Changing your job title on LinkedIn without notifying your connections can be useful in certain situations where you may not be ready to announce a job change publicly. However, LinkedIn does not have a built-in way to hide job changes from your connections. Any edits made to the experience section of your profile will trigger a notification to your connections. That said, there are some workarounds that allow you to change your job more discretely.
Why Would You Want to Change Jobs Without Notifying Connections?
Here are some common reasons why someone might want to update their job on LinkedIn without broadcasting it to their network:
- You’ve accepted a new job offer but are still working out the details like start date, contract signing, etc. before announcing it.
- You want to test out how the new job title looks on your profile before making it public.
- You don’t want your current employer or coworkers to know you’re job searching.
- You want to wait until after you’ve officially started the new job before notifying your network.
- You are changing roles within the same company and don’t need to alert your wider connections.
- You want to avoid notifications flooding your connections’ feeds.
- You are making minor edits to your existing job description and title.
Having the ability to tweak your employment details without broadcasts allows you more control in managing your profile and privacy.
LinkedIn Notifications When Updating Job
LinkedIn automatically generates notifications when you make changes to your experience section, including:
- Editing your employment status (current, past role, etc).
- Changing your job title or company name.
- Adding or removing roles from your experience.
- Altering your employment dates.
- Updating your job description/responsibilities.
These notifications show up in your connections’ feeds in real time as you edit your profile.
The notification will typically say “[Your name] updated their work experience” or “Congratulations to [your name] on their new role at [company]”.
It does not specify exactly what was changed, but it does broadcast to your network that you updated your job details.
How to Change Jobs Without Posting to Feed
While there is no way to secretly tweak your LinkedIn job within the experience section, there are a couple workarounds:
Option 1: Temporarily Exclude From Profile
If you want to change your current job title or company, the easiest method is to temporarily exclude that role from your profile:
- Go to your experience section.
- Click the 3 dots next to your current role.
- Select “Exclude from profile”.
- This will remove the job from your public profile. You can now edit your remaining experience without triggering notifications.
- Once you are ready to broadcast the change, go back and re-add the new job details.
The downside is you will have an employment gap on your profile until you un-exclude the role. But this allows you to change jobs privately.
Option 2: Create a New Profile Draft
LinkedIn allows you to create draft profiles that are unpublished. You can use this to tweak your job details:
- Go to your profile and click “View profile as…”.
- Then select “Create a new draft”.
- This will generate a copy of your profile that is unpublished and invisible to others.
- Edit your experience on this draft version without triggering notifications.
- When ready, go back to your main profile and re-add the new job details.
The draft profile essentially serves as a sandbox for you to test out changes before making them public. One limitation is any edits you make will not be saved if you discard the draft.
Option 3: Manually Update After Starting Job
If you want to wait until after you’ve actually started the new job before updating LinkedIn, simply hold off on editing your profile until your first day. Then add the new details once you’ve officially changed roles. This avoids prematurely notifying your network. Just be sure to toggle your old job as a past role once you update your current employer.
Minimizing LinkedIn Notifications
While you cannot eliminate notifications entirely, you can reduce spam by making your job changes gradually over time, such as:
- First update your employment dates.
- Then tweak your job title/company name.
- Finally edit your job description.
Spreading out smaller changes avoids flooding your connections with multiple updates.
You can also remove contacts you don’t interact with frequently if you want to limit who sees your notifications. Pruning your connections list reduces unnecessary broadcasts.
Ethical Considerations
It is perfectly acceptable to want more privacy and control over your employment status updates. However, it is unethical to falsify or misrepresent your work history or qualifications. Some important caveats:
- Never claim skills, titles, credentials that you have not earned.
- Be truthful about employment dates, responsibilities, and achievements.
- Have a valid reason for excluding a role – don’t hide jobs for dubious purposes.
- Proactively notify key stakeholders before the public announcement.
Maintaining the integrity of your profile builds trust and credibility over time. Use discretion when minimizing job change broadcasts.
Conclusion
While LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to secretly edit the experience section, there are a few tactics to change your job details more discretely:
- Temporarily exclude your current role from your profile.
- Create an unpublished draft profile to test changes.
- Wait until after you’ve started the job to update your profile.
Make changes gradually to avoid flooding your network with notifications. And always act ethically when managing your profile. With some extra care, you can reshape your employment story on your terms.