How can you write on LinkedIn that you were the creator of a company’s department?

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Walt Whitman, Cowboy Poet (1819-1892) is often quoted as saying ‘If you done, it ain’t bragging!”

The value of Linkedin is that you can use it for your own personal marketing agency.

I have been led to believe that people use Linkedin for three main reasons:

1. They are looking for work.
2. They need to hire somebody to work for them.
3. They have a problem to solve.

The content of your profile needs to be crafted so you come across as a solution to somebody’s problem.

You comment that “it sounds very pretentious and not humble at all…”

For many of us, it can challenge writing promotional content about ourselves. At first, it felt awkward. I learned how to do it by creating promotional copy for monthly events I was organizing for a local entrepreneurial society.

I took the same concept and applied it to my Linkedin profile and the About sections for all of my websites and Author Bios.

I’ve presented workshops on “Blow Your Own Horn: Personal Marketing & Promotion for Business Professionals, in my local community.

Once you get your head wrapped around the fact that you can and should post the experience, you need to decide whether you want to feature it i.e. so that it is easily discoverable, or merely post it i.e. have it discoverable should the reader decide to drill down in your content.

A preliminary step before working on this particular section is to determine whether you want to promote yourself in the first person i.e. ‘I did …’ or the third person using me as an example “Rae did this…”

The next step is to sit down and create some promotional content. The first step is to determine what the purpose of stating your having created a department. What do you hope to achieve? Are you hoping this will help you with future work searches? If so, go for it!

Then you need to determine what the important facts are e.g.

• What was your role in creating this department?
• Did you have assistance, or did you do it alone?
• Were there any seemingly insurmountable obstacles you overcome?
• Were there any important lessons learned?
• Is the department still functional?
• Are you still a part of the new department, or have you moved on to other challenges?
• Are the organizational skills you utilized in this project, transferrable to other ones?
• Has there been any success stories or a demonstrable return on investment for the creation of this department.

Once you have created your promotional copy, you may have to edit it for size. While there seems lots of room to post your experience in Linkedin, you don’t want to come across as too verbose.

You may also want to add impact to your Experience submission by including any documents, publications or graphics that can add to your message. You will want to make sure that you violate no copyright infringement or confidentiality issues though.

If you can elicit any Testimonials from people that helped to develop the department or have benefitted from it, it would be helpful for you to post them. It adds impact to your promotional copy. Then it becomes more than just you saying you did something.

Once you have completed and posted this section, I would encourage you to review the rest of your Linkedin profile. Is the section you completed consistent with the other sections? Should you adjust your content in the other sections? Have you remained consistent with your person i.e. first vs third?

Check out my Linkedin profile at https://ca.linkedin.com/in/raestonehouse to see how I have handled similar accomplishments.

Linkedin: Personal & Business Professional Branding Strategist

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For further discussion of job searching & career development, visit the Live For Excellence Book Store for the following publications:

Assert Yourself! Harnessing the Power of Assertiveness in Your Career

52 Power Networking Tips: How to Network Like a Pro

Blow Your Own Horn! Personal Branding for Business Professionals

You’re Hired! Job Search Strategies That Work

You’re Hired! Leveraging Your Network: Job Search Strategies That Work

You’re Hired! Resume Tactics: Job Search Strategies That Work

Power Tactics: Job Search Strategies That Work