The Smallest Change for the Biggest Impact in Your Ministry Career Change: Your LinkedIn Headline
Nov 21, 2025
Read Time: 3.5 minutes
Todd Linder
Founder & Head Coach
Overview
Welcome to the Ministry To Marketplace Minute! Today, we’re talking about possibly the single easiest thing you can do to boost your job search in a big way: updating your LinkedIn headline. Yep, that one line of 220 characters that could give you more opportunities. Don’t believe me? Let’s dive in.
Today's Ministry To Marketplace Minute:
Mindset Shift: Small shift with big impact for your ministry career change.
Strategy Shift: Getting more opportunities with your LinkedIn headline.
Do This Right Now: Make yourself an attractive candidate for your pastor job search.
Who Will Hire Me?: 5 ministry friendly organizations with jobs for ex-pastors.
🧠 MINDSET SHIFT: Small shift with big impact for your ministry career change.
There’s one simple thing that you can change in your entire job search process that can bring you outsized results: your LinkedIn headline.
Wait, really? Yes, really!
Let’s start with the purpose of having a great LinkedIn profile.
In many cases, LinkedIn is replacing your resume. Recruiters and hiring managers go there to check out:
Are you who you say you are? (it’s harder to lie in public)
Get a more complete version of you, not just the version on your resume.
If you are connected to anyone they know. They might use that information for references later.
I wrote an entire newsletter on exactly what you need to update to optimize your LinkedIn profile, and how to do it in “The 9 LinkedIn Profile Essentials for Pastors Making a Career Change.”
But the LinkedIn headline is a very specific and important part.
Think about your LinkedIn headline like the professional summary of your resume. It’s a sentence or two about why people should care about who you are.
And, it’s one of three things that show up EVERYWHERE on LinkedIn. Your name, your picture, and your headline.
That means that no matter where you come up in a search, your headline is someone’s first impression of you.
To summarize, your LinkedIn headline tells everyone who sees your name how you can help them if they were to hire you. Good hiring managers don’t think about job titles; they think about problems that need to be solved. That’s where this comes in.
♟️ STRATEGY SHIFT: Getting more opportunities with your LinkedIn headline.
If that’s the case, how do you write it?
We use the XYZ statement formula to help you craft a headline that makes people more interested in you and how you can help them. (HIRE YOU!)
The XYZ statement formula is,
X: Who you help.
Y: What you help them with.
Z: How you help them.
Let’s break it down.
X: Who you help.
Who you help, specifically. Do you help teams? Organizations? HR leaders? Non-profits? Do you help parents? Executives? Managers?
Y: What you help them with.
Do you help X with organizing systems, hiring great talent, securing more funding, or making operations less of a headache?
This comes directly from the functions of the job types that you are aiming for. Not just knowing the job title, but specifically what the job does, what problems it solves, and what results it accomplishes.
We help you to discover not just what your top job types are, but also how to communicate that you are the top candidate for those positions in the Interview Accelerator.
Z: How you help them.
There are two different options for this one. You can either:
Tell them how you can increase a result by a certain amount, OR
Tell them how you help them avoid a pain they are experiencing.
Option 1 represents the results the hiring team hopes someone will achieve in the role.
Option 2 represents the solution to the problems they are facing right now.
You can write your headline in two different formats:
Option 1: “I help [who] [get a result (with metric)] for [metric they care about]”
Option 2: “I help [who] [get a result (with metric)] without [pain or problem]”
Here are some examples:
“I help non-profits raise 20% above their annual goal without expensive events.”
“I help managers leverage HR software tools to increase employee retention by 120%”
✅ DO THIS RIGHT NOW: Make yourself an attractive candidate for your pastor job search.
Determine what your Top Job Type is if you haven’t already.
Pick whether you will do Option 1 or Option 2.
Create your XYZ statement and update it on your LinkedIn profile!
🚀 FROM THE COACHING GROUP
Today is my first full day at the new company… Very grateful for Todd and the support of this whole community. Been looking for a new job since April, so this is a huge answer to prayer!
🤝 WHO WILL HIRE ME?: 5 ministry friendly organizations with jobs for ex-pastors.
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How we can help you:
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The Ministry To Marketplace Interview Accelerator Join 113+ others who have successfully transitioned from ministry into marketplace jobs that value their experience. The Interview Accelerator will give you our proven step-by-step process, coaching, and community for getting more interviews for jobs that value your ministry experience and support your family. Let's hop on a call!
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