I wrote earlier about the importance of our business legacy – both as an individual and as a company. And this has led me to think about another issue I have come across recently.

We are all increasingly using LinkedIn to promote and network ourselves and our businesses and I often get asked how people can best utilise this online tool. It is definitely worth being on LinkedIn, not least because it is free and LinkedIn spends a lot of time, effort and money on marketing our profiles with all the search engines. When we search for an individual online nowadays, we are very likely to find their LinkedIn profile is one of the top links returned in the search results.

What I have noticed is that sometimes I come across people with profiles that only go back a few years. Which can be surprising if I subsequently meet them and it becomes clear that unless they grew up with a trust fund they have likely been working for a good few decades at least. This is more of a problem for men than women. Women can talk about time spent outside of the workplace being a Mum, few men tend to make that claim.

But not having a professional history pre- 2000s does raise questions about where a person comes from, what have they done before? And why aren’t they sharing it openly on their profile? Maybe they did something really cool like work for the Secret Services and can’t talk about it? Or they did something so dull they’ve forgotten it? Or, as my mother suggested, they have been doing a stretch inside? Or what they did before has no connection with what they are doing now?

Whatever the truth is, we all need to account for what we have been doing; where we came from and how we got here. Our legacy is important and we really should share it because not doing so speaks volumes and might suggest a backstory that needlessly damages who we are now.