LinkedIn for Developers with Fernando Gomes and Camila Rodrigues

Knowing how to code is not enough. The market also needs to understand who you are, what you do, and what kind of problem you solve.

LinkedIn is not a pretty résumé. It is a professional showcase.

One of the strongest ideas from the session was treating LinkedIn as a professional showcase.

It sounds simple, but it completely changes the way a developer should look at their own profile.

Many people still use LinkedIn as a repository of old job titles, loose courses, stacked technologies, and generic descriptions. The problem is that a profile like that may exist, but it hardly communicates value.

A good profile needs to quickly answer a few questions:

• who is this person professionally?
• which technologies do they work with?
• what is their focus?
• what kind of problem do they solve?
• what impact have they already generated?
• what direction is their career moving toward?

When these answers do not appear, the recruiter, the technical leader, or anyone visiting the profile has to guess. And in the market, almost nobody has time to guess.

Headline: less decoration, more positioning

The headline was one of the first points analyzed during the session.

It is one of the most important areas of the profile because it appears in searches, comments, connections, messages, and quick profile views. That is why it should not be treated as a decorative sentence.

Fernando and Camila reinforced the importance of building the headline with elements that help the profile be found and understood: job title, professional focus, relevant technologies, and keywords connected to the type of opportunity desired.

For a Java developer, for example, a headline can communicate much more when it makes the focus clear:

Or, in a more senior profile:

The point is not to include every technology the person knows. It is to choose the words that help the market understand their positioning.

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, Angular, AWS, Docker, and other technologies may make sense, but they need to be aligned with the profile’s goal. A headline is not an inventory. A headline is direction.

Keywords matter, but context matters more

One of the main topics of the session was the use of keywords.

LinkedIn, recruiters, Boolean searches, and screening systems look at terms such as job title, technology, tool, industry, and seniority. That is why a profile that does not mention the right words may simply not appear.

But there is a common mistake: thinking that optimizing LinkedIn is only about repeating keywords.

It is not.

Keywords help the profile be found. But context is what makes the profile be considered.

It is not enough to write “Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, Docker, AWS”. You need to show where these technologies were used, with what goal, in which project, solving what problem, and generating what result.

This was a very important point in the conversation: the profile needs to pass through the machine, but it also needs to convince the human.

About: the first narrative of your career

Another strong point of the session was the analysis of the About section.

Many people fill this area with generic phrases, long stories, or empty statements. But the About section should work as a strategic introduction.

It needs to say, right at the beginning, what the person does, what they work with, what experience they have, which technologies they master, and where they are directing their career.

For someone who is just starting out, this may mean showing studies, projects, and technologies being practiced.

For someone in career transition, this may mean connecting previous experience with the new field.

For someone already working as a developer, this may mean highlighting impact, technical depth, business context, and real responsibilities.

A good About section does not need to be huge. It needs to be clear.

This kind of text communicates much better than a generic sentence like “I am passionate about technology and looking for new challenges”.

Career transition should not erase your story

One of the most relevant moments of the session was the discussion about professionals in career transition.

Many people coming from another field think they need to erase everything they did before in order to look more like a “dev”. But that can be a mistake.

Fernando and Camila brought a more mature perspective: if previous experience helps explain skills, business context, communication, client relationships, leadership, operations, or problem-solving, it can be used in favor of the new career.

The point is not to keep everything randomly. It is to change the storytelling.

Someone who came from sales, for example, can show that they understand clients, negotiation, goals, operations, and sales processes. If this person is going to work with sales systems, CRM, ERP, or commercial platforms, that background can become a differentiator.

Someone who came from healthcare may have an advantage when working with hospital systems, electronic health records, regulation, or clinical operations.

The secret is not to sell the previous experience as something disconnected. It is to show how it complements the new professional phase.

This is much stronger than pretending the career started from zero.

Projects also count as experience

Another very important point was the value of projects.

For those who are starting out, changing fields, or looking for their first opportunity in development, projects can be one of the most important parts of the profile.

But it is not enough to add a GitHub link and expect someone to understand everything by themselves.

A project needs to be described like professional experience: what the goal was, what problem it solved, which technologies were used, which decisions were made, and what result was delivered.

Instead of writing only:

it is much better to write:

Notice the difference: the second text shows intention, problem, technology, and learning.

A project is not just code. A project is evidence of execution.

Featured, GitHub, articles, and talks: use the tools you already have

The session also brought a practical tip: use the Featured section on LinkedIn better.

This area can highlight projects, GitHub, résumé, articles, talks, important posts, portfolio, videos, or any material that helps prove what the profile is saying.

For developers, this is especially useful.

If you have a project on GitHub, feature it.

If you wrote a technical article, feature it.

If you spoke in a community, feature it.

If you created a published application, feature it.

LinkedIn needs to stop being only a list of experiences and start working as a bridge to the proof of your work.

Seniority needs to be supported

Another very interesting point was the discussion about job titles and seniority.

There is a difference between positioning yourself well and selling yourself artificially.

If someone already performs technical leadership responsibilities, makes architecture decisions, guides other developers, participates in interviews, defines standards, or is responsible for critical deliveries, they can and should communicate that.

But if the title does not match the practice, the problem appears in the interview.

Using “Tech Lead” without being able to support Tech Lead activities may generate attention at first, but it damages trust later.

LinkedIn needs to sell well, but it cannot sell fiction.

Good positioning is clarity. Not exaggeration.

AI helps, but it cannot write your career by itself

An inevitable topic was the use of AI to improve LinkedIn texts.

The recommendation was balanced: using AI can help a lot, especially to rewrite, organize ideas, find keywords, and improve clarity.

But copying and pasting a generated text without review can make the profile generic, robotic, or even full of obvious mistakes.

AI can help with the form. But the person needs to bring the truth, the context, and the impact.

A good use of AI would be asking for help to transform a real experience into a clearer text:

But the result needs to be reviewed. The profile is still yours.

The profile needs to answer: what problem do you solve?

Maybe this was the main question of the session.

More than listing technologies, courses, and job titles, LinkedIn needs to show what kind of problem the professional solves.

Do you solve performance problems?

Do you build APIs?

Do you improve internal processes?

Do you integrate systems?

Do you help teams deliver better?

Do you understand a specific industry, such as healthcare, finance, education, sales, or logistics?

That is what differentiates one profile from another.

Profiles may have similar stacks. Many developers use Java, Spring Boot, Docker, Angular, PostgreSQL, and AWS. What changes is the context, the impact, and the way each person tells their trajectory.

Community is also positioning

A beautiful detail from the session was realizing that the LinkedIn topic was not restricted to recruitment.

The conversation also touched on community, networking, and building presence.

Participating in communities, presenting projects, writing articles, organizing events, asking questions, helping other people, and showing up technically are also part of professional positioning.

LinkedIn does not need to show only where you worked. It can show what you are building, learning, and sharing.

For people in technology, community can be one of the most real ways to grow.

Final thoughts

SouJava Sessions #008 was extremely practical because it talked about something many developers neglect: their own professional presentation.

There is no point in studying Java, Spring Boot, cloud, AI, architecture, or microservices if the market cannot see that in your profile.

LinkedIn does not replace technical competence. But it can prevent that competence from remaining invisible.

The big message of the night was simple: your profile needs to be clear, strategic, and true.

Clear for those who visit.

Strategic for those who search.

True enough to be supported in the interview.

Fernando Gomes and Camila Rodrigues brought a very strong combination of technical perspective, recruitment experience, international market awareness, seniority, storytelling, and positioning.

And once again, SouJava Brasília fulfilled an important role: creating space for the community to learn from real cases, real questions, and real profiles.

Because career is also built like this: with technique, visibility, community, and the courage to adjust your own path.