Quick Answer
You don’t need to include every job you’ve ever had on your LinkedIn profile. Focus on highlighting the most relevant work experiences that demonstrate your skills and qualifications for the types of roles you want to be considered for now. It’s fine to omit short-term jobs, unimportant roles, and experiences from long ago that aren’t applicable anymore.
Should You Include Every Job?
With LinkedIn’s focus on professional networking and career development, it’s natural to question how comprehensive your work history needs to be. Here are some things to consider:
- Relevance – Only include jobs that are related to your current career path and goals. Irrelevant work experiences can be distracting.
- Length – Brief stints of a few months may not be worth listing. Use your judgement.
- Timeframe – Going too far back may not be useful if those roles no longer apply to your skills.
- Job Details – More important than title is highlighting transferable skills used.
- Accomplishments – Focus on achievements rather than just responsibilities.
The key is crafting a profile tailored to how you want to be perceived by connections and recruiters. You don’t need an exhaustive job history, just the most impactful experiences.
When to Include Short-Term Jobs
Use these guidelines for determining when to add short-term employment stints:
- Relevant industry experience – Even if brief, include roles that provided key skills.
- Impressive companies – Big name employers can boost your profile, even if you were there shortly.
- Reason for leaving – If the duration was due to external factors like company closing, note this.
- Fill employment gaps – If needed to have a complete timeline and avoid concerning gaps.
Also consider adding temporary, contract or freelance gigs that are meaningful and allowed you to build your abilities.
How to Order Work Experience
One way to structure your work history is reverse chronological order, with your most recent or current job first. This has the advantage of highlighting your latest, and presumably most relevant, accomplishments.
However, it’s also fine to deviate from strict chronology if it makes sense for highlighting your narrative. For example, you may want to feature your most prestigious or impressive company first, even if from earlier in your career.
Just be sure the order flows logically and keeps relevant experiences towards the top. Anything over 10-15 years ago can typically be omitted, unless still highly pertinent to telling your professional story.
Should You List Every Responsibility?
Under each work experience, you don’t need to provide an exhaustive list of every single responsibility and duty you held.
Instead, focus on curating a few bullet points that illustrate transferable skills, impact, and breadth of experience. Choose accomplishments that align with the types of roles you are targeting next.
Quality over quantity is best here. In just 2-4 bullets you can convey what is most meaningful about each work experience.
Formatting Your Work Experience Section
To maximize readability and visual appeal, consider the following formatting tips:
- Use bullet points to break up blocks of text
- Bold key terms like job titles and company names
- Include dates of employment for context
- Organize in reverse chronological order
- Place most relevant experience first
- Highlight transferable skills gained
- Quantify achievements and impact when possible
Formatting elements like bullets, bolding, and spacing make your profile easier to quickly scan.
Should You List Every Job Title?
You don’t need to include every job title you held at each company, especially if you were promoted through various roles.
The key is finding the 1-2 titles that best reflect your position level and responsibilities. For example, just listing “Director” covers your tenure from Associate Director up through Senior Director.
Choose titles that accurately represent your experience and are clearly understandable outside your specific company. You can omit internal jargon and obscure job names that don’t travel well.
Handling Job Changes Not Due to Promotions
It’s fine to consolidate multiple lateral job changes at the same company under one position. For example, list your overall tenure as “Project Manager” even if your official title shifted between specific project teams.
But significant changes in role should be separated to accurately capture your evolving responsibilities and skillsets.
Any major new departments, disciplines, or job families should be split out as distinct positions to highlight your expanding expertise.
Should You Include Internships?
Paid internships related to your career goals can be useful to include, especially when you’re early in your career with limited experience. Unpaid internships are lower priority but can demonstrate skills and fill resume gaps.
Consider featuring internships if they:
- Provided relevant abilities or industry exposure
- Represent prestigious companies or well-known programs
- Show progression within a particular field
- Illustrate work samples you produced
Just be sure to label them as internships versus full-time roles. At a certain point in your career progression, unpaid college internships become less important to feature.
Should You List Every Promotion?
You don’t need to list every internal promotion separately if the roles were fundamentally similar.
For instance, advancing from Associate Designer to Designer to Senior Designer can be covered under one overall “Designer” position to simplify your profile.
But if the promotions involved distinctly different responsibilities or job families, list them as separate positions to better showcase your expanding skills.
Use your judgement – the key is providing enough detail to articulate your growth without unnecessary redundancy.
Should You Include Customer Service Jobs?
Entry-level customer service roles like retail cashier or restaurant server don’t need to be featured unless highly relevant to the field you now work in.
But for customer-facing careers like sales, marketing, or client services, including some customer service experience can demonstrate important soft skills like:
- Communication abilities
- Multitasking
- Patience
- Conflict resolution
So consider selectively including roles that enabled you to hone these talents. Just focus on the skills versus basic job duties.
Should Volunteer Work Be Included?
Volunteer work can certainly be added to your LinkedIn profile, especially if it’s relevant to your career or illustrates important skills.
Possible examples to include could be volunteering roles that provided:
- Industry exposure
- Leadership opportunities
- Event planning
- Public speaking
- Communication abilities
Just be sure to clearly label volunteer work as unpaid roles versus paid jobs. Focus on skills over basic responsibilities when describing.
Should You List Unrelated Side Jobs?
Odds jobs like dog walking, babysitting, lawn mowing, and bartending don’t need to be added when unrelated to your professional goals.
But “side hustles” that allowed you to demonstrate relevant abilities, gain technical skills, or make professional connections could be worthwhile to include.
Some examples could be freelance gigs, entrepreneurial efforts, consulting work, or teaching roles loosely connected to your field. Use your judgement here.
Should You Include Every Leadership Role?
To avoidredundancy, you likely don’t need to list every minor leadership role separately. For instance, you could just list “Section Leader” without including “Floor Team Leader” and “Shift Team Leader” first.
Focus on featuring key leadership roles that enabled you to demonstrate growth in responsibility and management capabilities over time. Avoid overly granular or repetitive listings that don’t communicate meaningful progression.
Should Coursework Be Listed?
Generally speaking, listing individual courses on your LinkedIn profile isn’t ideal because recruiters care more about real-world experience versus classroom learning.
However, relevant coursework could make sense to include if it directly demonstrates key skills or training for the types of roles you’re targeting.
For example, specialized certifications, technical training programs, and industry-specific courses may be worth including if they strengthen your candidacy. Just be selective rather than listing general curriculum.
Should You Include Every Skill?
Avoid listing every technical ability, personal attribute, and soft skill imaginable on your LinkedIn profile simply for the sake of having a lengthy skills section.
This excessive approach can ultimately dilute the impact of your top relevant skills that employers care about most.
Instead, carefully curate approximately 10-20 key skills that align with the types of roles you want to be considered for. Focus on skills that can be validated by the experience and accomplishments on your profile.
Quality over quantity is best for a compelling skills section.
Should You List Awards and Honors?
Featuring select professional awards, honors, and organizational leadership roles on your LinkedIn profile can certainly add credibility and demonstrate achievement.
Possible examples would be:
- Industry recognitions
- Sales achievement awards
- Educational honors
- Special designations
- Professional association leadership
Just be selective – focus on featuring the 3-5 most prestigious and meaningful accomplishments relevant to your current goals. Too many awards can seem like resume filler.
Should You Include Test Scores?
Generally, listing SAT scores, ACT scores, GRE results, or other standardized test scores on your LinkedIn profile is not recommended.
These numbers are typically only meaningful for college applications, not career progression, and take up valuable profile space better used for outlining relevant work experience and skills.
However, specific test scores directly relevant to your industry, like IT certifications, may make sense to include as qualifications. Just ensure they strengthen rather than detract from your professional brand.
Should You List Every Project?
Avoid an excessive project history that feels more like a resume info dump versus a strategic LinkedIn profile.
Instead, under your work experiences, selectively highlight 2-4 major projects that enabled you to demonstrate relevant skills and achieve impact aligned with your professional goals.
For example, if you want to be an event planner, describe leading key aspects of large conferences. If you aim to be a data analyst, summarize major analysis and dashboards you spearheaded.
Curate projects that tell your career story versus listing every minor job task. Feature transferable skills over basic responsibilities.
Should You Include References?
Avoid listing references directly on your LinkedIn profile. Keep these available upon request instead.
Profiles containing references tend to seem less professional and can catch people off guard if they are contacted without warning.
If you want to thank people who have supported you, the LinkedIn recommendations feature allows colleagues to validate you in their own words. Just keep references themselves confidential.
Conclusion
Be strategic when filling out the work experience section of your LinkedIn profile. Focus on highlighting roles that demonstrate relevant skills, progression, and achievements to support your current career goals.
Quality over quantity applies – you don’t need to include every job, promotion, or minor responsibility. Instead, curate your most meaningful experiences.
Keep your profile focused, concise and tailored to convey the key talents you want hiring managers and recruiters to notice. This presents a compelling, results-driven narrative that communicates your personal brand and abilities.