LinkedIn has become an integral part of career and job hunting for professionals around the world. With over 740 million members, LinkedIn is the largest professional network on the internet. As such, it’s important to keep your LinkedIn profile updated with all your work experiences, skills, accomplishments etc. However, sometimes you may wish to update your work experience without broadcasting it to your entire network. Here are some tips on how to discreetly add work experience on LinkedIn.
Why update work experience discreetly?
There can be several reasons for wanting to update your work history without blasting it out to everyone in your network:
- You don’t want your current employer finding out you’re looking for new opportunities.
- You don’t want to rub it in the face of contacts who are out of work that you just landed a new role.
- You have changed jobs frequently and don’t want to appear flaky.
- You have gaps in your employment and don’t want to highlight that.
- You don’t feel the role is relevant to your career path and want to minimize its presence in your profile.
While career experts recommend being transparent about your work history, there are valid reasons for taking a more discreet approach at times. The good news is LinkedIn provides settings to let you do that.
Ways to add work experience discreetly
Here are a few ways you can update your experience on LinkedIn without broadcasting it to everyone.
Adjust profile visibility settings
LinkedIn allows you to control what’s visible to the public and your network connections under the visibility tab in settings. You can set your work experience to be visible only to you. Here’s how:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile and click on the ‘Me’ icon at the top right.
- Choose ‘Settings & Privacy’ from the dropdown menu.
- Go to the ‘Visibility’ tab under settings.
- Under the ‘Your work experience’ section, choose ‘Only you’ from the dropdown next to ‘Make my work experience visible to’.
- Click Save.
This will ensure your new work details are not visible to anyone else. You can change the visibility anytime.
Exclude experience from your profile
Another option is to add the work experience but exclude it from your profile. Here are the steps:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile and click ‘Add profile section’ on the intro card.
- Choose ‘Experience’ and then ‘Add experience’.
- Fill in the details of your new work experience.
- Once done, click on the 3 dots icon next to the position.
- Select ‘Exclude from profile’.
This will add the experience to your LinkedIn resume but not showcase it on your profile.
Add experience but don’t select ‘Notify network’
When you add a new position, LinkedIn asks if you want to notify your network about the change. By default, this option is selected.
To add experience discreetly, simply uncheck this option when prompted after adding work details. Your connections will not be alerted about it.
Wait for profile updates to accumulate
If you don’t want to hide work details completely, another approach is waiting for other profile updates to accumulate before adding the experience.
LinkedIn curates multiple profile changes and sends a summary to your connections periodically. Adding new work details along with other information can help bury the news.
Some ways to build up profile updates include:
- Adding new skills
- Getting recommendations
- Joining new groups
- Updating your summary/headline
- Adding projects
- Taking online courses
Once you have a few updates, add your new work experience. It will blend into the summary updates sent to your network.
Customize visibility by group
LinkedIn also allows you to customize what’s visible to your connections based on groups. You could expose your new work details only to close connections.
Go to settings > visibility and under ‘Select who can see your work experience’ choose ‘Custom’ then pick which groups can view it.
Pros and cons of discreetly updating experience
Here are some pros and cons of taking a discreet approach to adding work experience on LinkedIn:
Pros
- Prevents current employer from finding out
- Avoids awkwardness with unemployed contacts
- Keeps your profile clean if the role isn’t relevant
- Doesn’t highlight employment gaps
- Allows for personal choice on showcasing work history
Cons
- Prevents relevant contacts like recruiters from knowing
- Goes against the transparency LinkedIn recommends
- Could be misconstrued once discovered
- Not sharing relevant work details presents an incomplete picture
Ultimately the pros and cons will depend on your specific situation and goals for using LinkedIn. Keep them in mind as you decide the best approach.
Conclusion
Being thoughtful about showcasing your work history on LinkedIn is important. While highlighting all your experience transparently is ideal, there are valid reasons for updating discretely at times.
Using the right privacy settings and options allows you to maintain full work details on LinkedIn while controlling what’s visible to your network. Consider both the benefits and drawbacks before choosing the level of discretion that works for your career situation.
With over 740 million users, LinkedIn is the premier social network for professionals. Updating your work history here is essential for career and job search success in today’s digital era. Utilize LinkedIn’s flexibility to add new positions in a way that thoughtfully aligns with your professional needs and goals.