After a recruiter reads your CV and decides to take you further, the first thing they do is check your LinkedIn.
This is not optional. It is automatic. Every recruiter, every hiring manager, every internal talent team does the same thing. Your CV makes the first case. Your LinkedIn either reinforces it or quietly undermines it.
Most profiles undermine it.
What LinkedIn actually is
LinkedIn is not a job board. It is not a social network in any meaningful sense for your career. It is a credibility surface.
When someone reads your CV and then checks your LinkedIn, they are looking for one thing: does this person's public presence confirm what the CV claims? If your CV says you are a finance leader who has driven transformation across three business units, and your LinkedIn headline says "Open to work | Finance Professional", something does not add up.
The CV made a specific case. The LinkedIn dissolved it into something generic.
A recruiter reads the first, checks the second, and the whole case quietly falls over. Not consciously. As a sense that something does not hold together.
The headline problem
Your LinkedIn headline is the single most visible piece of text on the platform. It appears in search results, in connection requests, in every comment you leave, and at the top of your profile. It is read more often than any other sentence you will write about yourself.
Most headlines are a job title. "Finance Director at [Company]." That tells someone what you do today. It does not tell them what you are for.
A recruiter-grade headline answers a different question: if someone saw this in a search result, would they know immediately whether you are relevant to what they need?
The difference between "Finance Director" and "Finance Director | PE-backed portfolio, operational transformation, FP&A to board reporting" is the difference between being found and being scrolled past.
The About section gap
The About section is where most profiles fall apart entirely. It is either empty, a copy of the CV summary, or a first-person narrative that reads like a motivational speech.
None of these work.
The About section needs to do something specific: tell the same story as your CV, in your own voice, with enough detail that someone reading it thinks "this person knows what they are talking about."
It is not a biography. It is a positioning statement written as prose. The best ones read like the opening paragraph of a business case: here is who I am, here is what I have done, here is what I am focused on next.
Why consistency matters more than perfection
The biggest problem is not that LinkedIn profiles are poorly written. It is that they tell a different story from the CV.
Your CV positions you as a specialist in infrastructure finance. Your LinkedIn headline says "Experienced Finance Professional." Your CV leads with a transformation programme that saved the business millions. Your LinkedIn About section mentions it in passing, buried in the third paragraph.
A recruiter notices this. Not consciously, but as a sense that something does not quite hold together. That sense is enough to slow down the process.
The fix is not to make your LinkedIn perfect. It is to make it consistent. Same positioning, same emphasis, same story. Two documents that reinforce each other rather than competing.
What a recruiter would rewrite
If a recruiter sat down with your LinkedIn profile, they would start with the headline and rewrite it to answer the positioning question: what is this person for?
Then they would rewrite the About section to mirror the career narrative from your CV. Not copy it word for word, but tell the same story in a voice that works for the format. Shorter sentences. More direct. The kind of writing that works when someone is scanning, not reading.
The result is a LinkedIn profile that does not just exist alongside your CV. It actively supports it. When someone checks your profile after reading your CV, they find the same story told with the same confidence.
Your CV is the one document that speaks for you when you are not in the room. Your LinkedIn is the one that speaks for you when someone goes looking.
The CV Intelligence Report includes a full LinkedIn rewrite: your headline and About section rebuilt to work as a credibility layer that reinforces your CV positioning. Not a template. A rewrite based on how your specific career should be presented.
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Michael Muir
Founder · The Other Side
Twenty years placing candidates across high-calibre boutiques through to FTSE 100 companies. Thousands of CVs a year. Writes “Notes from the Desk” on how hiring decisions actually get made.
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