Our founder: LinkedIn credibility review

About this review

A prospective client, hiring manager, recruiter, investor, or partner should be able to open your LinkedIn profile and understand what you do, see evidence of your expertise, and know why they would work with you. This review exists to help you make that happen. It compares the reputation you want with the information in your profile, your posts, and LinkedIn's own assessments of your expertise.

Keeping that information current is ongoing work. As your business changes, your headline, experience, skills, recommendations, and posts need to tell the same current story. This report gives you specific edits to make now, writing assignments for the next four weeks, and a way to check progress.

Our approach: start with the available data, explain what it suggests, and assign practical work. LinkedIn keeps its scoring and ranking methods private and can change them. We can make informed recommendations from your export and published research; we cannot promise a particular score or reach increase. Throughout the report, “Finding” identifies what the data shows, “Meaning” explains its relevance to your goal, and “Action” tells you what to do.

How to use your report

• Sections 1-4: understand the findings. Every finding points to an assignment and a completion target.
• Sections 5-9: update your profile. Copy-ready headline, About, and Experience text; skills to prioritize; recommendation requests; and Featured items.
• Sections 10-13: write your next twelve posts. Each brief includes an opening, the points to cover, terminology to use, and a completion check.
• Section 14: comment where your audience is reading. A 15-30 minute routine for each weekday morning, in your own words.
• Section 15: follow the four-week checklist. Section 16: record your results in one worksheet, and plan your follow-up review in week 8.
• Sections 17-18: inspect the evidence. Research links, source files, and calculation details. D1-D7 identify your export files; R1-R8 identify external references.

How to read LinkedIn's ratings

The scores in this report were supplied by LinkedIn in your export. We did not assign them. LinkedIn reports two kinds of expertise ratings used here:

Specialty ratings: for a specific area such as redacted: Category, LinkedIn provides five separate ratings: Role and scope, Tenure and experience, Content and output, Education and credentials, and Validation and influence. Each uses a 1-4 scale, with 4 the highest value. The file names these categories but does not explain how it awards each rating.

Broad-topic ratings: areas such as Sales, Growth & Business Strategy receive one decimal score on a 1-4 scale. LinkedIn calls this a “Topic normalized score.” We use these scores to see which broad subjects stand out in your profile. The tables keep these two types separate.

We use the most recent date on which LinkedIn supplied each rating. Blank cells are treated as missing information. The findings below explain what the relevant ratings mean for your goal and link directly to your homework.

Why these ratings matter

The ratings are LinkedIn's own record of what it has inferred you are expert in, topic by topic. LinkedIn describes this part of your export as inferences made “based on data the member provided, content created, activity, and other factors.”

LinkedIn has explained that its feed matches posts to members by topic and professional interest, including posts from authors they don't follow, and that it reads each author's headline, company, and industry (R7). LinkedIn has not published how it uses the expertise ratings themselves, and this report doesn't assume it.

In practice, that rewards a clear lane. A salesperson who specializes in medical billing technology and writes about the billing problems their buyers face is building a profile and a body of posts on their buyers' topic. A salesperson who sells general office software has to choose a topic their buyers care about, because the product category alone gives a buyer little reason to read. Your goal sets your lane. The ratings show how LinkedIn's current view of you compares with it.

Which ratings you can move: LinkedIn doesn't say which of the five specialty ratings matters most. In our judgment, two reflect work you can do before your follow-up review: Content and output, through the posts and comments in this report, and Validation and influence, through endorsements and recommendations. Role and scope, Tenure and experience, and Education and credentials reflect your history and change slowly, so the assignments focus on the first two.

1. Your priorities

LinkedIn already associates you with enterprise software sales and sales strategy. Your headline, About, current role, and most of your recent posts present you as the founder of redacted: Company, a redacted: Category company, so the profile does not yet put "I want to be known as a senior SaaS B2B enterprise sales person." first. [D1] [D2] [D4]

On September 17, LinkedIn rated Enterprise Software Sales Management at 4 for Role and scope and for Tenure and experience. It rated the same specialty at 3 for Content and output and for Education and credentials (LinkedIn scale 1-4). Its Validation and influence rating was 1 (LinkedIn scale 1-4) on September 10 and September 17, after 4 on July 30. Enterprise SaaS Sales Management was last observed on May 27. Your top broad topic is Sales, Growth & Business Strategy: 3.44 (LinkedIn decimal scale 1-4), observed September 21. [D1]

Your headline, About, and current role describe redacted: Company and do not mention enterprise sales or sales leadership. Your skills list has no skill containing "senior" or "enterprise". Your 9 recommendations date from 2006-2010. In the last 12 months, 3 of your 162 posts mention a goal phrase. Your strongest sales-experience posts, such as your January 13 post on quota and your August 13 post on the budget line, are the material to build on. [D2] [D3] [D4] [D6]

Your first writing task: explain how you run an enterprise deal from the budget line, step by step, building on your August 13 post. Post 1 in section 10 gives you the opening and outline.

Your first profile task: use the headline in Assignment A. It opens with your enterprise B2B SaaS sales leadership and drops redacted: Company from the headline.

The completion targets above measure work you can do. Sections 15 and 16 separately track whether that work attracts relevant attention and whether LinkedIn's recorded assessment changes over time.

2. LinkedIn already links you to enterprise software sales and sales strategy