LinkedIn Profile Writer & Positioning Specialist | Karen Tisdell.com | Executive Positioning & LinkedIn Training | Independent Authority on Trust, Visibility and Professional Relationships
The One Ambition She Allowed Herself
Earlier this year a journalist from the Australian Financial Review rang to ask Karen Tisdell what she thought. That call was the whole ambition. It had taken years of podcast interviews, articles and one newspaper in South Australia she had never heard of, and when it finally arrived she wrote about it publicly with something close to disbelief.
Most people who advise executives on visibility carry a long list of things they are chasing. Karen Tisdell has almost none, and she says so without dressing it up.
“I struggle to want things.”
It is an unusual line from a woman whose business exists to make other people easier to notice, remember and recommend. It is also the reason her advice sounds nothing like the rest of the personal branding industry. She is a LinkedIn profile writer and positioning specialist in Sydney, with 17 years spent writing profiles for senior leaders and 14 years in recruitment before that, and she is not selling fame to anyone.
Years ago, after some blunt words from an industry colleague, she decided against scaling. She wanted a business that fitted around her children and around a commitment she states without apology: wandering through forests and along beaches during normal business hours. Everything she teaches now sits on top of that decision.
Fourteen Years Learning How People Are Actually Chosen
She started with a human resources diploma and a stretch of writing job ads, an experience she recalls as trying to make them sound less like hostage notes and more like genuine opportunities. Fourteen years in recruitment followed. They taught her the thing that still underwrites her work, which is how people are found, assessed, shortlisted and quietly ruled out.
“My recruitment background taught me to read people, understand what the market needs to hear, and then shape their profile from the outside in.”
That last phrase is the entire method. Most profiles are built inside out, starting with whatever the person is proudest of. Hers start with what the reader needs to understand before they will act.
She joined LinkedIn in 2005 and used it to hunt for candidates. It took her a while to realise the same search could find clients, and once she did, the numbers moved fast enough that she was named Recruiter of the Year in 2008 on sales volume. Her employer then sent her across Australia to teach other consultants how she was doing it.
In May 2009 she left to start Karen Tisdell.com. Seventeen years on, she has written and repositioned profiles for board members, consultants and senior executives, spent more than 12 years training teams, and collected over 180 recommendations. She has never worked for LinkedIn, which she considers the point.
The Trap That Catches the Most Accomplished People
The clients who struggle hardest are not the ones with thin careers. They are the ones with too much career to explain.
“High achievers get stuck because they are too close to their own experience.”
They describe themselves in chronology. They led a transformation. They managed an acquisition. They built a high-performing team. Every claim is true, and not one of them separates the person from the hundred others making the same claim in the same words. Karen Tisdell has a phrase for the result: accurate but forgettable.
Her fix is not decoration. She reads a career from the outside looking for the pattern inside it, the problems this person is repeatedly trusted to solve, the situations where others turn to them, the judgement sitting behind the results.
“Positioning is about creating coherence.”
For portfolio careers, non-linear paths and leaders in transition, coherence is the commercial question. A profile that reads as drift costs opportunities the person never hears about and never gets to appeal. One that reads as direction gets forwarded to the person who decides.
“The aim is to make a long and varied career feel as though it has been leading to this moment, rather than reading like a collection of disconnected roles and achievements.”
That is work AI still cannot do, and she is unusually specific about why.
Polished, Generic and Strangely Uninhabited
When LinkedIn introduced a button inviting users to flag AI slop, someone asked Karen Tisdell what she made of it. Her answer became an essay, the essay became an article, and the article reached the AFR. Her position tends to surprise people who expect a writer to be defensive about the technology.
“AI is not inherently the problem. It can help organise thoughts, challenge an idea or overcome the tyranny of the blank page.”
Her objection is narrower and considerably harder to argue with.
“The problem begins when people use it to manufacture authority they have not demonstrated, in language they would never naturally use.”
The output, she says, reads as polished, generic and strangely uninhabited. It can carry enough of the right keywords to surface in a search. What it cannot do is see the pattern running across a long career, or work out what a prospective client actually needs to hear. Left to itself, it leads with what the person is proud of rather than what the reader has to understand.
Her test for whether a profile earns trust is not subtle.
“Calling yourself a ‘visionary, purpose-driven, transformational leader’ tells me nothing other than the size of your ego.”
What she wants instead is evidence. The problems you were trusted to solve. The decisions you made and what changed because of them. What you disagree with, and what changed your mind. Those details give a reader something they can assess, remember and repeat, which is the only currency that counts when your name comes up in a room you are not in.
“AI can help with expression. It should not invent the person, or decide their positioning.”
The Second Job Nobody Applied For
Her other argument runs against nearly everything senior leaders are currently told about the platform.
“Senior leaders are repeatedly told to post several times a week, build a large following and feed the algorithm as though they have accidentally acquired a second job.”
Her counterproposal is to treat LinkedIn as a relationship platform and a professional database rather than a stage. Use the notifications page instead of surrendering your attention to the feed. Comment where you can add experience or a useful question. Go back through the people who already know your work, because former clients and colleagues are the most credible referrers anyone will ever have.
The habit behind this is old. For years she kept a rule she called never eat alone on a Friday, using the lunch to meet someone she had connected with online, catch up with someone she already knew, or introduce two people who should know each other.
She is equally clear about the line between that and prospecting in disguise.
“People can smell ‘pitch breath’.”
The payoff is slower than a viral post and considerably more durable.
“Sales are often a lagging indicator of conversations.”
What Your Profile Does When You Are Not in the Room
The contradiction at the start of her story resolves here. Karen Tisdell dislikes social media, has said so publicly, and has spent 17 years inside one platform anyway, because she never understood it as a place to perform.
“The goal is not to become famous on LinkedIn. It is to become known for the right things by the right people.”
That distinction is what she sells, and it is why the work outlasts any individual post.
“Your profile manages your reputation when you are not in the room.”
Her advice for the year ahead compresses into a single line: your network still matters more than your noise. Not a broadcast schedule. Not a follower count. A reputation clear enough to be repeated by someone else, and enough goodwill in the relationships around you that nobody has to start from zero when there is a real reason to talk.
“Visibility may help somebody notice you. Relationships are what give them a reason to choose, recommend or champion you.”
Fame is a number. Being the name someone remembers at the right moment is a career.
Karen Tisdell is a LinkedIn profile writer and positioning specialist at Karen Tisdell.com, based in Sydney, Australia. She writes and repositions LinkedIn profiles for senior leaders, board members and consultants, and trains teams and organisations to build commercial visibility and relationships on the platform. To connect with Karen or learn more, visit linkedin.com/in/karentisdell or karentisdell.com.
