LinkedIn Brings Back the Ability to Re-Order Your Experience
In the 2017 LinkedIn Updates, many of us screamed at our screens when we saw LinkedIn had removed the option to re-order the Experience section of our LinkedIn Profile. The good news is, in the June updates, this function is now back.
It is now possible to re-order your LinkedIn Experience to feature the entry you want the most attention for.
Why is this important?
Your prospects have a limited attention span and, until you become relevant to them, they have no interest in learning about who you are and what you do. That’s not being harsh. It’s being real. Just as you wouldn’t ask each person you pass on the street for in-depth information about them (or anything), you wouldn’t on LinkedIn either. Read the full post on this.
Therefore, the order of our LinkedIn Experience is of utmost importance. By default, the Experience Section is ordered chronologically so your most recent and open positions are at the top where you’d naturally want them to be. The only issue is if you have several open positions. If the most recent open position isn’t what you want the most attention for, you’ll want to re-order the experience and place your most important message at the top, which will get the most attention.
Thus we need to make sure the profile is ordered in the right way for this to be the case.
2017 Updates
With the 2017 LinkedIn updates, the ability to reorder the profile was taken away, however, it has come back in part. We are now able to reorder open positions in our Experience. This means that you can only re-order the positions that are ‘Date – Present’. You won’t be able to reorder the entries that are closed (within a fixed date range) without adjusting the dates.
This is a fantastic feature since you want to make sure your LinkedIn profile highlights the things you want to have a conversation about. If you have several things going on at once, you will likely have the position still open i.e. date – present. This means that you can re-arrange them. You’ll want to consider how best to do this by evaluating your overarching outcome (what do you want to get from your LinkedIn profile) and how prospects will likely journey through your profile.
Personally I don’t see a reason to moving closed positions around since doing so will only confuse your prospect and appear misleading. Just like a CV, it is supposed to tell the story of how you’ve progressed. Dates out of order won’t help your visitor. Although the flexibility to do so would be nice, I don’t see it a reason to harp on at LinkedIn about it.
How to Re-Order Your Experience
To re-order your experience, just hover your cursor over the top right-hand corner just where you see a + and a pencil. When you do, an extra icon made up of four blue lines will appear. Simply hold down the cursor and drag to where you want it to go. Remember the blue lines won’t appear on entries that are closed.
If you’re concerned about how well your LinkedIn profile is representing your business and pitching your solution, I invite you to book a LinkedIn Profile Review with myself during which I will learn about your business and provide tailored advice for you. Book here.
Expert LinkedIn Profile Writer | Business Strategist
Naomi Johnson is a leading LinkedIn trainer and Business Strategist based in the UK. She has a passion for helping individuals build businesses around their expertise using LinkedIn. You can read Naomi’s own story here.
“Personally I don’t see a reason to move them around since doing so will only confuse your prospect and appear misleading.” Here’s why: I have 2 self-employed businesses doing things that don’t earn me enough money (illustration and proofreading), which I have done for many years alongside other things. I have, however, just done a masters degree in art therapy, and want my work placement positions (from that degree) to appear above my self-employed businesses because it is highly relevant to the jobs I now want to get to replace my other work. LinkedIn is still not working right though – it does not allow all current positions to be moved.
Hi Sara, yes that line is misleading. We do need to move things around to highlight what is important and to lead our prospect through our profile to the conclusion where they either see us as someone they need to hire or someone they want to watch (or neither if they aren’t a prospect). To fully replied I’d need to see your profile and understand your business. Ideally though, a problem is written about the problem you solve, the change you want to see and why you’re the best person to solve it. It’s very different to a CV or how the majority of people expect to write about themselves. If you’d like me to review your profile and discuss it, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and request a session – uk.linkedin.com/in/naomijohnsonuk
I actually disagree. I’m have a lot of projects and organizations on my plate and I hate that I can’t organize my profile by 9-5; Boards; and Creative jobs. It makes my profiles look disjointed and unprofessional.
I’d love to see your profile so I can get a sense of what you’re trying to achieve. The key to your profile isn’t to overload people with your achievements or projects, but to consider the outcome. Your intention to win new business or exciting projects. Therefore you need to put yourself in the mindset of the person looking to hire someone like that (whether they know yet they need you or not) and build out your content from there. I am not a fan of listing back things but keeping them in context and educating the prospect on the problem you solve and bringing them to an awareness that they may just need you.
Hi there, for some reason I don’t see the ‘reorder’ icon next to my current work experience. Do you have any suggestions how I can still reorder my current positions? Thanks!
Nevermind. I refreshed and now the icon is there! 🙂
It appears LinkedIn removed the feature again. This sucks, because it is hiding older positions in my profile and I am trying to change careers.
Have you tried refreshing the page?
I really want to reorder my experience to prioritize my relevant experience but when I hover over the pencil I do not get the 4 lined icon. Are you able to help?
Refresh the page and it should appear
How can limiting my experience order be a positive thing for LinkedIn? Cant add “promotions”, can’t highlight projects within experiences, and now we can’t reorder what we want to highlight! My opinion: The decision to force this structure was just another boardroom meeting checkpoint that did not include any end user research.
Since LinkedIn is the #1 job SM platform, I choose not to move away from it, but rather start linking contacts to my personal website contact page/CV.
Has this functionality been removed again? I don’t have the Reorder icon 🙁
No it’s still there as of May 2021!