LinkedIn for junior developers: a profile people click on

What does LinkedIn for junior developers need? A headline that says what you do and with which technologies, a few lines of About that tell the story of one concrete project, and links to something people can open and try. The GitHub profile that goes with it is the same. Let's fix Minh's profiles in 15 minutes.

Minh has a good project, but who can see it?

In the previous post, Minh finished the expense tracker you use by sending messages: it has a live demo, a README that explains the technical decisions, and 21 tests. Minh is an illustrative character, pieced together from situations that are familiar to new IT graduates, and the before-and-after profiles in this post are examples for you to follow.

The project is good, but it only helps if someone clicks on it. Whoever reads Minh's resume sees the GitHub and LinkedIn links on the very first line, as I suggested in 10 junior developer resume mistakes. Quite a few readers will click. What they find there decides whether they stay a little longer.

What does Minh's GitHub look like to a stranger?

I asked Minh to open their own GitHub profile in a private window, to see exactly what a stranger sees. Here's what came up, described in text:

minh99 · no profile picture · no bio

Pinned
  week-3-exercises        (no description)
  test                    (no description, 1 commit "first commit")
  netflix-clone           Forked from ... (no changes)
  graduation-project      (no description)
  learning-react          (no description)
  expense-tracker         (no description)

Minh's best project sits in last place with no description, among five repos that say nothing. test and week-3-exercises show that Minh was learning, but not what Minh can build. netflix-clone is a fork with not a single line changed, which means it's someone else's code.

A stranger doesn't know which repo matters. They read from the top down, and the first thing they see sets the impression.

What should a profile README say?

GitHub lets you put a README on your profile. You create a public repo with the same name as your username, add a README.md with some content, and GitHub shows it at the top of your profile. It's the only place on GitHub where you decide what a stranger reads first.

A lot of the profile READMEs I see are elaborately decorated, with dozens of technology badges, stats charts and animated GIFs. In my view, a junior looking for a job doesn't need any of that. Readers are short on time, and a wall of logos doesn't tell them what you've built.

Minh's README after the fix has just four points: what Minh does and what role Minh is looking for, one project to look at first, what Minh is learning, and how to get in touch. The repo with the username's name is minh-le-dev/minh-le-dev, because Minh also changed the username from minh99 to the name on the resume:

# Hi, I'm Minh 👋

Frontend developer, recently graduated, based in Ho Chi Minh City. I work with React + TypeScript and I'm looking for a junior Frontend Developer role.

**The project I'd like you to see first:** [Expense tracker by text message](https://github.com/minh-le-dev/expense-tracker)
— send `coffee 35k` and the expense is recorded. A few classmates and I use it every day.
[Live demo](https://expense-tracker.vercel.app) · 21 tests · the README has a "Technical decisions" section.

**What I'm learning:** testing React components, and reading the source code of the libraries I use.

**Contact:** minh.le.dev@gmail.com · [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/minh-le-dev)

"The project I'd like you to see first" is the most important line. It does the job the reader doesn't know how to do, which is choosing which repo to open. The three details that come with it (live demo, number of tests, technical decisions section) are three reasons to click, and all three can be checked.

Notice that Minh doesn't write "passionate about technology" or "eager to learn". The "learning" line says what exactly Minh is learning, so readers believe it more and have something to ask about in an interview.

Which repos go in the six pinned slots?

GitHub lets you pin up to six repositories and gists to your profile. You don't have to fill all six. Three good repos with clear descriptions make a better impression than six where three are empty.

Minh used the 12-point scorecard from the previous post to choose. The expense tracker scored 11 and comes first. The graduation project scored 8 and comes second, with a description that says exactly which part was Minh's. The profile README repo doesn't need pinning, because its content already appears at the top of the page. The exercise repos, test and the untouched fork are unpinned, but they stay public, because they do no harm.

Every pinned repo needs three things that show up on the pinned card or as soon as the repo opens: a one-line description in the repo's About section, a link to the live demo in the Website field, and a README. The description appears right on the pinned card, so it's the first sentence a stranger reads about the project.

Pinned
  expense-tracker      Record spending with one text message ("coffee 35k"). Next.js, TypeScript, 21 tests.
  graduation-project   Coffee shop website, team of 4. My part: shopping cart, checkout, reviewing PRs.

Two cards, two descriptions, and a stranger knows straight away where to click. The commit history is something people often open too, so from now on Minh writes commits using the templates in how to write good commit messages, instead of "update" and "fix".

How should you write your LinkedIn headline?

The headline is the line right under your name. It appears almost everywhere LinkedIn shows you: search results, comments, lists of applicants. It's the most-read line on your whole profile.

Minh's old headline was:

IT graduate | Passionate about technology | Looking for opportunities

All three parts are true, but none of them helps someone hiring for React find Minh. Recruiters search for candidates on LinkedIn with keywords like "React" or "Frontend", and this headline contains none of them. Anyone can write "passionate about technology", so it doesn't set Minh apart from anyone.

The new headline follows the pattern "what you do (with what) · one piece of evidence":

Frontend Developer (React, TypeScript) · Built a text-message expense tracker with real users

The first part contains exactly the words recruiters type into the search box. The second part is a concrete detail that makes people curious enough to open the profile. Minh writes "Frontend Developer" before landing a first job, because that's the work Minh can do and is applying for, with a project to prove it. If that feels uncomfortable, "Junior Frontend Developer" is perfectly fine too.

LinkedIn also has an "Open to Work" feature that says you're looking for a job, and you can choose to show it only to recruiters. Turning that on makes more sense than spending a third of your headline on "looking for opportunities".

What should the About section say so people read it all?

The About section only shows its first few lines; the rest sits behind a "see more" button. So the opening has to be enough for the reader to understand who you are, even if they never click.

Minh's old About section:

I am a dynamic, eager-to-learn person with strong teamwork skills who can work well under pressure.
I hope to work in a professional environment where I can develop myself.

This is almost the same empty career-objective statement Minh deleted from the resume in the first post of the series, just moved over to LinkedIn. None of the adjectives in it can be checked.

The new About section has four short paragraphs, each answering one of the reader's questions:

I'm a recently graduated frontend developer, working mainly with React and TypeScript.

The project I'm proudest of is an app that records spending by text message: send "coffee 35k" and it's done.
The hardest part was reading amounts in all the ways people in Vietnam write them ("35k", "45.000", "1tr2"),
which I solved with a table of examples in the spec, where every row is a test. The app has 21 tests and
a few classmates and I use it every day.

In my graduation project (a team of 4), I built the shopping cart and the checkout front end, and reviewed
pull requests for the rest of the team.

I'm looking for a junior Frontend Developer role in Ho Chi Minh City or remote.
The demo and code are in the Featured section below. Email: minh.le.dev@gmail.com

The first paragraph says who Minh is. The second tells the story of a project using the same structure as the interview answer in the previous post: the problem, the hard part, how it was solved, the result. The third makes Minh's part in the team project clear, so nobody assumes Minh built the whole website. The last says what Minh is looking for and what the reader should do next.

There's one detail I want you to notice. Every number and detail in the About section matches the resume and the README: 21 tests, a team of 4, the shopping cart and checkout. Recruiters often have all three open at once. A single mismatch, say "team of 3" on the resume and "team of 4" on LinkedIn, is enough to make them doubt everything else.

Do you need the Featured section?

The Featured section lets you pin links, posts or files near the top of your profile. For Minh, it's the best place for the live demo and the repo link, because LinkedIn readers don't have to dig through the Projects section at the bottom of the page.

Minh pinned two things: the expense tracker's live demo, and the repo with the line "the README has a Technical decisions section". If you've written a short post about a bug you ran into, say an expense at 6:30 a.m. on 1 December counted toward November because the server ran on UTC, that's a third item well worth pinning. A post like that shows how you think better than any adjective.

A 15-minute check before you send the link

I've collected everything above into a short checklist. Run through it once in a private window, and once on your phone.

## GitHub
- [ ] Profile picture and your real name (or the same name as on your resume).
- [ ] Profile README: what you do, what role you're looking for, one project to see first, how to contact you.
- [ ] Pin at most 6 repos: main project first; don't pin empty repos, class exercises or untouched forks.
- [ ] Every pinned repo has a one-line description, a live demo link in the "Website" field, and a README.
- [ ] Open it on your phone: does the live demo work?

## LinkedIn
- [ ] The headline says what you do and with which technologies, not just "looking for a job".
- [ ] About: the first few lines are enough to understand who you are without clicking "see more".
- [ ] The Featured section has the live demo link and the repo.
- [ ] Name, school, dates of study and projects match your resume.
- [ ] The LinkedIn link on your resume and the resume/GitHub links on LinkedIn all work.

"Match your resume" is the line I see skipped most often, because the resume gets edited many times while the LinkedIn profile was created in second year and then forgotten. If you only have five minutes, do that line first.

The profile is tidy, so where do you apply?

A one-page resume, a project with real users, and GitHub and LinkedIn telling the same story. Minh's profile is ready now. Minh's next question is a very practical one: where to apply, how many places to apply to, and how to read a job ad to tell which places are actually a good fit?

The next post in the series reads job ads with Minh and plans a strategic set of applications, instead of sending the same profile to thirty places like at the start. You can follow the whole journey in the series The junior journey. If you want to practise "tell me about yourself in one minute" beforehand, it's in the interview question bank.