Mummy at Maternity leave

Let me count the ways, that I loved seeing this recent LinkedIn update notification:

1. First and foremost, it’s obviously great news. Sarah is a friend, past colleague, and someone that I’ve admired for some time now, so the fact she’s become a Mum is simply wonderful to hear.
2. I love the way Sarah has kind of ‘hacked’ the ‘Add Experience’ LinkedIn form to document experience that they probably didn’t intent people to add. Reminds me of how hashtags and @’s emerged from user behaviour on Twitter. Not by product design.
3. I’m inspired that Sarah has added this update to her public professional network, after procrastinating for more than 6 months over a similar update for myself. Not as senior or quite as high profiled a role as ‘Mummy at Maternity leave’’, but ‘Daddy at Primary carer’ is an important job too.
4. And that’s the thing, that while the Add Experience form was not intended for this sort of update, it’s actually one of the most important pieces of experience that anyone can get. Why is this not highlighted more openly? Worn as confidently as we do all our past jobs and responsibilities?

I hope to see more of this in the future. More personality and real world experience creeping into LinkedIn. AI will never replace that.