How to Position Your LinkedIn Profile to Beat Age Bias and Brand Your Next Chapter

GGGR 357

SPEAKERS

Karen Yankovich

00:00

Karen, hello, hello, and welcome to the good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich,

and you know, there’s a moment that happens for women in midlife, when they open LinkedIn to

update their profile and suddenly it just feels heavier than it should. And it’s not because you aren’t

amazing and you don’t have the experience, and it’s it’s because you have so much experience,

right? Like you scroll through decades of roles, right, graduation dates in the 80s and 90s, maybe

even the 70s, right? And you wonder if your photo looks tired. You’re wondering if you’re like, kind of

still relevant. And you know, we’re not here to pretend that age bias doesn’t exist. I know that it does,

but we’re we’re also not going to let it dictate our positioning, because what we have is decades of

experience and expertise, and there’s no, there’s no there’s nothing anybody can do to take that

away from you, and there’s nothing anybody can do to match that, you know, that’s decades younger

than you, right? There was an experiment that was published in management science magazine in

like 2023 and it said that older job applicants received fewer callbacks than younger applicants with

identical qualifications, right? The one factor that measurably improved the response rate their profile

photo. So we’re not talking about insecurity. We’re talking about strategy. I don’t want you to be

insecure about this, right? Like it exists, right? So, so I’m not here to pretend it doesn’t, but I want you

to know that that doesn’t, that there’s ways we can, we can step into our empowerment era

confidently. So we’re going to walk through that today. We’re going to walk through how to edit your

profile without erasing your power, while stepping into your power. You know, things like, Should we

include your graduation years? What about career breaks, relevance, adaptability, and how to mostly,

most importantly, how to brand the woman you’re becoming, not just the woman you’ve been. All

right? So here we go. This is this I want you to think about this next. What I’m going to talk about here

as a little bit of a mindset shift. Your LinkedIn profile is not your career archive, right? Which is kind of

like what your resume is, right? Your resume is your career archive. Your LinkedIn profile is a

marketing document for your next chapter. Okay, so if so ask yourself this, like, take a look at your

LinkedIn profile. If somebody only reads your headline in your about section, do they know what

you’re stepping into, or they only see what you used to do. Okay? So I’m not saying like, I’m a fan of

including all of the experiences as many as you have, right? All the facts when you worked at

McDonald’s when you were in high school, because sometimes there’s a conversation to be had

there, right? And that’s what we’re looking we’re looking to spark conversations here, and yeah,

maybe somebody will say, Oh my gosh, I worked at McDonald’s too when I was in high school.

Remember coming home smelling like cheeseburgers, right? Like, so, so I’m not saying don’t use that

stuff, but, but do it in a way that it’s relevant to what you’re doing now, right? Like I talk about, you

may have heard me talk about a role that I had, infinity communications group, where I own the

company. I technically was vice president of the company, but I I basically did everything. The

President was an amazing man, but he kind of was a more of a mentor than hands on, although he

became more hands on, I think, than he thought he was going to be. In any case, I basically did all thethings right, but I don’t talk about all the things on my LinkedIn profile. I just talk about what’s

relevant to now. I don’t talk about, you know, writing, you know, I’m hiring and firing and negotiating

health benefits, right? Because it’s not relevant to what I’m doing now. I only talk about the marketing

and the things that are relevant to them doing now, right? So, so you can, you know, so think about

things that you can kind of trim, right? When you look into your LinkedIn profile. Think about maybe

things that are kind of outdated. Nobody really cares if you know Word or Excel, right? They you

know, keeping in mind your resumes in the past and your your LinkedIn profile is positioning you for

the future. Let’s talk a little bit about I want to talk a little bit about positioning. There’s no LinkedIn

police. Okay, that doesn’t mean I want you to lie on your LinkedIn profile. I do not want you to lie on

your LinkedIn profile. I want it to be authentic. I want it to be authentic. I want it to be relevant, but

you don’t have to add things like, I said I’m not lying when I don’t talk about the the HR work that I did

when I owned infinity communications group, right? I only, I just don’t. It’s just not relevant, so I don’t

talk about it. So things like your graduation years and things like that, you LinkedIn doesn’t require it,

right? So it’s not dishonest to leave it off. But, you know, think about, think about what might signal

that age bias. I’m not, I’m not saying I’m not worrying about it at all. Like, I don’t want you to worry

about that, but I also want you to look at it and are there things that you can eliminate that just don’t

matter, right? Like, maybe your degree. Relevant, but the timeline isn’t. So that’s how I want you to

think about it. I don’t want you to make stuff up, but I want you to look at it from the perspective of,

how can I position myself, where my age doesn’t matter, right? It’s not about your it’s not about your

age, hiding your age, right? It’s about keeping your field of study and your degrees and things like

that, but it’s positioning, right, not hiding. Does that make sense? Let’s talk a little bit next about your

profile photo. You don’t need to look 30, right? You I don’t look 30. I don’t want to look 30, right. But

you do need to look Karen, right. So you want to have professional lighting. You want to, you know, no

selfies. You don’t want to have, like, outdated, you know, glamor shots, right? Or over filtered,

smoothing. I remember one time I had a photo shoot done, and the woman, it was kind of like a free

thing. She was like, just, I’m going to be in New York City. Who was this, you know, I’m going to be

shooting, and I need things for my portfolio. I’m like, Yeah, me, I’ll do that. And she edited it, and I

remember her sending me the photos back, and I looked like I was embalmed, right? Like I was

maybe like 50 at the time, like I wasn’t 20. I didn’t need to look like I had no wrinkle, no lines on my

face at all, right? So you don’t want to have that over, smoothed out. You don’t want to look

embalmed, right? But you you want to, you know, you want to have a modern wardrobe, clean,

confidence, styling, you know, be looking at the camera or looking, you know, you don’t want to be

looking away from your LinkedIn profile, because that kind of makes you feel distant. You want to,

you know, kind of be looking either kind of straight, kind of towards the camera or towards your

profile, right? You want somebody to look at that and think she’s engaged, she’s sharp, she’s current.

She pays attention, right? And not like you’re clinging to the to something from 20 years ago, right?

Because you know the first impressions are formed in milliseconds, and it’s hard to undo those first

impressions. So when you’re creating your LinkedIn, when you’re when you’re looking at, re looking at

your LinkedIn profile, as you’re stepping into your next chapter, right? Understand that your photo

isn’t vanity. It’s just signaling you know who you are. All right, let’s talk a little bit about your creating

a profile that shows that you are relevant and current to what’s happening in the in your market and

your world right now. Okay, so, you know, this is often where smart, successful women age

themselves. Okay? You want to talk about things that are current, right? If there’s no mention of

digital tools, if there’s no mention of AI, if there’s no mention of, you know, continuing education or

growth, or no evidence of growth, right? And it doesn’t. I’m not saying you have to, you have to be

technical. I’m not saying, Go take an AI course. I’m not saying that at all. But if you have familiarity

with AI, then let’s talk about it. Okay? Because you want to signal adaptability. You want to let people

know that, like, I am a lifelong learner, I love taking courses. I love I mean, I can’t even tell you my

hard drive is so full of courses, right? And I love that. And I, you know, I want to talk about that so

people know that as as the world changes, I’m relevant. You know, there’s you can dig back, maybe

I’ll find it and link it to this show. But I did an episode of my podcast a couple years ago now, callingwhy you shouldn’t use AI on LinkedIn. And this was like Karen who was wigged out about AI a couple

years ago. Now, I use AI every single day, right? I love it, but at the time, I wasn’t really embracing it

the way I should. That episode probably ages me, right? Just a fact. It’s just a fact. So talk about, like,

integrating AI driven, driven analytics, or, you know, like for me, how can you use AI and LinkedIn and

still be authentic and real, and be you and let people know you’re, you’re a real person, right? Maybe

you, maybe you’re a CEO, like, maybe you do, like operations, right? Maybe you can talk about

automation platforms or things that you’ve recently got certified in, like, it’s just something you got

certified in. And, you know, 2021 2223 24 whatever. Like, put that in there, right? Maybe you are

currently on a board of a board of directors, and you know, that’s something that you and you did

some board governance training or something, right? And, but use the year, right? If that was done in

like 2024, recruiters and search algorithms, they look for these, they look for these keywords. And

right now what LinkedIn is doing is it’s really driving the algorithm is driving people, driving people to

your profile when they know exactly who you are and that you’re relevant. So if your profile hasn’t

been updated in five years, it’s just not just kind of branding you as older, it’s also branding you as

stagnant. And I know you’re not stagnant, right? I know you’re not I know you, I know you’re not

stagnant, right?

09:38

So you know, I want to also address a question, I get a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot from midlife women, and

that is, what if I took a career break? What if I, like, you know, what if I took 10 years off and I had to

raise my family? Well, first of all, I wanted to say I don’t know a single woman. I’ve never met a single

woman who sat for 10 years and a bomb. Bomb. Yes, right? And went to parks with her kids, like,

we’re always doing something. So maybe during so, first and foremost, maybe during those years you

were the president of the PTA, right? Add that, because it shows people had confidence in you, right?

Maybe you wrote a newsletter for you know, your your local record department, or whatever, like,

what, whatever it is you were doing during those years. You can add that in, right? It says experience,

not jobs. So you can add those kinds of things, but understand that. LinkedIn also introduced the

career break feature a couple of years ago. It allows you to formally list things like caregiving,

sabbaticals, relocation, health, education, personal growth, right? And this is really powerful, because

instead of hiding these gaps, you narrate them, you tell you explain them, and listen the word the

minute the word explained them came out of my mouth. I had this little trigger, because I, if you

listen to the last couple episodes, I do not think you need to explain yourself, right? I am so over

explaining myself. That being said, there are times that you need to kind of provide an explanation

for something that so that there’s no questions about it, right? So instead of hiding these gaps, you

can narrate them, right? So, you know, I mean, there’s a woman I really, really, really wish I saved

and I didn’t, but there was a woman a bunch of maybe more than 10 years ago now, but I was

running some kind of a LinkedIn challenge, and she had taken a career break to raise her kids, and

she wrote the absolute best description for that career break. I mean, you know, you’re managing

healthcare, you’re overseeing financial planning and logistics, you’re managing sports schedules and,

you know, crisis decision making and advocacy skills for your kids, right? And so, so you can write

that. I mean, it’s kind of funny and cute. And again, people know it’s okay, it’s okay, right? We’re not

pretending we’re something we’re not. We’re not pretending we did something we didn’t do. Maybe to

the professional sabbatical, right? Maybe you just needed a year off, right? But maybe during that

time you completed some kind of advanced certification, right? You can talk about that as a career

break, right? So I just wanted to kind of take that, that I feel like there’s an elephant in the room on

LinkedIn, and I want to take that out own it loud and clear. Alright, so next I want to talk about how

you’re positioning yourself, right? So, so this is kind of, this is kind of like, I want you to think about

this as how you’re who you are, as you’re stepping into your next chapter. So many women writetheir LinkedIn like they’re apologizing, right? Former VP exploring new opportunities, no, no. Instead,

remember that the headline structure we like who you are, who you help, and how you help them,

right? Maybe you can talk about it as executive advisor, helping healthcare leaders scale through AI

driven, operations, board ready, CFO, financial, governance and growth strategy, right? Even if you’re

transitioning, you brand forward to where you’re going, right? You’re branding forward to where

you’re going, not backwards, like looking for a new you know, like, it’s okay, we’re on LinkedIn.

Everybody’s looking, everybody’s on LinkedIn to network, right? So I want to, I want to, I want to talk

a little bit too about your about section here, if you’re about section, you know, is a chrono,

chronological explanation of the last couple decades of your life that nobody cares about that, right?

You wanted to strategically tell a story about why you’re uniquely positioned for this next chapter.

This is how we rewrite the narratives. Okay, so I want to kind of summarize this a little bit. Okay.

Number one, I want you to edit this for authority. Look at what you’ve previously done. Get rid of all

the clutter. Remove unnecessary dates. Leave necessary dates in. Remove unnecessary dates and

keep what positions you as a leader. Okay, like I said, you president of the PTA that positions you as a

leader. That means that you know entire school district had confidence in you. Number two, signal

relevance, a modern photo, current skills, ongoing growth, talk about that in your profile. Number

three, position yourself with your brand forward right towards your next opportunity, not your last

promotion. Okay? So understand that this, like women in midlife, is not a liability for us. It’s leverage.

You don’t need to look younger to complete. You need to look intentional, you need to look

interesting, and you need to look smart and successful and have expertise. I’ll take that all day long

over somebody you know younger, I’ll take the expertise all day long, right? So think a little bit about

what would change if your LinkedIn profile fully reflected the woman you’re becoming instead of the

one who survived your last chapter. All right? So you know what I hope that you’re taking away from

this. I want you to understand that midlife is not something to hide on LinkedIn. It’s something to

position. You have pattern recognition, you have lived experience. You have crisis management skills

that don’t come from a textbook, right, that only come from living life. You have depth. And what

we’re not going to do is let like your graduation dates or an outdated headshot decide your relevance.

We’re also not going to pretend that this is just about keywords. Profile sections. This is about your

empowerment era, stepping into your empowerment era, with visibility, with confidence, with a

strategy, deciding that you are not done, deciding that you’re not past your prime, deciding that

you’re not too late, right? You’re layered and layered women powerful, right, especially when we stop

shrinking. So if this episode made you realize your LinkedIn profile is still branding the woman you

used to be, not the one you’re becoming. I’d love to invite you to come join us in the visibility salon.

You get a week for free if that’s where we do all this work for real, right? If you go to Karen Yankovich

com slash free trial, you can get that. You can get in there and check it out. We love, love, love.

Talking about these kinds of things and supporting each other will refine your positioning. We

upgrade your presence, we normalize the authority that you’re stepping into, and we do it in a room

full of amazing women supporting each other who are all done playing small. We know that age bias

exists, right? But Invisibility is optional. Hopefully I will see you inside the visibility salon. Either way,

I’ll see you back here next week. You.