I have seen so many people reducing their chance to get a new job, that I decided to put together some advice. Much of it can be implemented with minimal effort. Most of these recommendations are triggered by things I have seen on LinkedIn. So there is naturally a lot of advice in the context of LinkedIn.
You may find some words in this article a bit harsh. They are not in there to insult, but create a sense of urgency. You should look at them as an indication of importance.
There is a chance that the entire article contains nothing new for you. Congratulations! This means that you are already above average. 🙂
This text is rather long, so you might be tempted to only read certain parts. I rarely recommend to read the entire piece, but this is an exception. The biggest value comes from reading it completely and thinking about what it means for you. Yes, you also gain from speed-reading it and applying things as-is in a copy-paste manor. But you would miss a lot.
So let’s go …
The big picture
The overall question you need to answer for yourself: What image of myself do I want to convey? And then think about how this image could be interesting for a recruiter. You are trying to position yourself as the ideal candidate. That is basically the same as trying to sell something.
So what happens when someone has to make a critical purchasing decision? In a simplified model there are two main parts. First, you search the market for products that are advertised such, that they seem to fit your requirements. Second, you try to verify the claims that the seller has made. You look into independent reviews, check product ratings at sites like Amazon, etc. What you basically want is to reduce your risk of buyer’s remorse.
Let’s now transfer this to your job application. Your LinkedIn profile and CV do the positioning for you. Do not use a single CV for all applications, but tailor it as much as possible to what is required. That does not mean to add false content! You would burn your reputation in a market that is smaller than you think. I have no idea if “black lists” exists that are shared between HR departments. But to err on the side of caution, I suggest you work under the assumption that such lists do exist.
Recruiters get very many CVs. So you have to make it easy for them. Do your research how CVs should look like for this company and/or person. Think of it as an intelligence gathering exercise. Who can you ask? Do you have someone in your LinkedIn network who knows the recruiter or company? What does the company homepage say about applying?
AI has also found its way into recruiting. The most basic use is to screen applications for certain key words. So if a particular technology is mentioned in the job description and you have the knowledge, do add that key word. If the key word is spelled wrong, which happens shockingly often, my suggestion is to use a phrase like “webMethods Integration Server (referred to as ‘webMetods IntSRv’)”. I made this one up, but you get the point: The search algorithm can find what it is looking for, and you have avoided adding a mistake that the hiring manager would probably not like.
Unfortunately, I have seen many people act in a very “entitled” way. Statements like “find me a job” (literally!) disqualify you immediately. Instead you want to appear as humble, but not servile. Know your value, but be friendly and non-arrogant when talking about it.
Even if the other side acts in an unfriendly or otherwise not so professional way. Stay calm and remember that we always meet twice in life.
Read, understand, act
Many, if not all, job postings I see on LinkedIn contain specific instructions how to apply. And that is what you should do. Please do not comment “I’m interested”, if it says to send an email, LinkedIn direct message, or use an online portal.
It creates the impression that you are not able to read and understand a rather simple and short piece of text, that seems to be important for you. So the recruiter will naturally think: How sloppy will this person be with things that are less critical?
Perhaps some people followed the required procedure, but added that comment in addition. Not a good idea. People don’t know that you did things properly, but only see something different. So please remove such comments.
Do not send your CV to non-company email addresses. I have seen a lot of cases where people, who claim to work for a large system integrator, ask you to send your CV to a personal email address (mostly GMail). You probably don’t know this person and would give them information that could be used for identity theft.
On writing
There are various issues I often see about the way people write. Together they create an impression about the author. Some make a good first impression, but many profiles I see would disqualify people right away. So in what bucket do you want to be sorted?
But there is a far more important aspect here. Most technical jobs are about precision and IT is certainly no exception. The computer does exactly what we tell it. So the ability to express yourself with utmost precision is key in many ways. If you cannot express yourself precisely, chances are that your thinking also has room for improvement. At least that is what a good recruiter will consider.
To train this, I recommend to practice writing on a regular basis. LinkedIn is great place to start. You can provide value to people with rather short texts. If you are more adventurous, a personal blog is a good idea. And if you don’t read English texts frequently, please start doing so.
Proper English
Many messages I have received on LinkedIn were written in very poor English. Not simply an occasional typo, but so bad that I really couldn’t understand what people actually wanted from me.
Yes, for many folks English is not the native language (including me). But do you really want to convey the picture of being ignorant and sloppy? You want something from the recruiter. So they can expect a certain level of effort and professionalism. If your English is not good, ask a friend or use some online tool.
To rephrase: Think about this as making it easy for people to do business with you. Ask yourself: Where would you buy something online? The shop that has a hard-to-understand web page, full of typos, and a checkout that only works 70% of the time? Or the clean and simple-to-use shop that integrates with your preferred payment method?
The same logic applies to any professional communication. If I have a hard time to even understand what you want, how will this impact my actions?
Typos
A single typo is not a problem, The more you write, the more often that will happen. But if your text is riddled with typos, it creates an image. (You see the theme?) It also makes reading more difficult. Spell checkers are not 100% reliable, but today they are doing a pretty reasonable job. So please pay attention.
Now comes the big one for folks in the webMethods space: You are working with webMethods, not Webmethods, nor webmethods, nor WebMethods, nor … If you don’t know how to write the name of your area of expertise, how big is that expertise? I see this ALL the time and it feels that in more than 50% of all cases it is wrong. That hurts!
Fun fact: When proof-reading this article, that section here literally contained the most typos. 😉
Wrong information
According to a lot of people webMethods is still owned by Software AG. Folks, the acquisition by IBM was announced in December 2023 and finished more than 9 months ago. By the way: While “Software AG” still exists as a brand, it has ceased to exist as a legal entity.
There are likely other such cases. So please do your research. It all comes back to the image you create of yourself.
Abbreviations
The use of abbreviations is a delicate thing. It makes it easier for you as the writer, but more difficult for the reader. Even for me who has spent more than 20 years with webMethods. Reading “wM IS” requires more mental effort than “webMethods Integration Server”. Now imagine how it is for someone who deals with many different technologies – like a recruiter.
This is even more pronounced for less common cases, like “SAG”. There are a few exceptions to this, and IBM is one of them. Or do you prefer “International Business Machines”?
Now comes the part that triggered the idea for this entire article. LinkedIn is a highly relevant tool in my professional life. It allows to get in touch with many amazing people. So it is worth to be given some thought.
Profile
There is a number of points worth mentioning for the LinkedIn profile. The overarching theme is to avoid typos, abbreviations that people might not now, inconsistencies, and everything that would make it harder to find you. You should look at your LinkedIn profile as an online version of your CV.
So let’s now go over some more specific points:
- First and last name:
It seems that a lot of people do not have a proper last name. Instead I often see “Mike S.” or something similar. LinkedIn is not Facebook, so please correct this.
There are regions with multiple first and last names (e.g. Spain). I would suggest that you restrict yourself to what you usually use in a business context. Otherwise you confuse the hell out of people.
Do you live in a country where names start with a lower-case character? Yeah, me neither. So don’t call yourself “dan webster”. - Picture:
You should have picture of yourself. Ideally, it has been made for the occasion by a professional photographer, but that is not a strict requirement in my opinion. As long as you look friendly and wear reasonable attire, it is fine for me (others might disagree, though). People want to see your face, so the picture should mostly show that plus a bit of the upper body. The background shouldn’t be too distracting and no other people should be part of the photo. - Background picture:
Your background is the canvas to advertise. It will be placed very prominently next to your face. So it should contain information about you. That can either be simple text, you on stage during an event, etc. Please be careful with trademarks like company logos or product names. All bigger organizations have information on their website how trademarked names and symbols may or may not be used. Complying with that and highlighting a registration with the ® symbol are professional courtesy. - Headline:
The headline is another prominent place for information about you. In contrast to the background picture, it can be searched. So think very carefully what to put here. It should be what a recruiter or potential client would be looking for. For technical roles I would put the technology or product name here. The same would in my opinion apply when your commercial role is strongly centered around a product or technical area.
For someone working in webMethods I would recommend things like “webMethods consultant” or (even better) “webMethods update specialist”, “webMethods performance expert”, etc. See how much more they say about you than simply “Integration Consultant” or even worse “Consultant”?
Another big issues here is that in many profiles the headline still refers to a past job. Your ex-employer may or may not be happy that you still advertise for them. But how does it look to others?
I am not taking a hard stance against the “ex-company” that some people put in (often multiple times). But in general my view is that it is a waste of precious space. Think about how it is it relevant for your “sale”. Do you want to show your future potential or brag that you once had a prestigious job? If it was so prestigious after all, that is. Having been the personal aid of your country’s political leader or to the chairman of a really big company is interesting here. But having been one of 100k+ employees is not, at least in my current opinion. But perhaps you can convince me of the opposite. - Contact details:
This is somewhat optional in my opinion. But if you provide contact details, give them some love. The thing I see most often are telephone numbers without a country code. IT is a global business, even if you are not actively looking for a job outside your country. And while the chance that someone wants to give you a call is probably slim, it just looks much better with country code. - Experience:
Many people just list a number of completely meaningless job titles in their experience section. “Senior Consultant” has zero meaning, other than you are hopefully not a rookie anymore. You are throwing away a big chance to shine here. But don’t write long stories either. Have a crisp description what you did as part of that job.
There is certainly more, but those are the basics for me. Having them right is a great starting point. In addition I recommend that you try to put yourself into the shoes of the reader: If you were a recruiter, what would make you interested in the profile?
Activity
Provide value to people. This can have various forms. Here are some examples:
- Re-post valuable content:
Since most postings on LinkedIn do not provide real value, those that do stick out in very positive way. So if you come across interesting stuff, why not re-post it. That shows your thoughtfulness and gives credit to the author.
If you decide to not use the re-post functionality but create your own post with someone else’s content, make it very clear at the beginning (not the end) of the post where it is coming from. Not doing so will only make you loose credibility and risk to be blocked by the original author (I will certainly do that).
Another aspect of taking false credit is that the recruiter might ask you something in that context. It would become very obvious very quickly that you are not the expert that you claimed to be. Not a good idea for getting a new job. And even if you manage to get through, you end up with a job that is above your head. Your colleagues will notice quickly and your reputation goes down the drain faster than you ever thought possible.
On the other hand giving proper credit shows honesty and willingness to learn at the same time. Isn’t that a much better image to create of yourself?
A bonus would be to add your own thoughts. Not some trivial praise like “This is great stuff”, but perhaps an adjacent aspect. Example: If the original post is about a more technical side of DDD, why not write a bit how DDD can help in conversations with the business side. - Interpret advanced content for beginners;
If the original author writes about something rather complicated, you could add how this is relevant for less experienced people. Because this is a side that is really difficult to address, once you are an expert in something. You are so immersed (aka deep in the trenches), that it is almost impossible to see why a beginner struggles with it. - Be careful wit AI-generated content:
I have recently seen quite some webMethods content that to me looked AI-generated. It was close to trivial, used a lot of words to convey something that could have been said much shorter, and sounded somewhat artificial. Think about what value that delivers to people and what it tells them about you.
AI can be a good tool to rephrase something. I sometimes use it as a sounding board, if I struggle to find the right words. But even then I do not simply copy-paste everything, but take it as a starting point for additional thoughts. - Engage with comments that add value:
Few people leverage the potential of comments. They allow you to reach people you are not connected with (yet). And since few folks write comments (even fewer write good ones) you will stand out.
But please don’t comment with something like just “Great post”, for that we have likes. Instead do “Great post. It made me think and here are some additional aspects that crossed my mind. [..]” - Ask good questions:
This is basically a special kind of comment. It can also easily be combined with a statement. So, taking the example from the comments directly above, in addition to adding your own thoughts, you can finish with a question about what other aspects people see. That gives them an opportunity to join the discussion.
Important: Make sure your questions show that have done your part of the thinking. People asking for something that 30 seconds and Google can answer, come across as lazy (or worse) and abusive of others’ time. - Share project insights:
People always love real-world examples and insights. So if you tell about things you experienced on a project, that will usually be received very well. Some people might now think: But if I tell this to the world, I diminish my value. Well, if your entire value-add is a short story that fits into a LinkedIn post, you have a real problem anyway. Plus, if nobody knows about your experience, where is the value?
Make sure to obfuscate details, so that organizations and people are not exposed. If the latter is not a problem in your culture, be advised that it is frowned upon by many others and often also a legal offense.
Learning through content creation
This is strongly related to LinkedIn activity. So far the main value we talked about was positioning yourself. But there is another aspect and long-term it is far more important for me: That is learning. Today life-long learning is more important than ever. Yes, I know: That was already the case 5, 10, and 20 years ago. 😉
Still there is a new aspect and that is AI. If you write yourself that takes longer and requires mental effort. Whereas with AI you have the result (let’s ignore quality for a second) much faster. But what did you learn? Of course knowing how to use AI effectively is also something worth learning. But that is not all. Let’s look at how search engines, as another relatively(!) new tool, can be compared.
When I started programming search engines didn’t exist, and neither did the WWW. You had to rely on printed documentation, computer magazines, and news groups. If there was a problem with e.g. a C library, it could take several hours to figure it out. Today you often find the answer in a few minutes. Does this mean that learning a programming language has been superfluous for the last 25 years? Of course not.
There are many things that an online search will not (easily) tell you. Plus what if you don’t find the answer online? Then you have to dig in and do things the hard way. Perhaps you need to look at the source code of the Java library you are using. Or turn on the remote debugger. If you never did this, you will have a hard time when it hits you first. Knowing Murphy’s Law, that will probably be during an all-nighter over a weekend before a critical deployment …
It is the same with AI, which is just another tool. Yes, we are currently (March 2025) all learning where it makes sense to use it. There are technical and commercial reasons why some use-cases, while somewhat possible, might not be ideal. And if someone tells you that in one year software developers are not needed anymore, they either are ignorant, or want to sell something, or both. Will jobs change for software developers? Yes. Is that a challenge? Yes. But if you adapt it is certainly not the end of the world and possibly the biggest opportunity of your entire career.
Now where does writing stuff by yourself fit in here? It requires you to think and that means learning. As I often jokingly tell people: When I start writing an article like this one, I have a pretty good overall idea of the end result in my head. Yet in literally all cases the finished text has very little in common with this first mental version. Because when I write my thoughts flow and additional ideas “creep” up. If you find this strange, I can tell you that it is actually the normal way for new knowledge to be created. There is a wonderful (long) video about this on YouTube, where the then-leader of the writing program of the University of Chicago explains all this. Even if you only watch the first 10-15 minutes, it is time extremely well spent.
If that sounds too “esoteric” for you, there are also more practical things to learn. For non-native speakers your English gets better (really important). Closely related is the ability to express a non-trivial thought in written form. Not that many people are really good with this and it is a huge advantage for projects. Concise writing requires concise thinking. IT projects, and especially software engineering, are largely about managing complexity. So if you are good at thinking in layers and being able to look at the abstract patterns through the details, that is a huge differentiator. Which in turn makes you a valuable asset for every project and employer.
This learning effect is probably not providing strong results short term. But it is in my opinion vital in the long run. As a personal side-note: I started my private blog back in 2008. If you look through the posts you can see how my writing improved over time. Your career is a marathon, not a sprint. So the sooner you start the better.
In closing
That’s it for today. I do hope that this helps you for your job search, especially if the job market is challenging. If you miss something or have ideas for other details, please let me know.
If you want me to write about other aspects of this topic, please leave a comment or send an email to info@jahntech.com. The same applies if you want to talk how we at JahnTech can help you with your project.
© 2024, 2025 by JahnTech GmbH and/or Christoph Jahn. No unauthorized use or distribution permitted.
