How to Make a Stealth LinkedIn Career Pivot (Without Alerting Your Entire Network)

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Karen, 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 quietly for smart, successful women, and it usually starts like

late at night or early in the morning, when you open your LinkedIn profile and you read the headline

at the top, and then you think like the person described on that LinkedIn profile isn’t really who you

are anymore, right? It’s who you were, and maybe that LinkedIn profile still reflects the job that you

took 10 years ago, or the industry that you built your reputation in, or the title that felt like such a

huge accomplishment at one point in your life. But something may have shifted right? Your thinking

has changed. Your ambitions have expanded. The world has changed, right and and with that, it’s got

your curiosity that pulls you somewhere new, so you know you want to update it, but you also know

that the minute you start changing things, LinkedIn might tell everyone. Your boss might see it, your

clients might see it, your colleagues might see it, and you might not really be sure what you’re doing

yet. So you you feel like you’re making a public announcement for something that you haven’t really

evolved into yet. Does that make sense? So you hesitate, so you leave it right. You leave you leave

your old headline, your old positioning, and you figure like, I’ll deal with that later. But here’s what I

know, you can you can absolutely update your LinkedIn profile, your brand, your personal brand,

without notifying your entire entire network. You can control what’s visible, what stays private, who

sees what, and when the world finds out about your next chapter, like when you figured it out, right?

And you can do it quietly. You can do it strategically. You can do before you make the big

announcement, before the big reveal. Because the reality is, you can’t just, like, unless you’re just

going to cut ties and move forward. Typically, there’s a gradual growth to it, right? So how do you do

that gradual growth when you don’t want to update your LinkedIn profile, because you don’t want

your current network to know what you’re doing until you figure it out? Right? So before the

announcement, before the press release, right before that big reveal, we’re going to talk about what I

call the stealth mode career pivot, and we’re gonna talk about how to rebuild your LinkedIn profile for

the next version of your life without broadcasting it to the entire internet before you’re ready,

because you must you. I’m sure you’ve heard me say this before. Your LinkedIn profile is not

supposed to be a museum of who you used to be of your past, right? It’s supposed to be like you

stepping into your future. And, you know, I believe that the most powerful ring inventions can start

quietly, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. All right, so where do we start?

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We start with a question I get asked a lot, which is, how do I update my LinkedIn profile without

notifying everyone? Okay, so luckily, we have an option for that. There’s a setting. And, you know,

LinkedIn moves this a lot. So, you know, depending on when you’re listening to this, may or may not

be in the place that I’m telling you it is. But if you go to your settings right,03:14

you can find this. And when it’s on, all the profile changes can appear on your feed, new job updates,

headline changes, you know, profile edits, even things like you spelled something wrong and you

updated the spelling. It’s going to show us a new experience or an update to your about section, but

you can turn it off so that you can make some major edits pretty quietly, right? So what you want to

do is, you want to go to I’m actually going to do well, I’m talking, you want to go to me. So you’re

looking at your profile, right, and and at the top where your picture is, and then go down to

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settings and privacy, and then under settings and privacy, okay, so then you want to go to visibility.

And then when you go to visibility, you want to go under the visibility of your LinkedIn activity section.

And you want to go to share job changes, education changes and work anniversaries from your

profile, and under that, when you click that, you’ll see share key profile updates, and you can toggle

that on and off. Okay, I typically leave that on because at the end of the day, like, if it’s gonna get my

profile in front of somebody, I’m not really looking to hide my profile and my changes that I make, so I

typically leave it on because it just gives me more visibility, like, gets me in the feed more but if I’m

going to make some major edits to my profile, I’ll turn it off, and then I’ll turn it back on. And here’s

the thing, like, recruiters might still see some of these signals, like depending on some of your other

settings, but your general network isn’t going to see an update post. Okay? Because, you know,

here’s, you know that I believe that visibility on LinkedIn is so powerful, but strategic visibility is like a

superpower, right? Especially during like a transition season. You’re not hiding, right? You’re kind of

building the runway right before you take off.

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The other thing that you can do is, the thing I want you to understand, is that there’s really two

versions of your LinkedIn profile. There’s the public profile, which is searchable by search.

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Engines like Google, and then there’s a member only profile that only LinkedIn users can see. Okay?

And this matters. This matters when you’re creating a pivot like i right? I have everything open to

Google because anything, anytime Google wants to bring up my profile to somebody, I’m down for

that, right? But, but the public profile visibility can control things like your headline, your experience,

your skills, your profile photo, you can kind of customize exactly what appears publicly. So if you’re

like looking to leave corporate maybe and become a consultant, you might want your public version

to emphasize more things like speaking or thought leadership well, and then you can leave like

employer details for member only, visibility for now, right? Does that make sense? Your LinkedIn

profile ranks really high on Google, so your public profile version is important, and it’s part of your like

reputation strategy. And I want you to think like, if someone Googles Google, I’m using Google as a

verb, but you throws your name in a search engine today. Does your LinkedIn profile reflect the future

version of me or the past version? Right? You want to think about this. Another thing that you can do

while you’re again in this transition is use the open to work feature strategically. Now this is huge ifyou want to be found by recruiters. And what basically this is, is when you’re on your profile, there’s a

section that says open to right, and you can click that open to and a couple things, you can be open

to right, but you can be open to work, but you can make that available to recruiters only. Okay, so if

you make it available to everyone, everyone sees it. There’s like a green banner. There’s a thing

around your face, you know, your profile picture, and it’s great if you have an active job search. It

gives you high visibility, but it’s not great if you’re still employed, right? So the second option is to say

recruiters only. And so LinkedIn allows you to mark yourself like open to work for recruiters only. And

it does. LinkedIn does make an attempt to hide this from your current company, from recruiters, from

your current company. It is not foolproof, right? I don’t want you know. LinkedIn flat out says on there,

like when you go to do this and you market for recruiters only. LinkedIn flat out says on there, you

know, we try to hide this from your current company, but no promises, right? So at least they make

an attempt to do that. But so it’s not foolproof, but it significantly increases the discretion. So when

you’re pivoting, you can definitely use this feature to signal new roles, consulting opportunities, board

roles, speaking opportunities, right? Without making it public, without making it public. And you know,

for many of the women listening to this, and for many of the women that I work with, and frankly,

even for me, in some cases, I’m not job hunting, right, but I’m opportunity hunting, and recruiters are

often the people who bring those opportunities. You may want to just turn that on and make it to

recruiter only and see what happens, right? And maybe there’ll be some opportunities that come your

way, right? The next section I want to talk about here is kind of like a behind the scenes just for you

section. And you know, like, I’m, I’m all about identity work as you’re shifting into your next chapter,

right? Really, we need to start thinking about who we’re becoming, and starting to step into that. And

the mindset work around that is just as important as the strategy. I know. You know, you know,

sometimes when I talk to people about updating their LinkedIn profile, it kind of feels a little disloyal.

You know, you have a company that’s paying you maybe six figures, right? Maybe you have

colleagues that count on you and who you adore and you and you want to be counted on, right? So it

feels a little disloyal to like the version of you that you used to be. It’s so common. It’s so common. So

what I want you to do, and again, this is just for you behind the scenes. This is like a little, you know,

Karen, homework assignment. I want you to write a private pivot statement just for you, and just say,

like, why now? Why now is why is now the time to make this pivot, because this is going to be the

energy behind the work we’re doing here in this episode today, right? Maybe an example is like, after

20 years in corporate leadership, I want to focus on helping women build financial power, or I’ve

spelled it spent a decade mastering this skill. Now I want to bring it directly to clients, right? Or

maybe you’re like, you’ve got a great job, and you’re not looking to leave that great job, but you want

to build some consulting clients, because you’re not really sure what the next chapter will bring. And

you want to build that foundation, right?

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You know, under writing this pivot statement, right? This private pivot statement helps you align the

next chapter with who you’re becoming, because when you have that clarity internally, right, your

LinkedIn profile updates start to feel more like an alignment. And I would like write it out, maybe,

maybe put it on a you know, put it in Canva, and make some pretty make a pretty frame around it,

cut it out, put it on your wall. Put it on your computer, if you.10:00

Could see under my computer screens, I have all kinds of sticky notes under there and and index

cards was saying all kinds of different things. I would put it there right because you want to start to

align with that private pivot statement. It’ll help you as you’re stepping into this next chapter again,

all the strategy in the world is going to help, but doing the identity work is going to put the fuel under

that strategy, right? Does that make sense? All right? So let’s let me just step into a really important

part of this topic, and that is that a stealth pivot doesn’t mean you’re not telling anyone. It means

you’re being intentional about who knows first. So as you know, as we’ve talked about in many other

shows for this, for this show, you want to think about like a disclosure circle, maybe, right? Like, who

are the five people that you want to know this early? Maybe it’s a mentor or a trusted colleague or a

spouse or partner, right? Or an advisor or your coach, right? You want to have an inner circle, alright?

And then share your profile with that inner circle. Okay, this is not just because we’re making this

quiet. Doesn’t mean that we’re telling no one. So initially, we’re creating that inner circle, five people,

maybe 10 people, whatever works for you, right? And then from that inner circle, we’re going to move

to strategic allies, right, people that can help open doors for you. So maybe these are industry

connectors. Maybe this is where you start connecting with recruiters, board contacts, podcast hosts,

event organizers, right?

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Colleagues that can help you you know that you can maybe partner with right. So you’re widening

that circle from your inner circle right of five or 10 people now to your strategic allies, which is maybe

10 or 20 people, and now you’re starting to make that outreach on LinkedIn to some of those people.

And then beyond that, when you’re ready to go live, that’s when you do the announcement, right?

That’s when you create the public announcement. And then your pivot is intentional, instead of

experimental. Does that make sense? Because you’ve already got people that have been waiting for

this announcement and and are there to support you, and are there to lift you up, right that rising tide

that lifts all boats? So you know, initially your inner circle, and then building out to strategic allies

until you’re ready for that public announcement.

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Reminder that your LinkedIn profile is not the Museum of who you used to be. It’s the living, breathing

document of who you’re becoming. And I truly believe that the most powerful pivots happen quietly.

They happen when you start to adjust the language, when you start to shift the headline, when you

start to refine the expertise, and before anybody even notices, you are already living inside your next

chapter, right? So if this episode has you thinking about your next chapter, you definitely have to

check us out at the visibility salon, where we talk about these pivots in real time, because building a

powerful LinkedIn profile isn’t just about getting more views, it’s about owning the story of who you’re

becoming next Okay, so check that out at visibility salon.com. We got a free trial. You can check that

out there. And I want you to connect with me. I mean, I would love, love, love, love to be a part of

your inner circle or your strategic allies. I feel like our visibility salon is all strategic allies, right? So

connect with me. Let me know how it’s going, and I’ll see you back here next week with another

episode.