LinkedIn in 2025: how to design your profile so that half the market hates you and recruiters don't ban you

LinkedIn in 2025 is no longer just an online business card, but a real tool that can lead you to a new job, project, or partner. But only if you know how to use it.

Catch tips from HRD Lead Panda Holding’s Alena, who closes vacancies in affiliate and digital marketing every day, and she shared tips that really work: how to design a profile if you can’t burn verticals, what wording will save you in an NDA, what kills a recruiter’s interest in 10 seconds, and how to make sure the right people find you.

This article is a powerful guide for those who want to get into the funnel of the best offers and not get lost in an overheated market.

Does it make sense for an arbitrator to be on LinkedIn in 2025 and does the platform work in this niche?

Of course, yes, cross your fingers:

1. Are you actively looking for a job?
2. Are you passively monitoring interesting offers?
3. Looking for partners, clients or contractors?
4. Are you building a personal brand?
5. Are you planning to do any of these things in the future? 
6. If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need LinkedIn. 

This platform has long ceased to be just a business card. It is a full-fledged network for career management, personal brand development, and professional networking. In other words, this is where your future opportunities are born, you just need to learn how to create and notice them.

Candidate’s LinkedIn: what catches your eye and sets off red flags?

Given the sensitive nature of information in our industry, a LinkedIn profile cannot always be read as a CV. Rather, I perceive it as an opportunity to connect with a person who can potentially close a business request here and now or in the future.

Red flags can be any obvious exaggeration or deception, whether it’s “CEO at Self-employed”, but in fact just launched a couple of connections solo, or ROI 800, etc. And, of course, any manifestation of toxicity in the profile description or comments: sexism, arrogance, passive aggression, rudeness, or devaluation of someone else’s experience.

What is the best way to describe your experience in your profile if you have worked in verticals that you don’t want to burn?

Not everything can and should be on LinkedIn. A specific vertical can be replaced with “high-risk niche” or a more veiled wording – “an area with high regulatory pressure” (for those who like subtlety).

But to be found, add a few keywords: traffic sourcing, payment model, tools you work with (Keitaro, Dolphin). If you don’t want to go into details at all, use a universal shield – NDA. For example: “experience in affiliate marketing (NDA)”.

How to formalize cases or results if you signed an NDA?

I recommend starting by clarifying the NDA framework to understand what exactly can be described and choose an option based on this: 

• Option 1: Do not mention the name of the company and trump the results a bit. 
• Option 2: Do not write numbers, products, instead of specific GEOs, indicate experience with the appropriate Tier, i.e. do not give specifics. 
• Option 3: If you’ve been in the industry for a long time, you can write down a few cases that have already been linked to.
• Option 4: Don’t bother: “case details are under NDA, but I’ll be happy to discuss the results at the interview.”

Does being active on LinkedIn help you find new collaborations/offers/agencies?

Yes, it does. But only if you don’t act like an undercover spy. LinkedIn, like any other platform, has its own algorithms, and it’s important to be careful: 

• A properly designed profile = your entry point.
• If a recruiter or partner reads your page and doesn’t understand in 10 seconds who you are and what you do, then your profile doesn’t work.
• You need to be visible, so create and publish content.
• This gives you additional visibility and increases your chances of getting on the radar of the right people.
• Networking with meaning.
• Your contact database should be relevant to your professional niche. And this database should be “alive”: communication, comments, reposts, of course, are what any platform likes. 
• Initiative is always the key to new contacts.
• Don’t wait for someone to write first. A well-formulated, personalized DM message obviously yields better results than months of passive waiting.

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to be in the game all the time, not just when you’re looking for a job or traffic. 

What are the main challenges in working with LinkedIn as a recruiting tool in affiliate marketing?

I can identify three main challenges that I’m sure most recruiters face: 

• Invisible profiles. Due to NDAs and vague role descriptions in profiles, you can miss strong candidates even when searching by keywords.
• Overheated market. Professionals whose profiles are visible receive 10+ incoming messages daily, so recruiters need to compete for their attention.
• Passive users. For many, LinkedIn is just a business card. They visit the platform once every six months, or even less often, so the message risks being read late or not at all. 

How do my team and I overcome this?

I won’t disclose all the details, but we do what we do: 

• We use Boolean search, AI tools, and search for donor companies to expand the funnel.
• We write personalized messages with certain “hooks” to stand out from other offers. We also use “warm entrances”: liking/commenting on a post, participating in a joint discussion before writing directly. If this does not work, we use guerrilla methods.
• We extract contacts from the platform, look for candidates on other social networks, write to messengers, send them an email – we don’t leave any communication channel behind. 

How do you see the future of LinkedIn in the context of affiliate and digital marketing in general?

1. It is definitely a continuation of the growth of personal and business branding. Businesses can no longer hide behind logos and official press releases. If you want to build trust, show your face. Personal brands in affiliate marketing are experiencing their finest hour. 
2. Of course, automation and AI integration are no longer a trend, but a basic infrastructure. Artificial intelligence works in content creation (Copilot), recruiting tools (Understand and Predict), sales (Sales Navigator + AI), and other key processes.

Filtering “empty” content. The platform has gradually learned how to filter out the “noise” and increase the visibility of really useful content. This is critical for maintaining the quality of communications and developing professional communities. For our niche, this is a matter of survival: without it, communities quickly turn into a marketplace.