Ali Watson shares 4 tips to overcome LinkedIn Cringe by embracing our professional story. 

While interning as a Learning Designer at Hikma Strategies this summer, I found that I couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer. Nothing humbles you quite like dusting off a LinkedIn profile that you made in your first year of undergrad and haven’t looked at since.

Creating a LinkedIn profile can be uncomfortable – for many of us, it’s downright cringy. It could be the discomfort of showcasing our accomplishments in such a public way, or beyond this, the embarrassment of feeling that we’ll be discovered as an imposter. Despite this we have to admit – sometimes begrudgingly – that LinkedIn has become a valuable tool in building our professional lives and relationships. We know it’s important, but pushing past the cringe and creating a profile can feel so daunting we can’t help but set it aside again and again.

Where does the cringe come from?

I think the cringe we feel around LinkedIn is often chalked up to discomfort around bragging about achievements, performing for an audience, or sounding robotic. While this is certainly true for some, for many of us I think it touches on the fear of being an imposter. Rather than feeling discomfort around showing off our achievements, many of us end up cringing because we don’t feel we have the right titles, experience, awards, etc. to show off in the first place.

In my experience, creating a LinkedIn profile feels so cringy because my professional life hasn’t followed a very linear trajectory. This is true for a lot of us. Maybe you switched programs multiple times, took longer to get through a degree than your peers, or sought out work in many different fields rather than staying on a specific professional track. Maybe your professional experience has been impacted by more systemic issues – perceived “gaps” in your resume due to illness, disability, etc., or perhaps you couldn’t take on low-paying (or no pay) internships because you needed paid work – any work – to make ends meet. For me, a lot of the discomfort around LinkedIn comes from, if I’m honest, shame around my professional history and a perception of LinkedIn as a space where “good” professionals congregate.

Shaking this narrative of what a “good” professional is can be tricky, but we need to remind ourselves that the careers we’re comparing ours to didn’t happen overnight. What if we thought of our LinkedIn profile as an opportunity to tell a story about our professional selves? Through this lens, building a profile becomes an exercise in self-reflection and framing our professional experiences – something that can help us get to know and appreciate our professional selves more than we might have otherwise.

Tips to overcome LinkedIn cringe 

Here are four tips to help you tell a story about your professional self and get your LinkedIn profile off the ground:

1.  Stop thinking of your LinkedIn profile as a resume.

We’re accustomed to a job search that asks us to send a resume and cover letter to an often faceless, and sometimes nameless, hiring manager that either accepts or rejects us. Your LinkedIn profile isn’t simply a resume, it’s an opportunity to tell your professional story and cultivate professional relationships that aren’t necessarily bound by a candidate/ employer dynamic.

2. You’re always in process, and so is your profile.

There’s no “finished product” when it comes to your LinkedIn profile. Getting a profile started, regardless of whether you feel “professional” enough to be there, is better than not having a profile at all. Your profile will evolve with you; as you get to know your professional self and professional goals more, your profile will reflect that.

3. Get to know the skills and value you already have.

Use building a profile as an exercise in reflecting on the professional skills and value you’ve already cultivated. I was prompted to do this after reading Hikma founder Erica Machulak’s book, Hustles for Humanists. She offers motivating insights into how we can identify our strengths and translate them to services - whether for an employer, a client, etc. (see Chapter Two: Translate Your Strengths into Services) Particularly for those of us finding it difficult to see our professional value, accessing resources like this will challenge you to think about your professional history differently. 

4. Ask someone for feedback! Then, ask someone else!

Your professional self doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Neither does your LinkedIn profile. Ask someone – an employer, colleague, friend, etc. – to look it over. Ask more than one person. When you seek out different perspectives, you’ll get a better sense of how to present your professional self in a way that invites the kinds of connections that can champion your unique professional trajectory

Your profile might not get you the connections, mentor, or job you want right away, and that’s ok. Really, that’s the point – you’re building a space where you can continue to get to know your professional self and build lasting professional relationships in a way that feels authentic to you. That takes time, nurturing, and accountability. The more you get to embrace your own professional story – where you’ve been and where you’re going – the more the cringe around LinkedIn loses its power. 

Reference

Machulak, Erica. Hustles for Humanists. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2025. 

About the Author

Ali Watson is Hikma's Learning Designer and a current MA student in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, where she focuses on the relationship between fatness and constructed understandings of health. With a background in non-profit work at the intersection of gender, digital media, and education, she is passionate about creative and accessible knowledge translation.

With generous support from the UBC Arts Amplifier, Ali is currently participating in the collaborative internship with Hikma.