If you can’t flex on LinkedIn, where CAN you flex?
This is the one platform specifically designed for you to brag about your accomplishments.
That’s not a bug. That’s the entire point.
And yet.
I’ve watched people change their actual job titles because they decided the real one sounded too pretentious. Not embellish. Not exaggerate. DOWNGRADE. On purpose.
She softened her title. Then she fixed it.
One connection was executive level. She’d quietly downgraded her title because she was worried about coming across as “too senior-level.”
I didn’t even know that “too senior” was a thing to downgrade, TBH.
So I gave her some straight talk: if you want to work with executives, they need to know you’re one of them. Because the moment you open your mouth, it’s going to be obvious you’re not middle management.
Own the title.
She fixed it. She found work.
He had the title. He just wouldn’t back it up.
The other one came to me for help with his profile. He’d been a VP of Sales at a startup, and when he went looking for his next role, someone told him his title didn’t sound VP-level.
He assumed they thought he was lying. So instead of backing up what he’d done, he changed his title.
Because, he explained, a VP at a startup “isn’t the same” as a VP at a Fortune 500.
(No shit, Sherlock.)
Except he wasn’t applying to Fortune 500s. He was looking at growth-stage companies. You know, startups. The exact place a startup VP title means something.
I told him the title was never the problem. The problem was that his Experience section didn’t prove his worth. Nothing on there explained that it was a startup, or what led to that role.
What did he actually accomplish? What made him good enough to get promoted in the first place? Growing a startup takes a completely different skillset than running a department at a big company.
THAT is a story worth telling.
He didn’t listen. Pretty sure he’s still looking.
(Heavy sigh. I really do try.)
The thing they had in common
Same move, same reason. Both shrank themselves to fit some expectation they imagined other people had.
The difference was what sat underneath.
She had the profile to back her up. Real receipts, genuinely executive-level. She just got in her own way.
He didn’t. And worse, he didn’t see why it mattered.
LinkedIn is not the place for false modesty. It never was.
If your title is real, own it. Then make your profile prove you’ve earned it.
Because if you can’t flex on LinkedIn, where CAN you flex?