By Rachel Wells, Contributor. Apr 21, 2025, 12:00pm EDT
Modern hiring has changed. Several years back, you could see a job ad in the paper and apply for it with your resume, be up against a few applicants, get an interview, and land the job. It was that simple.
Now, with many job listings being posted online, and with remote work being extremely popular among professionals, the dynamics are different. It’s not that easy to just land a job anymore. A typical job posting on LinkedIn could attract as much as several hundred interested applicants, especially if it’s listed as being a fully remote opportunity. The competition is stronger. You’ve got to adjust your approach and work a little more strategically to stand out.
What’s changed?
Why You Need An Online Personal Brand In 2025
These days, many employers check a job applicant’s online assets before coming to a hiring decision to progress the candidate to the next steps. The oft-cited 2018 CareerBuilder survey pointed out that 60% of employers use a candidate’s social media accounts as part of their screening process, with more than half of hiring managers rejecting applicants based on what they found from their candidates online presence.
Although Harvard Business Review warns against employers checking job applicants’ social media to reduce bias and discrimination, and there are some U.S. states that impose restrictions on this (especially prior to interviews), hiring managers are still checking your digital footprint. And this is particularly true if you apply through LinkedIn and select the option for your profile to be shared or used as part of the application.
Furthermore, we live in a time where skills-based hiring takes precedence over credentials and degrees, so you’ll be expected to demonstrate your expertise using a portfolio, especially for creative, marketing, and some technical product roles. This means you’ll need to have some online proof that you’re as skilled as your resume suggests.
And beyond this, if you’re a freelancer and applying for freelance projects online, in nine times out of 10 you’ll be asked to provide your relevant social media links, portfolio, website, and any other supporting information about your work online.
So if you don’t have a strong online brand and haven’t dedicated time towards cultivating your digital footprint to the point where you’re proud enough to share it and for it to be viewed by decision-makers, you’re deliberately missing out on potentially lucrative career and job opportunities.
Even worse, you won’t ever surface in recruiter searches (on LinkedIn) or in searches by decision-makers and potential clients on Google.
Here’s how to easily reverse that:
How To Build Your Personal Brand Online In 3 Steps
Follow these three easy steps to control your digital narrative intentionally instead of allowing it to work against you in hiring and business opportunities:
1. Turn Your LinkedIn Profile Into A Career Storefront
The very first and most essential digital asset you need to focus on as a professional actively seeking opportunities in the workforce, is your LinkedIn profile. The LinkedIn platform goes beyond merely applying for jobs. Recruiters, leads, and head-hunters want to find you, and they do this by searching for your skills, services, and certain keywords.
Recruiters are 50% more likely to search based on skills than years of experience when looking for candidates on LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s 2023 data shows, and about 45% of recruiters use the skills filter explicitly to fill their positions.
If you’re not showing up in search results often, that’s because you haven’t fully optimized your LinkedIn profile.
Many professionals leave money on the table because their LinkedIn reads as a passive job description. It’s time to turn that around, and instead of listing job titles and boring tasks, showcase outcomes and results. Speak to your accomplishments and use industry and job-specific keywords while quantifying using numbers and metrics.
Use every available space to demonstrate your skills by uploading documents, pictures, samples, customer reviews, etc. There’s plenty of space to do this under each job description in your employment section, where you can upload a range of media, and you can also add media to your featured section. The About section of your LinkedIn profile provides room for you to highlight your top three to five skills.
2. Google Yourself
Run a quick search of your name online, using incognito search mode. If your name is popular, add some context such as the city where you live, or your current job title/the company you work for, to see what appears in search results.
This will give you an idea of what anyone in the public might see when looking you up on Google, and can indicate where you need to clear up your digital footprint, update it, or turn on privacy settings so personal updates, family, etc., are not visible.
As part of your audit, delete and stop making posts complaining about specific employers or name-shaming. Sure, there’s a time and place to vent your frustrations with the hiring process, but it doesn’t always work in your favor if you start tagging your ex-employer and begin acting unprofessionally in your references to them online.
3. Create Content Intentionally
Shape your online presence by being strategic and intentional about the content you post, and how often. Regularly share updates, especially on your LinkedIn, about one or two times per week.
Post content that acts as proof of your expertise, such as behind-the-scenes, what you’re passionate about and why, lessons you’ve learned from projects you’ve worked on or career choices you’ve made, tips for other professionals in your field, client wins, and unique perspectives and insightful commentary on trends and news.
When you follow all three of these steps–optimizing your LinkedIn, conducting a self-audit of your online footprint, and creating content that strategically showcases your expertise and skills–you’ll attract more inbound requests for projects, partnerships, and work you’re interested in, and it will be easier for you to move on to the interview stage when applying for jobs.
