How to Successfully Write About Your Career Experience
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The document provides tips for writing an effective LinkedIn summary that highlights your career achievements and values in a clear, authentic, and story-driven way. It emphasizes focusing on one key achievement to frame in a story format that shows how you overcame obstacles. Examples are given of strong topic sentences and structuring techniques to help the reader understand your experience, strengths, and what makes you distinctive.
How to Successfully Write About Your Career Experience
- 1. How to Successfully Write About Your Career Experience Or How Not to Look Like an As$hat on Linkedin @lanegenee
- 2. Good Copy Checklist ➔ Clear ➔ Authentic ➔ Story ➔ Voice
- 3. What about all the other stuff? It doesn’t matter.
- 4. CLEAR If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
- 5. TIPS Front load your copy (headlines first paragraphs most important) Organize your copy Use the active voice (It is believed to believes) Reduce wordy verbs (are suggestive to suggests) Use expletive constructions ("It is," "There is," "There are") sparingly Try to avoid using vague, all-purpose nouns (Consumer demand is rising in the area of services. To Consumers are demanding more services.) Eliminate unnecessary prepositional phrases
- 6. AUTHENTIC This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any (wo)man.
- 7. AUTHENTIC COPY TIPS Before you start a first draft do a braindump of ideas Write the first draft as if you were talking to your BFF Use the same words that you do in your everyday life Show your sense of humor. Or don’t. Use a pen and paper :) Read Bird by Bird
- 8. STORY A story can go where quantitative analysis is denied admission: our hearts. Data can persuade people, but it doesn’t inspire them to act; to do that, you need to wrap your vision in a story that fires the imagination and stirs the soul.
- 9. TIPS Make sure your story has a conflict or obstacle You, not KPIs, are the focus of the story Make the specific universal Make the reader ask: Then what? And don’t worry about a neat ending
- 10. VOICE Voice is the purposeful, consistent expression of you through words and prose styles that engage and motivate. It's true: Your voice is determined, in large measure, by the words you use and the sentences you write.
- 11. TIPS Always keep your audience in mind Get personal Focus on your goal Avoid imitation Go far and rein back in Try writing using someone else’s voice
- 12. Wait. There are some rules you should follow.
- 13. NEVER DO THESE THINGS Use the words: ninja, rockstar, or hardcore Use anything close to “world’s best” or “best in the world” (superlatives) Write for everyone Copy someone Use vague language
- 14. What to cover in your Linkedin Summary
- 15. Reading Exercise Read the beginning of this LinkedIn summary. “The achievement I'm most proud of didn’t start with a business plan. It started in a dumpster. Twenty years ago, I adopted an abandoned, crumbling brick row-home with a group of friends at Habitat for Humanity in Philadelphia. It was a blighted neighborhood, seemingly beyond hope. We collaborated with the community, working relentlessly to take the neighborhood back, block-by-block and house-by-house.”
- 16. Freewriting Exercise Get a pen, paper and timer. Take 10 minutes to answer the questions below. Put the pen to paper and don’t lift it up. If you complete the last question keep writing for the whole 10 minutes. 1) Career achievement you’re most proud of (victories) 2) Best work habit (values) 3) The highest praise your boss has ever given you (validation) 4) Why your coworkers want to sit next to you (verve) 5) Something about yourself you view as a weakness, or something that has impeded your career (the conflict or obstacle of your story) 6) How you overcame that obstacle (valiant superpower)
- 17. Structuring Exercise Take your answer to question 1) and format to match: The achievement I am most proud of is not ______________. It is _______________. OR It could have started ______________. But it started with ___________________. OR The achievement I am most proud of didn’t start ______________. It started__________. Use this as your topic (first) sentence. Example: The achievement I am most proud of didn’t start at a tech startup. It started in Georgia politics.
- 18. Structuring Exercise The next paragraph should use your answers for questions 6) and 7) to give color to your first sentence. Example: The achievement I am most proud of didn’t start at a tech startup. It started in Georgia politics. My first marketing role was as a communications manager for a dark horse judicial candidate. Our opponent out spent us, had political savvy friends all over the state, and employed a well-known PR and Communications firms to run his marketing efforts. What he didn’t have was a driven, data-lovin’ storytelling marketer who believed in her candidate. Weakness: Weakness: lack of pedigree lack of pedigree Superpower
- 19. Structuring Exercise The Fun part! Use the rest of your Freewriting exercise to come up with the the next supporting paragraphs. Don’t exceed 225 words. The achievement I am most proud of didn’t start at a tech startup. It started in Georgia politics. My first marketing role was as a communications manager for a dark horse judicial candidate. Our opponent out spent us, had political savvy friends all over the state, and employed a well-known PR and Communications firms to run his marketing efforts. What he didn’t have was a driven, data-lovin’ storytelling marketer who believed in her candidate. While my current role as Marketing Director of CB Insights has taken me far from judicial campaigns, the skills I learned that summer are still used daily. I’m fortunate to lead a crack team at CB Insights that focuses on PR, demand generation, branding, and growth. Our team uses a multi-channel approach to generate high value leads for our business development team...