I spent a week trying to polish my LinkedIn and still feel like a stranger

Getting back into the LinkedIn habit

I really thought I could just ignore LinkedIn for another year, but after talking to a few friends working in aviation and tech, I felt this weird pressure to actually update my profile. It is funny how we all collectively pretend that this blue-and-white interface is the only place where ‘real’ professional history happens. I spent about three hours last Sunday just staring at my own work history, trying to make my previous roles sound like they were part of some grand, intentional plan rather than just a series of jobs I took because I needed to pay rent. The interface felt clunky, and honestly, every time I go to edit my headline, I feel like I’m trying to write a riddle that only HR recruiters in their late twenties can decode.

The weird gap between reality and the profile

There is this disconnect when you look at your own profile and compare it to others. I saw an executive from Delta recently posting about a conference, and everything they put out looks so polished, almost like it was written by a PR firm. Meanwhile, I am sitting here trying to remember if I should include that six-month contract role I had three years ago or if it just makes my history look messy. It feels like a performance. I saw some articles circulating lately—stuff about how even some C-level executives apparently don’t really know how to use AI in their daily workflows, yet we are all supposed to be ‘AI-ready’ on our profiles. It makes the whole platform feel like we are all just projecting a version of ourselves that doesn’t fully exist.

Trying to find people in the same industry

I started searching for people in similar roles at foreign airlines because a few people told me that if you want to work for an international company, you have to be active there. It is frustrating, though. You send a connection request, and you just sit there waiting to see if they ignore you. I have a lingering doubt about whether this actually works or if it’s just a digital version of shouting into a void. I noticed that some of these overseas companies, like the ones that show up at tech events, have these massive, impersonal pages where they post about ‘AI-driven security’ and ‘innovation,’ but finding an actual human to talk to feels impossible. It’s like trying to navigate a maze where the walls keep moving every time there is a platform update.

Is the effort worth the screen time

I ended up spending nearly forty dollars last month on a premium trial because I was curious about who was looking at my profile, but that felt like a complete waste of money almost immediately. You get these little notifications saying ‘someone viewed your profile,’ but it’s usually just another person trying to sell you a coaching service or a recruiter for a job that has nothing to do with what I do. I am still not sure if I am supposed to be posting ‘thought leadership’ content or just leaving it alone and hoping a recruiter stumbles upon me by accident. The former feels exhausting, and the latter feels passive.

The lingering uncertainty of it all

I closed the tab after a while, mostly because my eyes were starting to hurt and the endless scrolling through other people’s ‘milestones’ was getting depressing. It’s strange how a platform meant to connect people leaves me feeling more like I am just managing a catalog entry of my own life. I’ll probably log back in next week because I have this nagging fear that if I don’t, I’ll miss some random opportunity that might never come back. It’s not that I think LinkedIn is necessarily ‘bad,’ but it definitely feels like a chore that never really finishes. I’m still not convinced that having a perfectly curated profile does anything more than just occupy a bit of digital space that I’m forced to rent with my time.