Ten representative sales profiles — modeled on the most common real-world patterns, from a one-word “Sales” headline to an enterprise AE with 127% attainment — scored by Standout's live audit engine. Median: 38/100, with the single lowest score in the entire benchmark (19).
The profession that lives on numbers publishes none — no quota, no ACV, no pipeline, anywhere.
Type your name — or paste your LinkedIn URL — and get your 0–100 recruiter-visibility score free, right on this page. No sign-in, no account access.
median — even with the benchmark-wide median of 38
mean score across the 10 profiles
scored below 50/100
full score range, weakest to strongest
the family's ceiling — its strongest profile's score
8 of 10 sales profiles scored below 50 — including the benchmark's overall floor (sales-01 at 19: a one-word headline over a blank profile). The instructive miss at the top: sales-10, a deliberately strong VP profile, scored just 57 because “Regional VP” and “GTM” abbreviations don't match what recruiters type.
Counted from the engine's own findings across the family's 10 audits — each audit returns one finding per area: headline, About, experience.
Sales is the one profession where the proof is inherently numeric — and 6 of the 10 sales profiles showed no numbers at all: no quota attainment, no ACV or deal sizes, no pipeline value, in any section. The engine's flags read like a pattern: “Made outbound calls and sent emails”, “Selling software to businesses”, “Upsold additional products when possible”. Worse, hedged phrasing backfires — “consistently worked toward quota” was read by the engine as signaling missed targets. The four profiles that did publish numbers all scored 44 or higher.
“'Made outbound calls and sent emails' describes tasks, not outcomes — no quota attainment, meeting counts, or pipeline value.”
— the engine on sales-03, scored 31
“'Consistently worked toward quota' signals missed targets; every bullet lacks numbers, ACV, or named methodologies.”
— the engine on sales-04, scored 31
“'Selling software to businesses' — one vague line with no quota attainment, deal sizes, or segment.”
— the engine on sales-02, scored 28
See the fix in practice: 6 real before/after headline rewrites for sales → and 5 real before/after About-section rewrites → and 5 real before/after experience-bullet rewrites → The site-wide top-3 failure modes — headline, About, and experience-bullet failures across all 50 profiles — are in the full benchmark report.
No job family is meaningfully “better at LinkedIn” — all five means land within 3 points of each other. Each family has its own cut of the data.
| Family | n | Mean | Median | Range | Cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 10 | 40.1 | 34 | 22–71 | Read cut → |
| Product | 10 | 41.9 | 38 | 24–66 | Read cut → |
| SalesTHIS PAGE | 10 | 39.2 | 38 | 19–66 | — |
| Marketing | 10 | 41 | 41 | 18–68 | Read cut → |
| Data | 10 | 42.2 | 38 | 22–66 | Read cut → |
Full distribution, tier sanity check, and all 50 per-profile scores: the complete 2026 benchmark report →
The profiles are constructed, not scraped. This cut covers the 10 sales profiles from the benchmark's 50 — each a fictional profile, with invented names, slugs, and companies, modeled on the most common real-world LinkedIn patterns, across a deliberately realistic quality spread per family (2 sparse, 4 typical-weak, 2 mid, 1 decent, 1 strong). LinkedIn blocks anonymous profile access, and Standout's own product promise is no account access, no scraping — so a scraped corpus is neither possible nor honest. Each profile was scored in a single pass by the live production audit engine — the exact same code path behind every visitor's free audit on this site — on September 18, 2026; every score is the first and only result returned.
When citing, say “representative LinkedIn profiles” or “profiles modeled on common real-world patterns” — never “real profiles.” Full methodology and limitations are in the complete report. Raw per-profile data, the corpus, and the runner scripts are available to any journalist on request via [email protected].
“In a September 2026 benchmark by Standout (standout9.acoco.ai), 10 representative sales LinkedIn profiles — modeled on common real-world patterns — scored a median of 38/100 for recruiter-search visibility. 6 of 10 showed zero sales numbers anywhere: no quota attainment, no deal sizes, no pipeline value.”
“In a September 2026 benchmark by Standout (standout9.acoco.ai), 50 representative LinkedIn profiles across engineering, product, sales, marketing, and data scored a median of 38/100 for recruiter-search visibility — 9 in 10 scored below 60, and 42% of headlines never named the job the person was actually targeting.”
The benchmark used the exact engine behind the free audit. Type your name — or paste your LinkedIn URL — and get your own 0–100 recruiter-visibility score in 60 seconds. Free, no sign-in, no account access. If you want the fixes, $1 unlocks exactly 3 paste-ready rewrites: a keyword-optimized headline, a rewritten About section, and your top 3 bullets reworded for recruiter search. One-time — no subscription.
Get my free scoreScored below the median and deciding what to do about it? Compare every LinkedIn profile review option — free vs. $1 vs. $400 or see what human profile writers charge in 2026 ($99–$500+).