Reminder to everyone (including myself) who is going through their career: LinkedIn is not reality.
I find myself going through LinkedIn and looking at other people’s profiles from time to time. And it makes me feel self-conscious. It makes me feel like I haven’t done anything with my life so far.
That everyone else is farther ahead – a classic case of impostor syndrome.
LinkedIn is the new Instagram
However, when looking at other people’s LinkedIn, I often forget something important: That LinkedIn profiles and resumes are like a “highlight reel” of people’s careers.
LinkedIn is where people post the very best things they’ve done, framed in the most impressive way possible. Just like on Instagram and Facebook, where you post your beautiful vacation photos, but not the weekend you had no plans and felt a bit lonely.
Sometimes, making everything seem super impressive can be a bit too much:
Most people don’t share their failures on LinkedIn. They don’t share the weeks they were struggling to fit into a new workplace or the overwhelm they felt when venturing out into the job market.
They share the accomplishments that make them look as impressive as possible.
Everything they’ve done is condensed into “improved loading time by X%”, “saved Y amount of money” or “lead a team of Z people”. And when you compare their “best of” to your “worst fails”, you always come up short.
Let’s try showing it with images. The way people brand themselves on LinkedIn is like the following image:
But that’s only part of the real story. There is probably a lot of things being tucked away:
So remember: When looking through LinkedIn, you are not actually seeing the accomplishments of others. You are seeing their accomplishments, branded in the best way possible – and there is a chance you are pitting that against a smaller version of your own accomplishments.
As podcaster Jordan Harbinger says “Don’t compare your blooper reel with other people’s highlight reel”.
