How artificial intelligence can help you build a professional reputation, reach the right people, and create new career opportunities.
Most people think of LinkedIn as a place to post their résumé, look for jobs, or promote their business. But what if its greatest value isn't finding opportunities that already exist, but creating opportunities that otherwise might never have existed?
That was one of the ideas I explored in my conversation with Al Kushner, author of The AI Linked-In Advantage: Unleash the Power of AI and Dominate the Competition.
Al helps professionals use LinkedIn and artificial intelligence to develop their personal brands, expand their networks, and attract career opportunities. Our conversation began with a familiar question: How can AI make LinkedIn more useful? As we explored the possibilities, a more interesting question emerged.
What if, instead of using LinkedIn to ask people for opportunities, you used it to give people a reason to discover you?
AI Can Help You Write. Should It?
One of the most obvious uses of AI on LinkedIn is content creation. You can ask ChatGPT to write a post, develop an article, suggest a response to someone's comment, or help improve your profile.
That saves time.
I've often wondered whether making content easier to produce necessarily makes that content worth producing. If I can ask AI to generate a LinkedIn post in seconds, what am I actually contributing by publishing it?
Is it something I believe? Something I've learned? An observation that others might find useful Or am I simply adding more content to an already crowded internet?
Al's approach is to treat AI as a starting point rather than a finished product. AI can provide the structure, suggest ideas, and help organize information. The individual still needs to contribute their own experience, perspective, and personality. The goal is to take the framework AI provides and put your own spin on it.
AI can help you communicate an idea. It shouldn't replace the need to have one.
The Opportunity Hidden in Someone Else's Post
Instead of focusing entirely on creating your own posts, spend time responding to posts written by people you want to know. Suppose there's an industry leader, hiring manager, or business executive you'd like to connect with.
You could send a connection request and hope they accept it.
Or you could follow them, read what they publish, and contribute to the conversation.
Use AI to develop thoughtful responses and questions the original author might not have considered. A useful question can be more effective than a generic compliment because it gives the other person something worth responding to. If that person responds, you've begun a conversation.
Don't begin by asking someone to connect with you. Begin by giving them a reason to want to connect.
The objective isn't to accumulate connections. It's to become familiar to people whose work interests you. AI can help identify possible questions or organize your thoughts, but the contribution still needs to be meaningful.
Otherwise, you're just automating compliments.
What If You're Trying to Change Careers?
To explore how these strategies might work in practice, consider two hypothetical situations.
The first is a recent college graduate with a degree but little professional experience. The second, an experienced professional who wanted to move into an entirely different field.
Both face a similar problem: their LinkedIn profiles may not represent where they want to go.
A recent graduate may have little to show beyond education and unrelated employment. An experienced professional may have hundreds of connections, years of accomplishments, and a strong reputation—but in an industry they no longer want to work in.
How do you use LinkedIn to build a reputation in a field where you aren't yet established?
Begin with the profile itself.
Your headline, About section, professional accomplishments, and keywords should help communicate the direction you're pursuing. For a recent graduate, relevant coursework, volunteer work, projects, awards, and recommendations can help demonstrate ability even without extensive professional experience.
For someone changing careers, the challenge is different. Their existing accomplishments may still have value, but the profile needs to communicate what they want to do next.
AI can help identify the skills and experiences that are relevant to the new direction and organize them into a clearer professional message.
Updating the profile is only the beginning.
You also need to reach the people who might care.
Find the People Before You Ask for the Job
Al introduced a tool I hadn't thought of using for a career transition: LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It's generally associated with sales professionals looking for potential customers. Al suggested using its search capabilities to identify employers, hiring managers, and other professionals in a particular industry.
You can search by criteria such as job title, company size, and geographic location. And you can look for people who are active on LinkedIn.
Why does that matter?
Someone who regularly posts gives you opportunities to interact with them. Instead of immediately asking for a job, you can follow their work, respond to their ideas, and gradually establish a connection.
Al also recommended participating in LinkedIn groups related to your field. Someone interested in neuroscience, for example, could join groups where researchers and other professionals exchange information. They could share an interesting study, ask a useful question, or contribute an observation about a development in the field.
Over time, other members might begin to recognize their name.
When appropriate, there's nothing wrong with mentioning that you're seeking an opportunity. The larger idea is that professional networking doesn't have to begin with a request. It can begin with participation.
The Newsletter Strategy That Changed How I Thought About LinkedIn
We discussed a problem with LinkedIn's audience. Imagine you've spent years working in engineering and have built a network of 500 professional connections.
Now you want to pursue neuroscience.
You begin posting about neuroscience, but most of your existing connections are engineers.
They may have little interest in what you're publishing. Your professional network reflects your past, not your future. How do you reach a new audience without abandoning the network you've already built?
Consider creating a LinkedIn newsletter focused on the new subject.
For example, someone entering neuroscience could publish a newsletter about recent discoveries, research papers, and developments in the field. Their existing connections would have an opportunity to subscribe, but only those interested in the subject would need to follow the newsletter. As new professionals discover the content, they could subscribe too.
This creates an audience organized around the subject rather than simply around the author's previous employment.
Now take the idea a little further.
Suppose I'm a recent neuroscience graduate looking for my first job. Instead of spending all my time searching job listings and contacting recruiters, I could begin reading research publications and sharing the most interesting developments through a weekly newsletter.
I wouldn't need to pretend to be an established neuroscientist.
I could simply become someone who helps other people stay informed about neuroscience. If I consistently find and share useful information, people may eventually come to value what I publish. Some of those people might work in the very organizations where I'd like to find employment.
Instead of waiting for someone to give me an opportunity to demonstrate my interests and abilities, I could begin demonstrating them myself.
That was the idea I found particularly compelling. A newsletter wouldn't guarantee employment. Nor would having subscribers automatically make someone an expert. It could create something a résumé alone might not: an ongoing demonstration of curiosity, initiative, and the ability to communicate useful information.
That could lead to conversations that otherwise might never happen.
AI Makes Consistency Easier
Creating content regularly takes time. You have to find subjects, research information, organize your thoughts, and write something people will want to read.
AI can make this process more manageable.
Rather than spending hours developing every post from scratch, you can use AI to generate an outline, identify possible angles, or help turn your research into an article.
Someone using LinkedIn for networking might spend as little as 10 or 15 minutes a day checking posts, responding to comments, and maintaining relationships. The important distinction is between using AI to reduce unnecessary work and using it to eliminate the work that gives your content value.
If you're publishing a neuroscience newsletter, AI might help organize your notes or make an explanation easier to understand.
It doesn't eliminate the need to understand the research, verify the information, or decide why the findings matter.
That raises a concern.
Who Owns the Words AI Writes?
What happens if AI produces a paragraph that closely resembles something another author has already written You might publish it without realizing the similarity exists.
Consider using plagiarism-detection software such as Grammarly. Such tools can identify passages that resemble material published elsewhere, giving the author an opportunity to investigate potential problems before publishing.
There's a larger issue that a plagiarism checker alone cannot resolve. A low similarity score doesn't necessarily mean a work is original, just as a high score doesn't automatically establish plagiarism. Changing a few words doesn't necessarily resolve a copyright concern.
The questions of authorship, originality, and intellectual property become more complicated when AI contributes to the writing process. For anyone publishing under their own name, the responsibility remains with the person who chooses to publish.
AI can generate the words; it doesn't take responsibility for what you say.
When AI Becomes Your Voice
Near the end of our conversation, we discussed another use of AI: generating audio and video content. Al explained that he had used AI narration for the audiobook version of The AI Linked-In Advantage. He was enthusiastic about the quality and the time it saved.
I saw the benefit and had a different perspective. As someone who hosts a podcast and has narrated my own work, I consider my voice part of my personal brand. If an AI-generated version of me could deliver every presentation, narrate every book, and produce every video, what would be lost?
Al made an interesting counterargument. People have long hired professional narrators to read audiobooks. If the purpose is to communicate information, why should it matter whether the voice belongs to the author, a professional narrator, or an AI system?
I appreciate that distinction. For some work, the information itself may be what matters most. For other work, the individual delivering it may be part of the value. Neither applies to every situation. It raises a question worth considering as AI-generated voices and videos become increasingly realistic.
Are people following us for the information we provide, or because of the person providing it?
The answer may influence how we choose to use AI.
The Real Advantage Isn't AI
Professionals who learn to use AI effectively will have advantages over those who ignore it. Technology can help people accomplish more in less time, and those who take advantage of useful tools may become more competitive. AI can make many tasks easier.
What actually creates a professional opportunity?
Is it the ability to publish more posts? To respond to more people? To build a larger network?
Or is it the ability to contribute something others find valuable?
The strategies I found most useful in our discussion weren't necessarily the ones that depended most heavily on AI. They were the ones that changed the approach to networking:
Follow people before asking to connect.
Contribute to discussions before asking for favors.
Share useful information before expecting others to pay attention.
Build a reputation around the work you want to do, not just the work you've already done.
AI can help make these activities easier and more efficient. The underlying principle works with or without AI.
Instead of asking how AI can help you get noticed on LinkedIn, ask what you could contribute that would make people want to notice you.
The technology can help you communicate that contribution.
The value has to come from somewhere.
Listen or Watch
AI Secrets on LinkedIn: Using AI for Branding & Networking with Al Kushner
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Learn more about Al Kushner and his work
Editor's Note
This article grew out of a conversation with Al Kushner, author of The AI Linked-In Advantage. The ideas discussed here originated in that conversation, while the structure, emphasis, and commentary are my own. Any errors or interpretations are mine, not Al Kushner's.
About the Author
Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more than 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.