Bring Your Professional Story to Life on LinkedIn

The most interesting part of every professional journey is the story behind it. No two professionals are the same: your career paths, skills, dreams, and aspirations are unique. Sharing your professional journey in an authentic and engaging way is the starting point for connecting with the communities that matter most to you. 

That’s why we're excited to announce that we have re-imagined how you can bring your professional story to life on LinkedIn and are introducing tools to help you create a more expressive and inclusive Profile. 

This starts with a video Cover Story, a new tool that lets you personalize your first “hello,” so you can engage your audience and reach recruiters. For inspiration on how to bring yours to life, check out the video below.

Once you add your Cover Story, an orange ring will appear around your Profile photo, and a preview of your video will auto-play silently within your photo frame (we like to think of it as the “Harry Potter” effect). And, stay tuned for captioning capabilities coming soon. 

For job seekers, a Cover Story is a great way to introduce yourself to hiring managers by sharing your career goals, providing a peek at your personality and showcasing your communication skills. According to a recent U.S. survey* almost 80% (76%) of hiring managers believe seeing a pre-recorded video of a job seeker would be useful. Also, if you’re searching for a job, check out the announcement from Ryan, LinkedIn’s CEO,  about free LinkedIn Learning courses to sharpen your skills.

If you’re a freelancer, you can attract new clients by using a Cover Story to talk about your services. You can now create a dedicated Service Page right from your Profile, giving you more reach to LinkedIn’s global community of nearly 740 million members. 

For many of us, expressing our authentic self is also about our pronouns. They are core to our identity and how we want to be seen. We’re introducing an optional field at the top of the Profile, displayed next to your name, where you can add your gender pronouns. 70% of job seekers believe it’s important that recruiters and hiring managers know their gender pronouns, and 72% of hiring managers agree and believe it shows respect. 

Introducing creator mode

Every day, LinkedIn is seeing members share and connect like never before with almost a 50% increase in conversations, and with nearly five billion connections made over the past year.

At the heart of our ecosystem is our creator community. People love to see creators give their take on what’s happening in the news or share insights into a specific industry -- whether that’s a post, a video, an article, or even a comment. If this is you, check out the new creator mode in your Profile dashboard.

With creator mode, you can add hashtags to indicate what topics you post about the most -- for example, #design or #mentorship. It will move your Featured and Activity sections to the top of your Profile to more prominently display your content,  and change the “Connect” button to “Follow,” to help you engage your community and build a following.