How to Craft the Perfect LinkedIn Update

You did it. It happened. All your hard work paid off. You spent late nights tweaking resume formatting, you networked with your dad’s golf buddies and on two separate occasions you scheduled (but didn’t show up for) meetings with the Career Center. You landed that coveted summer internship at Birmingham Consulting Group or Goldfish Sachs, and now you only have one more hurdle: telling everyone you know precisely why you’re better than them.

Fortunately, there is a tried and true framework to use when it comes to big-brained gloating: emotion + future experience + undying praise for nepotism.

Emotion

“Happy” isn’t gonna cut it. You’re about to work for Jean Street, a place for smart people. You need people to know that you’re smart people too. Dust off that thesaurus or think back to your best Scrabble game. You learned this shit for the SAT (which I’m sure you aced and added to your scores section alongside your GMAT and blood pressure) and finally it’s useful again. In general, the best practice is to maximize your total letter usage and alliteration. Try something like “I’m expectedly enthusiastic,” “I’m joyously jubilant” or “I’m unequivocally, ubiquitously, unusually, unashamedly, unavoidably and unceremoniously unafraid” for best results.

Future Experience

You’re about to be a legal assistant intern at Ducker, Ducker and Gosling and it’s of the utmost importance that those upperclassmen you connected with freshman year know exactly what you’re made of. Here’s where you lay it on thick. You’re the second coming of pre-spraytan-but-post-New-York-Mayor Rudy Guliani himself, and this is your chance to highlight just how this will position you to get into Harvard Law. Talk about the life-changing experiences you’re absolutely going to have. Elaborate on how you’re going to go to verbal hand-to-hand combat with Attorney General Merrick Garland over gun control (because they certainly should not be open-carry) or that you personally are bringing the law wig back in style in America where it belongs. Remember, this is your chance to show everyone that you’re hot shit, and it’s okay to lightly embellish the fact that you’ll mostly just be picking up coffee and fixing punctuation in the appendix of a document no one will read.

Thank Yous

It’s always good to end by kissing as much ass as possible. You learned from your daddy that the only way up in the world is to brownnose every old white man in your way, so make sure to tag all 37 of them. If doing that doubles the length of your post, even better! Your personal brand is directly tied to how much screen real estate your post claims on your classmates’ iPhones. Let each of them know that they individually are extra special, they each were particularly integral to the success of your hiring and that you’d pretty-pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top like to get hired full time at the end of the summer. Don’t forget to add personal tidbits: thank the recruiter “for making the process enjoyable and easy to navigate,”  that partner “for the most welcoming interview” or get your dad to buy the CEO a new mansion in Puerto Vallarta (and attach a small thank you card to the bow on the front door). For maximum clout, end your post with hashtags. I personally recommend #Summer2023, #ItsMyTimeToShine, #StepOutOfTheWayGuyWhoDidAllTheWorkInMyGroupProjectYouDontHaveWhatItTakesToWorkAtBlackCock and #Hired.

Once you have these core three components, all there is left to do is find the most garish GIF you can and hit send. Remember: success is zero-sum so you need to show why you’re the best.