna: That is a huge lift from just headline and About. What about the rest of the profile? Lucas: The second section in the audit is the Featured section. Fifteen minutes. Most people leave this empty, or they pin a single post from three years ago. The Featured section is prime real estate — it sits right below your About and it is the first thing a recruiter sees when they scroll. You want three to five pieces: a recent case study, a published article or guest post, a link to a portfolio or personal site, maybe a presentation or a recorded talk. Luna: And these should be recent, right? Not something from 2022. Lucas: Within the last 12 to 18 months ideally. If you do not have anything that recent, that is its own signal — it tells you that you need to create something. Write a LinkedIn article about a campaign you ran. Record a three-minute video analyzing a trend in your space. The Featured section is a living portfolio, not an archive. Luna: Okay, so third section? Lucas: Skills and endorsements. Fifteen minutes. This is the part most people ignore because it feels low-stakes. But LinkedIn uses your skills list to match you with job postings and search results. If you have thirty skills, many of them generic — 'teamwork,' 'communication,' 'Microsoft Office' — you dilute your signal. Luna: So you prune them. Lucas: Yes. Audit down to the ten to fifteen skills that are most relevant to your target role. Move the most important ones to the top. And here is a trick: the skills that you get endorsed for most frequently — those get weighted higher in LinkedIn's algorithm. So ask a few trusted colleagues to endorse you for the skills you want to emphasize. It sounds tactical, but it works. Luna: I have definitely noticed that when I add a new skill, I suddenly start seeing job postings that include that skill. The algorithm is paying attention. Lucas: Absolutely. And the fourth section — the last fifteen minutes of the audit — is the experience section. But this is not a rewrite. This is a trim and a polish. Read each bullet point and ask: does this include a number, a result, or a specific tool? If it just says 'responsible for' or 'led,' rephrase to show impact. And remove any bullet that is more than five years old unless it is directly relevant to where you want to go. Luna: It is interesting that you say 'trim' because I think a lot of marketers feel pressure to include everything they have ever done. But a recruiter is scanning, not reading. Lucas: Exactly. They spend an average of seven seconds on a profile before deciding whether to message you. Seven seconds. So every word has to earn its place. If a bullet point does not help a recruiter understand what you can do for them in that first glance, it is noise. Luna: Okay, so you have this four-part audit. Headline and About, Featured, Skills, Experience. One hour total. When do you do it? Lucas: I recommend scheduling it for the last Friday of every quarter. Put it on your calendar as a recurring appointment. Call it 'LinkedIn Q3 Audit' or whatever. The rhythm matters because the platform changes — they add new features, the algorithm shifts, your own career evolves. A quarterly cadence keeps your profile from decaying into a digital resume graveyard. Luna: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. It is a small way to keep these conversations going without any commercials or sponsorships. And we really do appreciate it. Luna: Alright, back to the audit. One thing I want to add: the 'open to work' setting. Should you have it on or off? Lucas: That is a great question. For mid-career marketers who are employed, I recommend using the 'open to work' setting that is visible only to recruiters, not your network. It is under your profile settings. That way you signal interest without broadcasting to your current employer that you are looking. But if you are actively job searching, the green banner can actually increase recruiter outreach by a significant margin. Luna: I think there is a stigma around the green banner for some people. They feel like it looks desperate. Lucas: That stigma is fading fast. Recruiters themselves say the green banner tells them you are ready to have a conversation. It saves them the cold outreach dance. And for a marketer who is between roles, it is a clear signal of availability. I would not overthink it. Luna: So the audit includes checking that setting too. Make sure it reflects your current job search status. Lucas: Exactly. And while you are in settings, check your contact info. Is your email up to date? Is your personal website link working? You would be surprised how many people have a broken link or an old email address. That is a five-second fix that can cost you an opportunity if it is wrong. Luna: Okay, so the full audit checklist: headline and About, Featured, skills, experience, open to work setting, contact info. One hour, quarterly. Lucas: That is the framework. And the return on that one hour is hard to measure precisely, but Sarah's experience — three to four recruiter messages a week instead of one a month — is not unusual. The key is doing it consistently. One audit will help. Four audits a year will transform how recruiters see you. Luna: I think the hardest part is getting started. So if someone is listening right now and they have not looked at their profile in six months, what is the one thing they should do tonight? Lucas: Rewrite your headline. It takes five minutes and it has the biggest immediate impact. Use the formula: role you want, industry you serve, one measurable outcome. Change it tonight. See what happens over the next two weeks. Then do the full audit next quarter. Luna: Good advice. I am going to do mine this weekend. Lucas: Let us know how it goes. And if you have a career audit story of your own, we would love to hear it.