Pharma Bloodbath Part XXII: Your LinkedIn profile as a used-car advert. Four owners, two restructurings, nearest offer: silence

Dear MoreThanCareer.de community,

FOR SALE. Regulatory affairs specialist, 2015 model, four careful owners, two restructurings. Photo from 2019, taken at a cousin’s wedding, cousin cropped out except for one shoulder, which now turns up in more recruiter searches than the cousin. Headline: “Experienced professional”. About: “Results-driven team player”, results-driven since 2011 and still waiting for the first result. 500+ connections, 31 of them recruiters, two presumed dead judging by their activity feeds. Price: VB (Verhandlungsbasis, or nearest offer). Nearest offer so far: silence.

That advert stands on a forecourt of more than 1.3 billion LinkedIn members¹, the largest used-car lot in history and the only one where the cars write their own adverts. The buyers have upgraded too. LinkedIn says recruiters using its AI Hiring Assistant review 62% fewer profiles before finding a qualified match². Splendid news. Recruiters can now ignore you 62% faster.

Save this before you pay anyone to “fix” your profile, and repost it for the colleague whose headline has said “Seeking new challenges” since 2022. Comment rather than like. A like is the nod of a man strolling past the forecourt with no intention of buying, and I get enough of those from hiring managers.

A declaration of interest, because a car dealer writing a guide to dodgy car dealers should at least park his own car in the photo. I rewrite CVs and LinkedIn profiles for money, next to career coaching (job search strategy, interview preparation, salary negotiation training with tailored scripts) and reverse recruitment, all on www.morethancareer.de. My licence to judge other people’s bodywork: 17 years in recruitment, the last nine at Bayer and the five before that at the global top-3 CROs ICON and Syneos, hiring in most EU countries and the US up to SVP level. Everything below works without me, which is either my best sales argument or my worst. My bank statement hasn’t decided yet.

The Hauptuntersuchung at the kitchen table

Germans approach the Hauptuntersuchung (the compulsory roadworthiness test) the way other nations approach a colonoscopy: with dread and a clean shirt, certain that a man in overalls is about to find something. He usually does.

1. Bury the wedding shoulder. The commodity advice says buy a headshot for the price of a small used Fiat. The specific action: plain wall, daylight, phone, today. LinkedIn’s own training deck claims members with a photo get up to 21 times more profile views³. A profile without one reads like a missing-person poster, and recruiters walk past those too.
2. Swap the fantasy model name for the one buyers type. Your employer calls you “Associate Director, Global Regulatory Excellence Hub”, because titles cost less than pay rises. Since late 2023 recruiters can describe the person they want in a plain sentence⁴, and in my experience they type “regulatory affairs manager CMC Berlin”. They rarely type “hub”. Put the searchable version in your headline and keep the hub for your email signature, where it can impress your mother. Mehr Schein als Sein (more shine than substance) sells paint jobs, and search bars don’t look at paint.
3. Hand German buyers the German brochure. LinkedIn shows visitors your profile in the language they use the site in, if you’ve written one⁵, and the HR team of a Mittelständler (a family-owned midsize company) clicks around in German. Write only German you could defend on the phone. A flawless machine translation followed by an interview where you explain GMP in mime is a car with the Tacho zurückgedreht (odometer wound back). The buyer finds out at the first corner.
4. Walk round five cars that sold. Find five people who hold the job you want today, and read their profiles the way the Finanzamt (tax office) reads your return: thoroughly and silently. Compare titles and top skills, close the gaps that are true for you, copy nothing. One evening, one pot of tea. If it turns into three evenings, something stronger than tea and a quarrel with your own career history, that’s roughly where people start hiring someone like me.
5. Remove the turbo kit you bought on eBay. Engagement pods are LinkedIn’s Tupperware parties, where members applaud each other’s lids. LinkedIn’s User Agreement bans bots and automated engagement⁶, and comments posted through automation tools may be shown to fewer people⁷. Your bot writing “Great insights, Klaus!” under forty posts a day is now shouting into a cupboard with your name on the door. Nägel mit Köpfen machen (making nails with heads: doing it properly) means a few comments a week a human wants to answer.

The free tick that costs you a face

Number one on most “LinkedIn hacks” carousels: get verified. Free, a little tick, and LinkedIn says verified members see up to 60% more profile views⁸. I’d leave the passport-and-selfie version alone.

In Germany and much of Europe the ID check runs through a US company called Persona. A security researcher who verified himself in February 2026 read Persona’s privacy policy and listed what it covers: passport scans and chip data, a live selfie and the facial geometry taken from it, device and location data, even whether you pause or paste, plus cross-checks against sources such as credit agencies. He counted 17 subprocessors, nearly all in the US⁹¹⁰. Persona’s CEO replied that biometric data is deleted immediately, other data within 30 days, nothing from LinkedIn trains AI, and only eight subprocessors handle ID checks⁹¹⁰. LinkedIn says it receives no biometric data or ID photos¹¹. An Austrian data protection officer told netzpolitik.org the scope goes far beyond what a simple identity check needs, and noyb, the privacy group founded by Max Schrems, called Persona’s statements “very vague”¹¹. As a US company, Persona also falls under the CLOUD Act, which lets American authorities demand data stored abroad¹⁰.

So the trade is your passport chip and the geometry of your face, in return for a small tick next to the name a recruiter is about to ignore 62% faster. A Kuckucksei (cuckoo’s egg: something slipped into your nest that isn’t what it seems) wearing a blue ribbon. Germans would sooner show a stranger their Gehaltsabrechnung (payslip) than their passport chip, and plenty of Germans won’t show their payslip to their own spouse. If you must have a tick, LinkedIn also verifies via a work email address¹². That costs an inbox instead of a face. It does require a job, which for many of my readers is precisely the problem.

Dodgy dealers: a field guide

Augen auf beim Gebrauchtwagenkauf (eyes open when buying a used car), German fathers say, usually while holding the keys out of reach. The LinkedIn optimisation trade deserves the warning. Its warranty is the word “guaranteed” in a font no lawyer has seen.

• They sell a badge. The blue Top Voice badge comes by invitation from LinkedIn’s editors, and the gold community version was due to vanish by December 2024¹³. A purchased one is a TÜV sticker (the German roadworthiness seal) printed at home. Marvellous until the first police check.
• They guarantee numbers: recruiter messages per month, or a Social Selling Index of 80. That index scores sales behaviour¹⁴, so unless you sell for a living it measures the wrong sport. Guaranteed recruiter messages are jemandem einen Bären aufbinden (tying a bear onto someone: pulling their leg).
• They offer pods or automation. If LinkedIn restricts an account, it’ll be yours. Their invoice stays perfectly roadworthy.
• Their bespoke rewrite reads like the last forty you saw. Originality.ai, which sells an AI detector and is no neutral referee, rated 53.7% of long LinkedIn posts in its 2025 sample as likely AI-written¹⁵. A respray in the colour half the forecourt already wears. I call it Passionate Beige.
• They sell an online “programme” with videos and homework. Germany’s Federal Court of Justice ruled on 12th June 2025 that such a coaching contract was void because the provider lacked approval under the Fernunterrichtsschutzgesetz (Distance Learning Protection Act)¹⁶. Somewhere a “six-figure career accelerator” is accelerating towards a refund. I’m not a lawyer, so if you’ve signed one, ask one.

If the dealer won’t open the bonnet, den Braten riechen (smell the roast: sense a swindle). If he opens it and there’s a ring light inside, run.

Same car, different number plates

• Germany: XING became a job platform, and its managing director counted about 6 million complete, current profiles among 22 million users¹⁷. The other 16 million are on the hard shoulder with the hazard lights on, so your German LinkedIn profile enjoys a Heimvorteil (home advantage) the width of an Autobahn.
• EU, EEA and Switzerland: since 3rd November 2025 LinkedIn has trained content-generating AI on some member data unless you opt out under Data privacy¹⁸. Your lovingly polished About section may be teaching a machine to write your competitors’ generic one. The opt-out takes thirty seconds, the only fix in this article whose result I can promise.
• USA: home of the “visionary disruptor” headline, which Germans translate as Hochstapler (impostor).
• India: LinkedIn’s fastest-growing verification market, up about 80% in a year⁸. Somebody is handing over a great many faces.
• China: LinkedIn closed its last Chinese app, InCareer, on 9th August 2023¹⁹. Shanghai’s recruiters scroll Boss Zhipin and Liepin, so for once your invisibility isn’t your fault.

Who’s shopping for what

• Graduates and visa seekers: no service history, which buyers forgive. Guessing your work permit they forgive less, so give it one plain line.
• Two years in, up to senior level: check 2 is yours. Your employer is about to restructure that title anyway.
• Executives: no dates and no numbers is an advert with no mileage. Buyers read the silence as an engine that fell out in 2019.
• 50 and older: car buyers pay extra for a Rentnerfahrzeug (pensioner’s car: low mileage, careful owner). The labour market hasn’t caught up with the car market, which tells you something about the labour market. Detail the last ten years and let the Windows 95 certificate rest in peace.

For recruiters and hiring managers

An InMail from a fresh account with a stock-photo smile looks exactly like the scam we warn candidates about, so give them something checkable: your company email and the role on your careers page. And read the search criteria the Hiring Assistant drafts before you trust its shortlist. LinkedIn says you can step into its actions at any stage²⁰. Whether you’ll have the time is between you and your open requisitions.

Your turn

Save this for the day a stranger offers you a Top Voice badge, and repost it to the colleague about to pay. Then, in the comments:

• Graduates: paste your headline and I’ll guess your job. One of us will be embarrassed.
• Two years in up to senior level: how many recruiter messages last month described a real role?
• Executives: is your thin profile a strategy or an alibi?
• 50+: has a recruiter asked your age without asking your age? What gave it away?
• Already verified with your passport? Did the tick bring a single real recruiter message, or just more scammers who now know you’re real?
• Everyone: the most absurd LinkedIn “growth” offer in your inbox. Price included, please.

If you’d rather someone else lifted the bonnet: I rewrite CVs and LinkedIn profiles in English and German, coach pharma professionals on job search strategy, interviews and salary negotiation with tailored scripts, and run reverse recruitment for roles in Germany. Details and prices: https://morethancareer.de/cv-linkedin-rewrite-pharma.html

Join the Inner Circle email list at https://morethancareer.de/#newsletter for 5% off my coaching and reverse recruitment programmes and 15% off my upcoming book. Exclusive career tips for the list will follow, and LinkedIn-only readers will miss them. The company page lives here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/morethancareer/

Prost. Und schaut unter die Motorhaube. (Cheers. And look under the bonnet.)

Sources and references

Primary and journalistic sources

[1] LinkedIn, Community Report, July to December 2025: about.linkedin.com

[4] Fortune, “LinkedIn unveils platform for recruiters that uses AI to find better candidates faster”, 3rd October 2023: fortune.com

[5] LinkedIn Help, “Create or delete a profile in another language”: linkedin.com

[6] LinkedIn Help, “Prohibited software and extensions”: linkedin.com

[7] Social Media Today, “LinkedIn to limit visibility of comments made via automation tools”: socialmediatoday.com

[8] TechCrunch, “LinkedIn’s profile verification push is accelerating, and India is leading the charge in 2025”, 18th December 2025: techcrunch.com

[9] Social Media Today, “LinkedIn ID verification partner Persona under fire for security concerns”, 24th February 2026: socialmediatoday.com

[10] GIGAZINE, “Where does the passport and photo data that I submit to get a verified badge on LinkedIn go?”, 25th February 2026: gigazine.net

[11] netzpolitik.org, “LinkedIn, Etsy, Roblox: Wer dein Gesicht scannt, wenn du dich online verifizierst”, 26th August 2026 (in German): netzpolitik.org

[12] LinkedIn News, “Our new verification features”, April 2023: news.linkedin.com

[16] ARAG, explainer on the Federal Court of Justice ruling III ZR 109/24 of 12th June 2025 (in German): arag.de

[17] Personalwirtschaft, “XING-Neuausrichtung: Verzweiflungsakt oder rettende Idee?” (in German, paywalled): personalwirtschaft.de

[18] Malwarebytes, “LinkedIn will use your data to train its AI unless you opt out now”, September 2025: malwarebytes.com

[19] KrASIA, “LinkedIn shuts down InCareer in China”, May 2023: kr-asia.com

[20] Social Samosa, “LinkedIn to roll out AI-powered hiring assistant globally”: socialsamosa.com

Vendor and directional sources (commercially interested, treat as indicative)

[2] LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Recruiter product page (LinkedIn’s own figures from pilot users): business.linkedin.com

[3] LinkedIn Talent Solutions, “Rock Your Profile” deck, April 2025, hosted by Allan Hancock College: hancockcollege.edu

[13] HackerNoon, “How AI killed LinkedIn’s Top Voices program” (quotes LinkedIn’s announcement): hackernoon.com

[14] ContentIn, “What is the LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI)?”: contentin.io

[15] Originality.ai, “50%+ of LinkedIn posts were likely AI in 2025”: originality.ai

© 13th October 2026 Andreas Schulz. All rights reserved.