Congratulations on your new job! Sharing the news of your career update on LinkedIn is a great way to expand your professional network and get more eyes on your profile. With over 740 million members worldwide, LinkedIn is the premier social media platform for career professionals looking to connect, get noticed by recruiters, and grow their careers.
Posting about your new job allows you to control the narrative and message around your career move. It enables you to highlight your new role, responsibilities, and why you’re excited about this opportunity. Done right, a new job announcement positions you as an authority in your field and gets your network engaged and supportive of your career growth.
Should You Post About Your New Job on LinkedIn?
Here are some of the key benefits of sharing your new job news on LinkedIn:
- Announce your move on your terms – Don’t let others reveal or speculate around your new role. Share the news yourself on LinkedIn.
- Expand your network – A new job post prompts connections, colleagues, and recruiters to congratulate you. This facilitates networking and forging new relationships.
- Showcase your skills – Highlight your new responsibilities, accomplishments that landed you the role, and capabilities gained from your previous experience.
- Attract opportunities – Recruiters search LinkedIn for top talent. A standout new job post can put you on their radar.
- Build your brand – Position yourself as a thought leader and authority in your new industry or function.
- Gain visibility – Increase eyes on your profile and get more search visibility for your name and expertise.
Of course, there are some cases where you may want to avoid or postpone announcing your new job on LinkedIn:
- If you changed roles internally and don’t want certain colleagues to know yet, it’s better not to post until you’ve had those conversations.
- If your new employer wants confidentiality around the hire, it’s best to comply with their preferences.
- If your move meant leaving your team in a difficult position, hold off posting until any sensitivities around your departure have passed.
However, in most cases, sharing exciting career updates is part of what makes LinkedIn valuable for professional networking and brand building.
Crafting Your New Job Announcement
Here are some tips for creating a compelling LinkedIn post to share your new job:
Summarize Key Details
Succinctly cover the key facts upfront – your new job title, company, location, start date, and brief overview of your role. This info satisfies curiosity and gives context.
Explain the Fit
Describe why you’re excited about this opportunity and how it aligns with your career goals, strengths, and interests. This builds narrative and helps people understand your motivations.
Share Key Skills
Highlight 1-3 key skills critical to excelling in your new role. This shows what capabilities you offer and communicates your personal brand.
Thank Supporters
Recognize colleagues, mentors, recruiters, or connections who helped guide or advocate for you. This shows gratitude and deepens relationships.
Call to Action
Prompt readers to connect with you personally to continue the conversation. This mobilizes engagement.
Best Practices for Formatting
Here are some best practices to optimize visual appeal and readability:
- Lead with an eye-catching graphic – Upload a photo celebrating your news or an image showcasing your new company’s logo.
- Use line breaks, bullets, and bolding strategically to break up text.
- Hyperlink to your new company website to associate your brand.
- Tag relevant connections mentioned to notify them.
- Add the right hashtags to extend reach and discovery.
- Include an emoji or two to convey tone and personality.
Sample Post Template
Here is a template structure you can follow or adapt:
[Engaging image]
I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined [Company Name] as a [Job Title]! 🎉
[1-2 sentences on what company does]
As a [Job Title], I’ll be [concise overview of role and responsibilities]. I’m excited to apply my background in [Relevant Skill/Experience] to [core work you’ll do].
This role is an amazing opportunity to [explain why personally excited about opportunity and how it achieves your career goals]. I’m looking forward to [what you hope to accomplish in the new job].
I’m so grateful to [name connections who were instrumental] for [how they specifically helped or advocated for you].
Please connect if you also work at [Company Name] or have experience in [Your New Field] – I’d love to expand my network!
#newjob #careermove #dreamjob #lifeupdate
Optimizing Your Profile
In addition to posting an update, be sure to optimize your LinkedIn profile to complement and align with the new job change. This establishes consistency across your personal brand and maximizes the impact.
Key areas to update include:
- Headline – Refresh to reflect your new title and company
- Experience – Add new role with responsibilities and achievements
- About – Update summary to incorporate new job focus
- Skills – Tailor to highlight capabilities relevant to new industry or role
- Background image – Overlay with graphic featuring new company name or logo
- Profile URL – Customize with new job title to improve search visibility
Proactively updating these profile elements creates cohesion with your announcement post and leverages your new position to strengthen your professional brand on LinkedIn.
Best Practices For Engagement
To make the most of your new job announcement, leverage LinkedIn’s features to proactively drive engagement:
- Set a reminder to post during optimal days and times, like Tuesday at 10am.
- Follow up one-on-one with key connections to deepen relationships.
- Prompt discussions by posting questions and polls to react to.
- Share your post widely to relevant LinkedIn Groups and Company Pages.
- Check notifications and reply to comments from your network.
- Send personalized InMail messages to share the news.
- Track post analytics to optimize future content.
Mobilizing your community not only extends your announcement reach, but surfaces new opportunities and establishes you as an influential thought leader.
Pitfalls to Avoid
Steer clear of these common new job post pitfalls:
- Oversharing confidential deal details that should remain private.
- Making exaggerated claims about the role that don’t align with reality.
- Focusing solely on yourself without recognizing supporters.
- Having typos, sloppy formatting, or accidental misinformation.
- Forgetting to customize the post for LinkedIn’s professional audience.
- Using too much jargon or unexplained acronyms.
- Letting the post come across as egotistical rather than celebratory.
Proofread thoroughly and run a draft post by a trusted colleague to catch any issues before publishing.
Examples of Strong New Job Posts
Here are two recent examples of stellar new job announcement posts on LinkedIn:
Julie Zhuo, Product Design VP at Figma
[Photo of Julie smiling wearing Figma hoodie]
Some personal news! I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be joining Figma as their VP of Product Design. 🎉
Figma’s vision of a collaborative design platform matches my own beliefs about empowering teams to build better products together. I’m excited to work with the incredible design and engineering team to take Figma’s products to the next level.
I couldn’t be more grateful to have worked with the amazing teams at Facebook for the past 11+ years. A huge shoutout to the many mentors and colleagues who’ve made this journey incredible.
Can’t wait to see what the future holds! Let me know if you also work at Figma or are thinking about product and design at scale.
Alex Goldstein, Head of Product Marketing at Calendly
[Photo of Alex shaking hands with new colleague in office]
Beyond excited to start a new chapter as Head of Product Marketing @Calendly!
Calendly’s growth has been incredible, and I’m honored to join this talented team and help tell their story. In my new role, I’ll lead positioning and messaging as we build Calendly into a global household name.
Thank you to my wonderful colleagues at HubSpot for teaching me so much over the last 5 years. Can’t wait to take all that experience to help Calendly achieve their vision!
Drop a note if you know anyone at Calendly I should connect with! #careermove
Measuring Effectiveness
Track these key metrics to gauge the impact of your new job announcement post:
- Profile views – Increased profile discovery
- Post reactions – Shows engagement value
- Comments – Deeper discussion and connections
- Shares – Amplified reach and visibility
- New followers – Expanded professional network
- Mentions – Visibility gains
- InMail – Surfaced opportunities
Compare to previous posts and optimize future announcements based on what resonates best with your community. Over time, continue refining a data-driven approach.
Conclusion
Announcing your new job on LinkedIn is a strategic move to control your professional narrative, expand your network, and get recognized as a thought leader. By crafting an engaging post, optimizing your profile, proactively engaging your community, and tracking results – you can maximize the impact.
With these best practices, you’re ready to share your career update and achievement with your connections. Here’s to your new adventure ahead!