7 Phrases to Strike From Your LinkedIn Profile

An interesting practice seems to have cropped up among self-written social media profiles, where phrases that are taboo on resumes (like “self-motivated team player”) are creeping back into lists of job hunter credentials on LinkedIn.

Unfortunately, these mundane, dry, and redundant phrases can make it difficult for you to maximize the power of LinkedIn in a job search.

It's also challenging for recruiters and employers to see past these overused terms when looking for your value proposition!

However, with a little ingenuity, you can pull the lackluster phrases out of your Profile and replace them with powerful writing that conveys your personal style and energy.

Here are some of the worst offenders lurking among LinkedIn Profiles, along with suggestions for alternative wording:

1 - Accomplished professional.

If this is really true, then show (don’t tell!) your readers about it. This phrase is likely to prompt more annoyance from employers than appreciation.

Instead, consider using a sentence or phrase that speaks specifically to your achievements, such as “Sales rep honored for closing 147% of quota during 2009 and 2010” or “IT Director heading multimillion-dollar outsourcing contracts at major banks.”

In addition, you can add accomplishment data (right in the Summary) that cuts to the heart of what you do and why you’re good at it, with sentences like “Sales manager honored for coaching 3 Top Producers” or “Operations manager promoted for increasing production line efficiency.”

2 - Results-driven.

Most companies plan on hiring someone who fits this description, and they weed out anyone who doesn’t perform to their expectations. It’s almost to your detriment to point this out in your Profile.

You might try adding information that actually PROVES your drive for results, with mention of how you’ve earned a promotion in just 6 months, or the ways in which your performance has outpaced that of your peers.

3 - Exceptional communicator.

The trouble with this phrase is that it’s not only tough to prove, but that the person using it often misspells one or more words (really).

Since your LinkedIn Profile gives you plenty of opportunity to demonstrate your writing skills, you’ll have the opportunity to convey complex concepts or perhaps distill a major project into a short description… both of which would speak louder about your communications skills than this phrase ever will.

4 - Proven success.

Well, employers would hope so. After all, why mention your success unless you have some proof to back it up?

Here’s where you’re better off noting some metrics, as in “exceeded quota for 7 out of past 8 years,” “brought company to 87% market share,” or “met 100% of project budget constraints despite limited resources.”

These achievements can help online readers understand the scope of your work and the reasons behind your career progression.

5 - Experienced.

Ahem… of COURSE you are.

Even worse, “successful experience” is so redundant that you’re wasting space and LinkedIn keyword optimization by even thinking of these phrases.

One way to replace this word is to simply specify the number of years you’ve worked in the industry.

However, be careful here: “15 years of experience in sales” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “Generated 23% average over-quota revenue throughout progressively challenging sales roles.”

6 - Responsible for.

Just like a resume, there is no reason to clutter the landscape of your Profile with a phrase that is largely assumed.

Rather than use this phrase, you can just skip to the relevant facts (“managed $500K budget,” “supervised staff of 10”) and save everyone’s time.

7 - Microsoft Word skills.

There’s no advantage to listing basic skills that nearly all candidates possess. Unless you are seeking an entry-level role requiring clerical duties, employers will be more surprised if you don’t have these skills, than if you take the time to list them.

You’re much better off researching target jobs and noting the skills (keywords) required for the position, then using these terms to show your competency.


To summarize, back up and take a long look at your LinkedIn Profile. Are you committing the same mistakes that have been appearing on resumes for years?

If so, it’s time to refresh your approach and provide specific details on the high points of your career—information that others can readily relate to (and even use to hire you) from your LinkedIn Profile.

In interviews, what you ask is as important as what you answer

Facing an interview with dread? Sharpen your questions for the interviewer

What do interviewers want?

That seems to be the question on the minds of job hunters everywhere. You might have made it into an interview, only to realize that your competition is every bit as qualified, and that employers are being selective.

If you're going on interview after interview with no end in sight, here’s a critical idea to take into your next meeting with employers:

The interview questions you ASK are just as just as important as the ones you ANSWER.

Employers are attuned to candidates that are attentive to THEM. In other words, the What’s-In-It-For-Me approach is alive and well in interviewing, and companies are eager to hear your ideas on what can help them.

My recent collaboration with colleague Tony Deblauwe of HR4Change, The Right Questions to Ask in a Job Interview, published here on Monster.com, shows that employers are not only gauging your fitness on your ability to field their questions, but also on your ability to throw some good ones back their way.

Formulating and asking solid questions for employers demonstrates 3 qualities important to company needs:

1 - The ability to think on your feet.

Copying a Professional Resume? Watch Out For These Pitfalls

Recently, I was contacted by a job hunter who wanted an update to his existing resume, a service that I offer to former clients in my practice.

The resume looked strikingly familiar on some level, but the name didn’t resonate.

Then it hit me: I HAD written it—but for someone else.

Professional resume writers encounter this scenario all the time, and for the most part, it’s flattering to think that our work is compelling enough to be copied (at least if we can ignore the obvious part pertaining to copyright law).

However, here’s what worries me when I spot a copied rendition of a professional resume (mine or anyone else’s): the copier rarely grasps the branding and building process that went behind it in the first place.

Therefore, he’s doing himself a grave disservice by borrowing the format, writing style, and tone, then pasting his career story in between that of someone else.

The worst part? The “borrower” often fails to understand this context, and goes right on using it as if it were a coherent and targeted document.

So, if you’re determined to make your resume look like the masterpieces that you see on sites like mine, here are 6 likely problems that you’ll encounter in doing so:

1 - You can easily unravel the original brand strategy… and be left with nothing.

So… you think you have the same career path and can therefore just “tweak” a word or two? Not so fast.

For a resume to be effective, the strategy is set (prior to any writing) based on how well the candidate fits the desired role and the potential for screen-out factors based on his or her personal career path, age, industry preferences, and a host of other factors.

I often compare a client’s career path and achievements to others in the industry, pulling out any areas of strength or weakness in credentials (including education and former jobs) to make decisions about word choice and emphasis.

The writing process itself only starts after lengthy data mining and analysis of the job goal. Then, content is wrapped around and woven through the strategy, along with personality traits, resulting in a total picture and unique value proposition.

Given this process, any changes to the resume by someone who doesn’t understand the candidate will create problems in the message… and while these nuances may go unnoticed by you, they are all key factors in whether a resume gets read or dismissed.


2 – You might slide into generalizations that blur the message.

Yes, Research Really IS Important to Your Job Search Success

Guest post by Career Trainer and Certified Professional Resume Writer Bob McIntosh.

I tell jobseekers in all my workshops that research is key to their job search. I’m being redundant, but it’s true and worth repeating. Whether you’re writing a résumé or cover letter, or preparing for an interview or a networking event, the time you put into research is a tremendous return on investment. This time well spent precedes submitting your résumé and being interviewed for positions advertised or not.

Let’s look at the five steps you must take before you earn a seat at mid-court, the interview.


Step One
Candace Barr of Strategic Executive Connections writes that discovering which companies are growing the fastest is the start of the job search. “The very first step in your career transition, or executive job search should be research. So many people skip over this step quickly and do not take the time to really dig deep, consider their skill set as well as economic conditions when choosing target companies.”

An excellent source of the Fastest Growing Companies is the Inc 5000 list. Here you can find a list of 5,000 companies that showed the fastest growth rate in 2010. This would be a great place to start your research, as Candace Barr suggests.

Step Two
Once you’ve located the companies you’d like to researched and decided which companies are the ones for which you would like to work, you should dedicate a great deal of your computer time visiting their websites.

Executive Job Hunting? You’ll Need More Than a Resume

If you’re an executive planning your next career move, it might surprise you to learn that you’ll be judged by more than just your resume during your job search.

In other words, a full resume is NOT necessarily the best fit for every job search contact.

Surprised? You’ll find that recruiters, company owners, Boards of Directors, and other hiring decision-makers often look at your experience through a series of interviews and investigations—which means that your executive resume is just one part of the process.

Here are 4 must-have documents for an executive portfolio designed to capture attention at all the right levels—along with recommendations for the timing of each component:

1 - Executive Biography.
A short, narrative-form document, the Biography often appeals to readers that are not engaged in the technical detail of a full resume.

The best readers for an Executive Biography are usually networking contacts (who are easily overwhelmed by a full resume) or Boards of Directors (who typically interview you in the later stages of the hiring process).

2 - LinkedIn Profile.
While not technically a “document” created just for job hunting, your LinkedIn Profile is a critical—and often underutilized—piece of an executive portfolio.

What LinkedIn's IPO Means for You

Now that the dust has settled a bit on LinkedIn's successful IPO, you might have wondered what the implications are for your job search. Will the site change? What will happen to your membership?

Are more people expected to join? Will another networking hub overtake LinkedIn as the favorite of businesspeople and job seekers?

Here are some musings on what the new state of LinkedIn can mean for you:

Site changes.
Interestingly enough, LinkedIn HAS changed its functionality significantly over the past 18 months, potentially in prepartion for its IPO.

In case you didn't notice, the new Skills sections and search functionality appeared late last year. In addition, site functions that once were available from the top menu bar started to drift around. More notably, the Settings page became more user-friendly, with the Privacy controls a bit easier to understand.

So, it IS possible that the navigation and menus will continue to shift... but keep in mind that much of the change may have already occurred.


More jobs.
No, I'm not referring to the site's job search engine, but the company itself.

Want That Executive Job? Don't Write Your Own Resume

Here’s a common refrain that I’ve heard from budding C-level executives: “I wrote my own resume a few years back, but I can see that it’s just not working now. I can't get anyone to respond at the right level!"

An overwhelming majority of aspiring and current executive job hunters (and I mean literally 80%+ of the people that I talk with) cannot position themselves properly in a resume, and here’s why:

Buzzwords and project lists work fine for a mid-career move, but once you’re targeting the executive suite, the whole game changes.

Now you’ve got to list critical initiatives, collaboration with other leaders, impact on your teams, and a whole host of other situations in context from your career (and that's just a start).

As examples, I’ve seen IT Vice Presidents mistaken for Project Managers, and Sales reps who failed to make an impression as Sales Managers, all based on how the resume was constructed.

Here are steps to take to ensure that you don’t fall into this category:


Gather information about your own brand.

If you’re serious about advancing to the next step on the career ladder, you’ll ignore this step at your own peril. Feedback such as 360 reviews, performance evaluations, and colleague perspectives can all be important information for your resume.

3 Easy Ways to Overcome the Challenge of Resume Writing

Trying to get your job search off to a strong start – only to be hampered by the resume-writing process?

Do you struggle to articulate the high points of your career and brand - or to sum up the reasons you should be considered over others?

If so, you have plenty of company, especially if your career is at the executive or senior professional level. Many leaders have discovered that it’s easier to actually drive change, improve company operations, or transform revenue performance than it is to write about it.

Here are 3 main reasons why resume writing can be difficult--followed by 3 simple ways to make the process easier:

1 – You’re too close to the subject.

Most executive leaders and skilled professionals are subject matter experts in all types of leadership competencies, from strategic planning to team delegation.

However, when asked to describe their strengths, most of them will resort to tactical or skills-based descriptions, rather than illustrating the ways in which they add strategic value.

You’re naturally good at what you do, but telling your story requires a higher level of analysis—a process that most executives and senior-level professionals don’t think to undertake for themselves.

2 – Marketing copy isn’t your strong suit.

Most COOs spend their time ensuring that costs are reined in and that the company’s infrastructure will support growth, while sales managers are assessing the competition, CEOs are busy forming strategic forecasts, accountants are closing the books, IT Managers are negotiating with vendors, and CIOs are dealing with the rising costs of technology.

CIO Resumes: Mining IT Projects for Strategic Benefit

Are you a rising star in the IT world eager for a shot at the CIO role? Ascending from IT Director or VP takes more than just showing how you’ve leveraged the technology itself: you’ll need to first put yourself in the C-suite on paper.

As described by my recent article in ComputerWorld, most would-be technology executives stumble when it comes to resume writing at the CIO level.

Transitioning your value proposition to reflect officer-ready qualifications requires a significant transition from the traditional, skills-based resume that helped capture your last job in IT.

Here, I've included simple steps that can transform your IT resume from mundane, project-by-project details to a leadership brand message designed to land a CIO role.

First, I recommend making a list of the projects you’ve led, then answer the following questions about each one: 

• What made these initiatives attractive to stakeholders (in terms of ROI)?
• Were the benefits external or internal to the company (with impact to either the company’s customers or business users)?
• How did the company leverage the new technologies from a PR standpoint?
• And last of all, what competitive edge was gained from the project?

Now, take these project details and add specific budget or cost figures to demonstrate scope, as shown by these examples:

“Contributed to $4M total savings by working with regional CEO to incorporate SaaS and cloud technologies…”

Do You Really Want to Use THAT LinkedIn Photo?

Some time ago, I ran across a LinkedIn picture of a job seeker who was holding a very specific political sign over her head that used bright letters.

While wearing shorts (and no, they did NOT become her).

Curious about this phenomenon, I surveyed my fine resume-writing, coaching, and careers industry colleagues at Career Directors International on the subject of inappropriate LinkedIn photographs.

As a result, I came away with a very interesting list of purported job seeker LinkedIn photos that:

• Were taken from such a distance that no one would recognize them
• Included the candidate posing in a bikini on a beach
• Showed the candidate's GARDEN - without her in it
• Displayed a major league sports cap (a turnoff to the recruiter that contacted him, who noted that it was the "wrong city, wrong team")
• Were snapped at a party where the subject obviously had too much to drink
• Resembled a mug shot - no smile, just a grimace that did not put the candidate in the best light