The wildly successful advertising man, David Ogilvy, once said that the headline in an ad does 80 percent of the selling. And, if you’re looking for LinkedIn headline examples, you probably already suspect that your LinkedIn headline is as critical for your LinkedIn profile as the headline in a traditional ad.
Your suspicions are correct. Your LinkedIn headline is that important. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur, a job seeker, employed full time, or just using LinkedIn to passively scan for opportunities — your headline is what makes your LinkedIn profile effective.
We’ve rounded up 23 of the best LinkedIn headlines to help you understand what makes a good headline and how to put these techniques to use on your own profile.
What is a LinkedIn headline?
Your LinkedIn headline is the first thing people see when they click on your profile. It’s also the only bit of text that’s visible before someone clicks on your profile, when they see you in comments sections or posts.
Quoting David Ogilvy again, “The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.”
Believe it or not, your LinkedIn profile is actually a sales page. In this case, the product you are selling is you: what you can do for a prospective employer or potential client.
There is a lot of noise competing for people’s attention. Your LinkedIn headline needs to do quite a bit of work — something like 80 percent of the work — quickly.
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Pro tip: After you reel people in with your headline, add a featured video to your LinkedIn profile. Making a LinkedIn video almost guarantees your profile will stand out from the crowd. It’s like a mini-job interview, ready and waiting to wow your next boss or win your next client.
This one gets a chuckle and scores points for being clear about what the profile owner does. Additionally, the joke gives context about who his services are for, since it’s mostly C-suite executives who frequent board rooms.
However, this headline could be more specific about the value he delivers. “Award-winning” establishes some authority. But a short statement about some of the results he’s achieved would add a lot of credibility.
The joke does double duty on this one: it hits the funny bone and creates a subtle call-to-action to check out his profile. Then the supporting statements give clarity about what he does.
Adding a few numbers to demonstrate the results and value he delivers would make this headline just about perfect.
This joke is more clever than it might seem. It uses generationally based humor to target a certain audience. And it establishes that the writer is able to simplify tech topics for readers who may be less than technically savvy.
Could this headline communicate more clearly? Yes. It would benefit from an additional statement or two that clarifies the value of easy-to-understand writing and what results it can get for clients. But as far as good LinkedIn headlines go, this one gets the job done on most counts.
Creative LinkedIn headlines
It’s possible to demonstrate your creativity, tell people what you do, and express the value you deliver all at the same time. This is a great way to pack a lot of information into your LinkedIn headline. And it’s an especially powerful tactic for creative professionals.
Creatively communicating all the necessary information is tricky. Have a look at these headlines to get some ideas for how it’s done.
The first sentence delivers a lot of information in a very tight space. If you’re a writer, clients want you to write what they want, not what you want.
This headline shows potential clients that they’ll get writing they like, and it’s creative enough to do double duty as evidence that this writer has some chops.
Additionally, the website at the end is a nice, subtle call-to-action. A more direct call-to-action wouldn’t hurt, though. Also, this headline could go further in showing some performance results.
But it’s certainly clever enough to get you to stop and read it.
This one is short and informative. It’s clear about what this writer delivers, both in terms of the product and the benefit. And it expresses both of those things in a clever way.
A quick sentence about results and a call-to-action would give this LinkedIn headline a nice boost. There’s nothing wrong with brevity. But it’s all about balancing brevity with information, and this one might be just a bit too brief.
This one might seem a bit strange. But the headline is from a fiction writer’s profile. So it makes a lot of sense.
This is a clever LinkedIn headline because it actively demonstrates what she does and wraps up with a quick call-to-action. The headline covers almost all the bases, and phrasing it as a question also helps people self-identify as potential readers.
The call-to-action is also smart because it invites a conversation, which is one of the most valuable aspects of LinkedIn.
She could go a bit deeper with some data that shows her proficiency. The title of her most popular book or the number of copies sold might work. But it’s a catchy headline, nonetheless.
Clever LinkedIn headlines
Being clever never goes out of style. It works in almost any industry. And a bit of cleverness can get a lot of attention. Check out these clever LinkedIn headlines for some inspiration.
This one smartly puts the cleverness right up front where it draws people in. Then it delivers the sales pitch.
Also, you may not like emojis. But they undeniably make your headline stand out on LinkedIn. They also break up the text in an eye-catching way, which is useful for scanning longer headlines like this one.
So don’t be afraid to throw some emojis around. (Just don’t go emoji crazy.)
A call-to-action would be a good idea for this particular LInkedIn headline. However, given its length, it’s understandable why the call-to-action is left out.
The cleverness in this headline is subtle. You might have to read it twice to see what’s so clever, but getting people to read twice is never a bad thing.
The cleverness also doesn’t get in the way of telling people what the writer does or the value he delivers. Yes, this LinkedIn headline could offer some data to back up the claim of delivering recurring revenue. And a call-to-action wouldn’t be a nice touch.
This is a clever headline, though. And a rhyme or two doesn’t hurt.
This really makes maximum use of being clever. She even invented a word to really make the headline unique. But the key to the cleverness here is that it doesn’t get in the way of communicating the value of what she does.
If there is any weakness in this headline it’s the last sentence. There’s a lot of personality in that one line. However, this headline might perform better if that last line were a call-to-action.
LinkedIn headline examples for HR
Take a scroll through HR LinkedIn headlines and you’ll notice very few include data that demonstrates performance. This is a missed opportunity, because there are plenty of performance metrics for HR, and many of them fit nicely into a LinkedIn headline.
Because so few human resources profiles include performance numbers in the headline, doing so on yours is an easy way to stand out from all the other HR profiles on LinkedIn. Here are a few industry metrics to consider using:
- Total number of employees your HR department manages.
- Time to hire new employees.
- Cost per hire.
- Retention rate.
- Time to productivity.
There are plenty of other HR performance metrics you can use as well, even if it means digging around in the performance data for your company to get the numbers.
But all that digging is worth it.
Case in point: You’ll notice none of our LinkedIn headline examples for HR have numbers that demonstrate performance. That’s because nobody is doing it. If you’re able to throw some numbers in your headline, you will stand out from the crowd.
Another easy way to pull away from the pack is to add a call-to-action. Almost none of the HR profiles on LinkedIn have a call-to-action in the headline.
This one has a couple of really good pieces of information. International experience is a good differentiator, since not everyone has that. Additionally, “engaged workforce culture” is a smart benefit to put in the headline.
Workforce engagement is something companies measure. So this headline uses language that’s relevant to potential employers or clients. Some performance data to back up the claim would be excellent, though.
Being direct is smart. Especially when there might be confusion about what you do. In this case, putting “consultant” right up front is a really good idea, because people might be prone to assume that this person is an HR executive or specialist.
The second half is good. But it could be more specific about which goals an HR consultant can help a company achieve and what specialized strategies an HR consultant delivers.
Giving yourself a unique title is one of the oldest tricks in the book. And it’s still around because it works. Branding herself as a “talent development leader” rather than an HR specialist or executive builds a unique position and gives people an idea of how she approaches HR.
Additionally, “organizational outcomes” is a very corporate term that her clients are likely familiar with.
The profile owner could be more specific about what strategies she executes and what organizational outcomes she improves. But this LinkedIn headline isn’t a slouch, either.
LinkedIn headline examples for sales
Leave it to the sales and marketing people to deliver quality LinkedIn headlines. Regardless of what industry you’re in, these examples are a masterclass on how to craft a good headline.
First, this headline is super specific about who she helps and what she does for her clients. The call-to-action is also outstanding.
True, there are no numbers in this headline to prove her claims. But the call-to-action takes care of that by directing people to check out her profile for testimonials that back up her claim. That’s a really brilliant strategy.
Additionally, video testimonials are one of the most powerful sales tools out there.
If you need video testimonials for your profile, just gather a few clips from your clients, pack them into a testimonial video template, and upload them to your LinkedIn page. It will make your LinkedIn profile far more engaging and informative.
The standout feature in this LinkedIn headline is the data. It’s incredibly specific. It proves she can help. And it shows exactly who she helps: copywriters who haven’t gotten 100 clients yet. There’s a ton of information in this one sentence.
Only one thing is missing: a call-to-action. But this headline puts a lot of work into a small space.
This headline doubles down on the value proposition and specifics. The smart thing is that two very important questions get answered immediately: how long is it going to take and how much will it cost? That probably makes this person’s sales calls short and sweet.
A call-to-action might be helpful. However, this headline is relatively long already. A little tweaking could shorten it enough to get a call-to-action in there, though.
LinkedIn headline examples for customer service
Customer service is another area where the LinkedIn headlines are almost devoid of performance numbers or calls to action. Because so few profiles in this sector contain it, you could easily get a lot of attention with just a little bit of performance data and a call-to-action.
Here are some examples of good customer service performance data to cite in your LinkedIn headline:
- Average resolution time.
- Ticket resolution volume.
- Average first response time.
- First contact resolution rate.
- Customer satisfaction score.
There are plenty of other customer service performance metrics you can use. You may have to ask around for them at work. But if you score some data to prove your performance, you’ll have one of the best customer service headlines on LinkedIn.
These headlines may not have the power that your headline will have. (Because we already know yours will be awesome.) But they do showcase a few aspects of a good LinkedIn headline for customer service.
From this LinkedIn headline, it’s very clear who the profile owner helps and what she does. This sort of distinction is important because there are a lot of roles that fall under the umbrella of “customer service.” It’s important to make sure people know exactly what you do in the customer service sector.
A bit of data to prove performance and a call-to-action would make this headline perfect.
This headline is also very specific about what this person does.
This headline does everything right, to a point. First, “value as a service” is a great way to get attention. The second half does even more work by focusing on helping customers, which is literally what customer service is all about.
The headline nails a couple of key things. However, a data point that shows exactly how he drives customer success, paired with a call-to-action, would do wonders.
LinkedIn headline examples for job seekers
If you’re looking for a job, it can be challenging to get performance data to use in your LinkedIn headline. But it’s doable and definitely worth the extra effort.
It’s also an especially good idea to get some keywords in at the beginning of your headline. That way your profile shows up better in LinkedIn search results and people can see exactly what positions you want as they scan the list of headlines.
The good news is that the need for keywords sets up a pretty easy formula for building a good headline if you are a job seeker: put your job position keywords first, add a few words about how you help employers, and finish it off with a call-to-action.
Here are a few examples of this formula in action.
This LinkedIn headline nails everything. The keywords are up front. There’s a clever line about what she does. Then it wraps up with a subtle call-to-action that sends people to her profile to check out work samples.
The call-to-action could be more direct. But we’re just nitpicking at this point.
This one follows the same structure. The emojis are a nice touch, but what really stands out is that the profile owner uses a unique data point to demonstrate their experience.
This is a super smart way to frame your experience. In most cases, this framing sounds far more impressive than the number of years you’ve worked. And it makes your experience tangible with some hard evidence that shows what you’ve done.
However, a call-to-action would really make this headline pop out of the search results even more.
This one goes all in on the position keywords. However, it does one thing very smartly. The last two position keywords are also previous job experience.
That makes this headline more searchable. And it gives potential employers a very brief summary of this person’s job history. This can be a good tactic if you have some recognizable brands in your employment history, because it entices people to scroll down and read the work history section of your profile.
This headline would be stronger if it focused a little more on the value this person offers employers and a more direct call-to-action. But not bad at all.
LinkedIn headline examples for students
Students might have the roughest time creating good LinkedIn headlines. They often have little or no work experience to draw from. And they may not be able to start working until after graduation.
However, there are opportunities within these constraints. Check out these LinkedIn headline examples for students.
Showcasing what college you attend and what you study are givens. Put those up front on your LinkedIn headline.
However, this student goes the extra mile and puts her graduation date right in her headline. Employers need to know when you can start work, so this tactic is super smart.
Additionally, any sort of extracurricular activities that relate to your field of study or your ideal job are great pieces of information to include. Believe it or not, employers place a lot of value on all the things you do in addition to your coursework.
Again, the university and field of study are showcased first. However, this student makes a wise decision to add keywords for the positions she hopes to get after graduation. And the keywords are added naturally, rather than stuffed in without context.
What to do once you perfect your LinkedIn headline
While a good LinkedIn headline is important, it only does so much. Crafting your headline is just step one in the process of building a great LinkedIn profile.
Once your headline is locked in, add a video resume or video testimonials to your profile to make it even more engaging and unique. Video gets attention and helps people remember you long after they close your LinkedIn profile.
Not a video expert? No problem. Biteable offers a full package of stock footage, animated text, and music to help you make LinkedIn videos that get you noticed.