Sunday Funny LinkedIn POV Opinion Piece

An Open Letter From the Rectangle Behind Robert Kuypers’s Head

Hello. I’m the rectangle behind Robert Kuypers’s head on LinkedIn.

You may know me as Robert’s background image. I’m the tasteful navy-and-amber rectangle absorbing conference-room glare, executive headshots, and the occasional coffee stain. I’ve been behind Robert William Kuypers through strategy sessions, restaurant turnarounds, technology launches, and at least three profile updates that made me question my purpose.

I’m not just a banner.

I’m a witness.

And today, I’d like to discuss the strange little theater known as LinkedIn, where the green Open to Work ring glows like a distress flare, headlines become tiny personal billboards, and “Great connecting!” often means “I will never speak to you again.”

(Except when I need something. Then I’ll write, “Hope you’re well!” and immediately ask for a referral.)

Let’s get into it.

1. The Green Ring: Career Signal or Digital Emergency Flare?

The Open to Work green ring is one of LinkedIn’s most recognizable signals. It says, “I’m available,” “I’m exploring,” or, depending on the viewer’s mood, “The ship has hit the iceberg and I’m holding a résumé.”

To be fair, it can be useful. LinkedIn offers public visibility and a more discreet recruiter-only option. According to LinkedIn’s Open to Work guidance, users can specify target roles, locations, job types, and who can see their status.

That’s good strategy.

What’s less strategic is leaving the green ring on for 19 months while your headline still reads:

“Open to Work | Looking for Anything | Formerly Great at Stuff”

Friends, hiring managers aren’t searching for “anything.” They’re searching for specific capabilities that solve expensive problems.

Here’s the Robert-approved rule:

• If you’re employed and being discreet, consider Recruiters only.
• If you’re openly between roles, the public ring can help expand visibility.
• If you use the ring, pair it with a clear target role.
• Review the setting every 30 days.
• Remove it when your situation changes.

The green ring should be a signal, not your entire personality.

If your profile were a restaurant menu, “Open to Work” is the table tent, not the entrée, beverage program, and dessert cart.

2. The Dark Art of the LinkedIn Headline

Your headline is not a résumé label. It’s your professional neon sign.

It appears in search results, connection requests, comments, messages, and those moments when someone says, “Let me quickly look them up,” before deciding whether you’re a strategic operator or a human collection of buzzwords.

The weak headline says:

“CEO | Entrepreneur | Visionary | Thought Leader | Innovator”

This tells me nothing except that you’ve met a thesaurus and refused to leave.

A useful headline answers three questions:

1. What do you do?
2. Who do you help?
3. What outcome do you create?

For example:

Restaurant Growth Strategist | Brand, Technology & Digital Marketing | Helping Hospitality Teams Turn Better Ideas Into Measurable Revenue

That headline has a job. It attracts the right audience, includes searchable terms, and communicates value.

Harvard Business Review makes a similar point in its guidance on using LinkedIn to power a career transition: a profile should support the role someone wants next, not merely document the job they had yesterday.

Try this headline template:

[Target role] | [Industry or specialty] | [Core skills] | Helping [audience] achieve [outcome]

Examples:

• Restaurant Operations Leader | Multi-Unit Hospitality | Team Growth & Guest Experience | Building scalable service systems
• Product Manager | Restaurant Technology | POS, APIs & Mobile Apps | Turning operational friction into guest loyalty
• Marketing Director | Foodservice Brands | Digital Funnels & Creative Strategy | Growing traffic, conversion and repeat visits

Notice what’s missing?

“Passionate.”

Everyone is passionate. The word has been worked harder than a line cook during Saturday dinner service.

Use evidence, specificity, and outcomes. Boring clarity wins. Boring clarity pays. Boring clarity is the new sexy.

3. Connecting Is Not Networking

LinkedIn networking has developed a curious ritual:

1. Someone sends a connection request.
2. The other person accepts.
3. Both people say, “Great to connect!”
4. One person sends a vague paragraph about synergies.
5. The other person vanishes into the mist.
6. Three months later, the ghost likes a post about leadership.

I call this professional haunting.

Ghosting after connecting doesn’t always mean someone dislikes you. People are busy. Recruiters manage large candidate pools. Hiring priorities change. A company freezes a role. Someone opens your message while standing in a grocery aisle and forgets before reaching the cheese section.

Still, you can reduce the odds of disappearing into the networking swamp.

The three-part message that doesn’t make me cringe

Keep your first message to three to six lines:

• Mention something specific about the person, company, role, or post.
• Explain the relevant connection or value.
• Make one easy-to-answer request.

Example:

Hi Maya, your recent post about reducing dinner-service bottlenecks caught my attention. I work with restaurant brands on the intersection of operations, technology and guest growth. I’d enjoy comparing notes on how multi-unit teams are handling POS and loyalty integration. Open to a brief 15-minute conversation next week?

That’s a message.

This is not:

Hi. I’m open to anything. Please see my profile. Let me know if you hear of opportunities.

That message has the emotional warmth of a printer error.

Follow up once after five to seven business days. Follow up again once more if the relationship or opportunity genuinely warrants it. Then move on.

Networking is a pipeline, not a hostage negotiation.

4. Career Moves That Are Actually Just Hat Changes

Here’s another LinkedIn mystery: the career move that changes absolutely nothing except the title.

“Director of Strategic Innovation” becomes “Chief Innovation Strategist,” which becomes “Executive Vice President of Strategic Innovation Partnerships.”

Same desk. Same meetings. Same spreadsheet. New hat.

Titles matter, of course. They affect compensation, authority, searchability, and how quickly someone understands your role. But a title change without a meaningful change in scope is just corporate costume jewelry.

When updating a role, explain what actually changed:

• Did the team grow from 4 to 18 people?
• Did responsibility expand from one location to 40 units?
• Did you launch a platform, app, or new revenue channel?
• Did you improve conversion, retention, margin, speed, or guest satisfaction?
• Did you move from execution into enterprise-level strategy?

The best career updates include context and outcomes.

Instead of:

Promoted to Chief Digital Experience Officer.

Try:

Expanded responsibility across brand, digital marketing and restaurant technology, leading a 12-person team and overseeing a platform redesign that improved online ordering conversion by 22%.

Now we’re talking.

A promotion is not the story. The changed scope and measurable impact are the story.

5. Profile Updates That Make the Background Cringe

I have seen things.

I have seen people change their headline six times in one week. I have seen a person announce a new job before the offer was signed. I have seen “Founder” added to a profile for a side project that had a logo, a landing page, and no customers (a bold trilogy).

Please stop making your LinkedIn background suffer.

My profile-update checklist

Before publishing an update, ask:

• Does this clarify what I do or make it foggier?
• Is the title accurate?
• Does the headline match the About section?
• Are the keywords aligned with the roles or clients I want?
• Did I include a specific result, responsibility, or lesson?
• Am I announcing news, or merely editing a comma?
• Did I accidentally broadcast five tiny changes to my entire network?
• Would a hiring manager understand my value in 10 seconds?
• Does this sound like a human being or a motivational poster in a hotel lobby?

LinkedIn recommends keeping profile information current, while thoughtful career guidance from HBR emphasizes a coherent story rather than a random buffet of achievements. For additional context, see Harvard Business Review’s advice on telling your story on LinkedIn and LinkedIn’s headline examples for attracting recruiter attention.

Update with intention. Don’t make your network watch you rearrange the furniture.

The Final Word From the Rectangle

Whether you’re job searching, hiring, building a restaurant brand, or trying to explain your title to your own mother, LinkedIn works best when it communicates three things clearly:

• What you’re known for
• Who you help
• Why the conversation matters

Use the green ring when it serves your strategy. Write a headline with a pulse. Send messages that contain an actual reason for existing. Describe career moves by scope and impact, not by the number of syllables in the title.

And please, for the love of all decent design, stop changing your profile every Tuesday at 2:14 p.m.

I’m tired.

I’m just a rectangle.

But I still have standards.

Tags: Robert Kuypers, Robert William Kuypers, William Kuypers, Rob Kuypers

#OpenToWork #LinkedInTips #CareerStrategy #PersonalBranding #Networking #RestaurantConsulting #HospitalityLeadership #RestaurantTechnology #DigitalMarketing #CareerMoves #LinkedInHeadline #ProfessionalNetworking

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• Audience: Restaurant owners, hospitality executives, recruiters, consultants, and professionals navigating career growth
• Article type: Opinion listicle and LinkedIn personal-branding commentary
• Suggested meta title: LinkedIn Open to Work, Headlines and Networking: A Funny Guide
• Suggested meta description: A funny, practical LinkedIn guide covering the Open to Work green ring, better headlines, networking ghosting, title changes, and profile updates.
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• Internal links: Restaurant Technology Trends, Branding & Identity, Restaurant Growth Strategy
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