Template:Linkedin job descriptions

LinkedIn job descriptions

A guide to those self-penned LinkedIn profile descriptions. We all know what they say, and let’s face it: you know what they mean.

Title	What it means
Section A: Bullshit artists
Thought leader	Git.
Digital prophet	Thought leader.
Keynote speaker	Thought leader.
Lateral Thinker	Unable to follow a sustained argument or complex syllogism. Prone to random outbursts.
Futurist	Dullard and liar (unless literally a medium or clairvoyant in which case this is market standard puffery)
Privileged to be leading customer-focused teams in an exciting network-centric IT services market	No idea what this means, but clearly disingenuous and obviously a git.
Speaker · Author · Mentor · Catalyst · Facilitator · Rebel	The Thought leader’s Thought leader
Award-winning Executive Leader Focused on Streamlining Processes, Driving Revenues, And Leading High-Performing Teams. Currently open to job opportunities at vice president level.	Reads a page of the dictionary before his tai chi and ice bath at dawn each day. Apparently hasn’t made it to “cognitive dissonance” yet.
Section B: Lifers from personnel
Director of talent acquisition	In personnel.
Director of diversity and inclusion	In personnel. Caucasian, male, can spot a bandwagon at 200 yards, is adept at virtue-signalling and spends most of day tweeting shameless corporate speak.
Global Head of Client Experience, HR Business Partnering & Leadership, Learning, Talent and Culture, COO	In personnel. See also “Thought leader”. And “COO”, for that matter.
Section C: The temporarily employed, unemployed, and soon-to-be-unemployed
Intrapreneur	Shortly to be embarking on a new career as an executive coach but hasn’t realised it yet.
Entrepreneur	Used to be a managing director in sales, until the bottom of the barrel whacked her, literally, on the arse. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?
Serial entrepreneur	Unemployable fantasist.
Angel investor	Recently, belatedly, made redundant from an middle management role.
Experienced financial services professional	Recently made redundant from an operations role. In process of resigning themselves to a life of contracting, but not quite cool with it yet.
Board-level legal advisor	Recently laid off from a law firm after a long and defiant career in knowledge management. Still in denial about employment prospects but coming round to signing up for Axiom.
Founder and CEO	Recently made redundant from an operations role. Now contracting.
Executive coach	Recently made redundant from an operations role. Unable to find work contracting.
Digital Thought and Program Leader running large end-to-end digital programs across multiple geographies.	Got laid off from a service-line role in operations at Fuji Bank. Now Founder and CEO of a Tech start-up.
Goals-driven executive with proven track record of success in programme management	Fish-food aspirant. Probably in the digestive system of a carp somewhere. It is all for the best. It was a mercy killing.
Experienced senior operations director with proven track record	Yet, here you are, “interested to hear of any opportunities. Will even consider contracting.”
Seeking new opportunities in ...	Possessed of charming candour but no common sense at all. Never admit you are out of work.
Workstream lead	Sounds glamorous; isn’t. Firstly, “lead”, in this context, means, “a thing you tie a misbehaving dog to” and not “what Moses did to the Children of Israel”. A “workstream lead” is one engaged, as a contractor, to prod unwilling employees along a manifestly pointless “business change” program, whereby outwardly useful staff will be distracted from whatever they are doing and instructed to strip paint off a bucket, so the bucket can be given to another employee to paint properly, so a third one can strip paint from it again. And so on. Requires experience organising all-hands conference calls, walking through action logs and compiling dashboards full of RAG statuses. Until your contract runs out.
Section D: Miscellaneous
Web developer	Invented the Internet.
Derivatives onboarding specialist	School leaver from Gdansk, seeking fortune in Krakow.
Social media advisor	(1) obsessed with twitter/instagram to the point of believing it a bona-fide commercial utility. (2) (Ergo) git.
Best-selling author of...	Greetings dear kind sir/madam I self publish my book i sincerely pray it will change your [I mean my] life. [It won’t. (Either of them).] Please review it on Amazon. I salute you thanks you!!! (sic)
Passionate about supporting and developing people in a way that is meaningful for them. Available immediately.	What. Just what. At a guess, underwear salesperson or photo lab assistant. Glass half-full type, anyways.