ChatGPT Can Be Used to Improve or Rewrite Your LinkedIn Headline
Are you satisfied with your LinkedIn Headline? This is one of the most important parts of the LinkedIn profile for being found in search.
If not, give ChatGPT, the latest Artificial Intelligence tool a try. This will be the first in a series of posts on how you can tip-toe into using one of the most valuable tools available.
If you are saying, “What is this thing ChatGPT?”, then I want you to listen to my podcast episode ChatGPT Demystified: How to Harness the Benefits for Career Success with Polly Allen. Polly is an expert in the field and gives a good overview of what its best uses are.
If you have not used it all then watch the following tutorial ChatGPT Tutorial – A Crash Course on Chat GPT for Beginners.
Some Additional Tools Before We Get Started
The video above was published in January 2023 and I am publishing this post in April of 2023. That is light years in the world of ChatGPT.
There is a Chrome or Firefox plugins that I will be using.
- ChatGPT for Search Engines – Prompt Templates for Chrome
- ChatGPT for Search Engines – Prompt Templates for Firefox
These are important because I want you to think of ChatGPT as a very young and inexperienced intern. If you have ever worked with a college intern, you have to give them very good instructions to get the kind of work you want out of them.
ChatGPT is the same. The more detailed instructions you give it, the more likely ChatGPT will produce the results you want. The Prompt Templates are useful for structuring the opening request.
Let’s Start Improving our LinkedIn Headline
We will be using the LinkedIn Headline prompt.
Listen to the most recent episode
When I select the LinkedIn Headline prompt, I am given the following:
There is nothing magical about this template. It is just giving you a framework to enter data that will guide ChatGPT to generate what you want. Notice the following:
- You are asking for 3 approachable LinkedIn headlines of less than 120 characters. You can replace “approachable” with a better descriptive word if you would like.
- You are asking for 3 but you could ask for more, or as you see later in this post, I ask for 3 more.
- My life outside of work is labeled optional. All of this is optional.
There is an option to select a style and tone which looks like the following:
After selecting the language of English (United States) the opening prompt looks like the following with the ChatGPT response:
Well… that was okay but I wanted something a little bolder and snarkier. I told it to generate it with a tone of snarky. Notice that Snarky is not on the list.
I like these better.
Notice that I am just having a conversation with ChatGPT. The prompt was there just to get you started.
I liked those but I want more possibilities and therefore, I asked for 3 more.
Maybe I Just Want to Revise My Current LinkedIn Headline
That is good but let’s see how ChatGPT would tell me to improve my current headline. I have learned something about myself from this conversation. Let’s ask it to improve on my current LinkedIn headline.
That was pretty good but the Forbes Top 100 Career Website was 8 years ago. Let’s see what it tells me when I tell it to remove it.
This is an Iterative Process
You are having a conversation with ChatGPT. I could have also asked it to look at my current profile to give me suggestions.
My career has been eclectic as my About section in my LinkedIn About section clearly states. I do not want to be known for the 22 years at IBM or the 2 successful tech startups and therefore ask it to consider only my work at Career Pivot.
I like that a lot better and I could continue to iterate getting different variations until I have enough material to work with.
ChatGPT is not writing this material in a vacuum. I have to provide it with enough information to generate new LinkedIn headlines for me to choose from.
ChatGPT Has not Hallucinated … Yet
ChatGPT can suffer from what I call MSU Disorder (MSU = Make Stuff Up). You may have read if you do not give it enough information and it needs to fill things in to make the content make sense, it will hallucinate or make stuff up. Therefore, you need to check EVERYTHING that ChatGPT generates.
It is very unlikely to hallucinate in writing LinkedIn headlines because they are relatively short. However, if I asked it to write my About section for my LinkedIn profile, or write a customized cover letter, there is a much greater opportunity for that to happen.
ChatGPT is Great for Ideation
I hope you can see that ChatGPT is great for coming up with new ideas. It speeds up the creative process but you still need to guide it. Remember this is just like working with a young inexperienced intern. The more guidance you give it the better the results and over time it will learn what you want.
One thing I have learned is if I ask it to write in a snarky manner, it may drop in a cuss word from time to time. Now when I tell it to write a longer form document in a snarky manner, I tell it to not use any cuss words.
In my next post, I will take you through the process of rewriting my LinkedIn About section.
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