LinkedIn is not a portfolio

Worth saying first, because the argument is not that you should delete it. LinkedIn is where recruiters search, it is how people confirm you are a real person with a traceable history, and it carries a graph of mutual connections that provides social proof no personal site can manufacture. For being found and being verified, it works.

The claim here is narrower: it is a directory entry, and a directory entry is not a body of work.

Everyone's profile has the same shape. That is the entire point of a directory, and it is why LinkedIn is scannable, but it also means the only variable is your text, in a layout identical to every other candidate's. You cannot lead with the thing you most want someone to see if the template puts it fourth.

It is optimised for skimming, not reading. The interface truncates, collapses and buries; long descriptions are hidden behind "see more", and most readers never expand them. Anything that needs a few paragraphs to land is structurally disadvantaged.

You are also sharing the page. Your profile sits inside a feed, alongside adverts, suggested people and whatever the algorithm is promoting that week. A link to your own site is a page where the only thing to look at is your work.

And you do not control it. The layout changes when LinkedIn decides it changes, some of your content is gated behind a login wall for logged-out visitors, and the profile is not really exportable in a form you can host elsewhere. If that sounds abstract, ask anyone who had a read.cv profile.

For plenty of roles it does not, and it is fair to say so. If you are applying through a large company's process for a role where the work is not visual and not public, LinkedIn plus a resume is often enough, and a personal site is a nice-to-have.

The difference bites in the cases where the work needs showing rather than listing. Anything visual, obviously. Writing of any kind, where a sample is worth more than a description of your writing. Freelance and contract work, where a proposal with a link converts and one without it does not. Career changes, where your history argues for the job you are leaving and you need somewhere to make the case for the one you want. And senior roles, where the interesting content is judgement and tradeoffs, which is exactly the thing that does not survive a bullet point.

The version of this that works is not choosing. Keep LinkedIn as the directory entry that makes you findable and verifiable, and have a site that carries the actual argument. Then link them: the site link goes in your LinkedIn profile, and your site links back to LinkedIn for anyone who wants the network context.

The reason people do not do this is that building the site sounds like a project, and it can be. It is also work you have largely already done, because the content is in your resume. DebutPage drafts the page from that PDF in about two minutes, and you restyle it by describing what you want rather than learning a design tool. Publishing is free.