LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for showcasing professional experiences and achievements. With over 750 million members worldwide, it offers invaluable visibility and networking opportunities for career development. Determining what to include in your LinkedIn profile work history section is an important part of cultivating your personal brand and attracting career opportunities.
How much work history should you include?
As a general rule, you should include at least your last two to three positions, along with details on your responsibilities, achievements, and skills gained. However, there are no hard and fast limits on how much you can include. The key is to showcase the experiences most relevant to your current career goals and field. Some tips:
- For recent graduates with limited work history, list any professional experiences like internships, freelance work, and extracurricular leadership. Volunteer work and class projects can also demonstrate valuable skills.
- Mid-career professionals should highlight positions from the last 10-15 years. Go into more detail on your most recent and relevant roles.
- For job seekers changing careers or industries, emphasize transferable skills and related experience vs. just chronological work history.
- Leadership profiles and senior executives can list accomplishments further back to convey their breadth of experience.
What positions should you include?
Again, the key is including the experiences most relevant to your professional brand and career goals. Here are some tips on choosing which roles to highlight:
- List your most recent or current job first. This is generally given the most weight by recruiters and hiring managers.
- Include roles that allowed you to develop hard skills directly transferable to the type of position you seek.
- Showcase jobs where you increased responsibility, managed larger teams, or achieved measurable successes like awards.
- For career changers, identify positions that developed soft skills or general knowledge that applies to your new field.
- You don’t need to include every single job. It’s okay to omit very short-term roles or those not relevant to your brand.
How much detail should you provide on each position?
For your most recent and relevant positions include:
- Job title
- Company name
- Employment dates
- Location (city and state/country)
- An overview of your role and responsibilities
- Key achievements and contributions
- Skills developed or used
For supporting roles, brief descriptions with highlights will suffice. Adjust descriptions to fit your brand. Technical roles may warrant more detail on specialized skills and knowledge, while soft skill-based positions could focus on relationship-building, communications, and other capabilities.
What formatting should you use?
Proper formatting is important for a clean, easy-to-scan work history section. Follow these tips:
- Place jobs in reverse chronological order, with current or most recent position first
- Separate positions into clear sections with company, title, dates, and description
- Use bullet points to break up and call out important information
- Emphasize achievements, skills, and responsibilities most relevant to your goals
- Keep descriptions concise – 2-4 bullets per position maximum
What about gaps in your work history?
It’s common for professionals to have gaps between jobs or take time off at some point. A few tips for handling gaps:
- If it was recent, you can omit short gaps of a month or less. Just list years for employment dates, e.g. 2021-2022 vs months.
- For longer gaps of 6 months or more, you can indicate you were “On sabbatical” or “Seeking new opportunities”. This shows it was a purposeful break.
- Consider including related experiences that developed relevant skills, like consulting projects, volunteer work or courses.
- Be prepared to briefly explain gaps if questioned in interviews. Focus on skills developed during time off.
Should you list every job or just go back 10-15 years?
Here are some guidelines on years of work history to include:
- Recent graduates – List all relevant professional experience, even part-time jobs. Go back to freshman year internships or relevant college extracurriculars.
- Early to mid-career – Focus on highlighting the last 10-15 years of experience. You can omit jobs from before that time.
- Later career – Once you have over 15 years of experience, you can omit very old positions and highlight the last 15-20 years (unless you have relevant experience from further back worth showcasing).
- Leadership profiles – Senior executives and C-suite officers may want to go further back in their work history to convey extensive experience.
Should you include every job or just the ones relevant to your goals?
As a general rule, only highlight the positions most relevant to conveying your personal brand, skills and career aspirations. You do not need to include every single job, especially ones from early in your career or unrelated fields. Consider omitting:
- Jobs from high school or college that are not relevant – retail, food service, etc.
- Internships unrelated to your current industry or function
- Brief stints of a few months in jobs that didn’t add to your brand or experience
- Roles more than 15 years old that lack importance to your narrative
That said, it’s okay to include some not strictly relevant roles from early in your career to show progression over time. Use your judgment based on your brand and goals.
How should you handle job changes or promotions with one company?
If you were promoted or changed roles within the same company, you have a few options for how to list on your profile:
- List each role individually with its own description, dates, responsibilities, etc.
- Group under the same company but have separate sections for each position’s details.
- List the full tenure as one position but break out responsibilities and achievements by time period or role.
Choose the option that best conveys the growth and increasing complexity of your roles with that employer. Multiple individual positions or grouped with detailed descriptions of each role are ideal for showcasing promotions over time.
Should you include company details like size, industry, etc?
Including some brief context on companies you worked for can add helpful context for your work history. You can include:
- Company size – revenue, # of employees
- Industry or sector
- Business focus or areas
- Brief description of company if not widely known
This gives readers a better understanding of the scope of each role. But keep company descriptions brief – 1-2 bullets max. You want the focus to remain on your position responsibilities and achievements.
What about listing clients or projects vs. company names?
If you worked as an independent consultant or freelancer, you may want to spotlight key clients or projects versus just listing “Self-employed”. This adds more credibility and details. You can structure a few ways:
- Have a separate “Consulting Experience” or “Freelance Experience” section and list key projects/clients under that heading chronologically.
- For large projects, list under the client name as you would a normal position with title, dates, and achievements.
- For multiple smaller gigs, you can group under a general heading like “Independent Consultant” and then list out key projects and clients in the description.
Just be sure you do not share any proprietary or confidential client information without permission.
Should you include numbers, percentages, or metrics?
Quantifying your achievements and responsibilities can make your work history really stand out. Consider including:
- Budgets or totals you managed
- Percentage growth figures
- Productivity or efficiency gains
- Revenue generated
- Amounts of cost savings
- Number of people, projects, clients managed
However, you want to avoid overusing superlative terms like “best”, “most”, “largest”, etc. unless you can back them up with real metrics or recognitions. Focus on facts over exaggerations.
Should you say you were promoted or just list each position?
Highlighting that you were promoted or earned expanded responsibilities shows career growth. Options include:
- Listing each role and indicating you were “Promoted to” the next position.
- Starting role with “Began as X, promoted to Y in [date].”
- Including a “Progress” section that says “Earned promotions from X to Senior X in 2018, X Manager in 2020.”
However, you do not need to explicitly say “promoted” – it is often clear from job titles increasing in seniority or scope at the same company. The focus should be on showcasing your increasing responsibilities and successes.
Should you include awards or other recognitions?
Relevant awards, honours and recognitions can enhance your work history and personal brand. Consider including:
- Industry awards
- Salesperson/Performer of the Month
- Employee of the Year
- Company awards or milestones achieved
- Grants or fellowships (for academics/researchers)
You can create an “Awards & Recognition” section or list under the corresponding position. Just be sure they are relevant and enhance your professional story.
Conclusion
Your LinkedIn work history section is a chance to build your professional brand and showcase your career progression. Be strategic in selecting which roles to highlight based on your goals. Focus on responsibilities, achievements, skills, and measurable results over merely listing job titles. Proper formatting and concise, impactful descriptions will create a compelling work history to communicate your value to future employers or opportunities.