You got promoted, and your LinkedIn profile still shows the old title. The quick fix is to edit that title and move on, but that wipes out the very step you just took. A promotion reads best when the profile keeps both roles, under one employer, in order.
One entry or separate roles: what a reader actually sees
LinkedIn has no dedicated promotion feature. What you can do is add the new job as a new position and attach it to the same company page the old one already uses. When both positions point to that page, the profile usually groups them under a single employer heading, shows the total time you have spent there, and lists each role beneath it with its own dates.
That stacked view does two things a single edited entry cannot.
- It reads as progression. Someone scanning your profile sees one employer and a climb inside it. The unspoken message is that the people who knew your work best chose to give you more of it.
- Each title stays searchable. Recruiters search by job title. If you overwrite "Account Executive" with "Senior Account Executive", the earlier title vanishes from your profile. Keep both and you can turn up in searches for either.
So the general answer to "one entry or several" is several positions on one company page. Editing the existing entry is fine for a pure correction, such as a typo. For a real change in level or scope, add a new position. There is one case in which a single entry makes sense, a title that moved while the work stayed put, and it is covered further down.
The old entry that does not stack
Sometimes the new position stacks neatly and an older one refuses to join. This usually happens with entries created before the employer had a company page, or when the employer name was typed in by hand instead of being matched to the page. Such an entry shows a generic placeholder logo and sits apart from the rest.
If you want the roles grouped, the older entry needs to point to the same company page. In most cases you can edit the old position so it is linked to the matching page, then check your public profile to confirm the roles now sit together. If the company has since changed its name, link to the current page and mention the former name in the description.
If the old employer has no page at all, the entry will stay separate. That is fine. A clear title and accurate dates do most of the work on their own.
Dating each step and closing the previous one
The stacked view is only as clear as its dates. Each position needs its own start date, and the previous role needs an end date. A frequent mistake is to add the new role and leave the old one marked as current, so the profile shows two current jobs at one employer. To a reader that looks like two concurrent roles, which is a different situation with its own article, Several Current Positions on LinkedIn.
Use the month the new title took effect, not the month you heard the news or the month your pay changed, if those differ. If you are unsure, check your promotion letter or your HR record. The date on paper is the one a reference or background check will rely on.
When the old role ends and the new one starts in the same month, that is normal. Do not invent a gap or an overlap to make the timeline look tidier.
What goes in each description
The weakest version of a stacked entry is two descriptions that say the same thing. If both roles list "managed key accounts and hit quarterly targets", the reader cannot tell what the promotion changed.
Write each description for what was new in that role.
The earlier role
Keep it short. A couple of lines on what you were hired to do, then the result that best explains why you were promoted. That result is the bridge to the next entry, so make it specific: the region you grew, the process you fixed, the new starters you were already training before anyone asked you to.
The new role
Lead with scope. What do you own now that you did not own before? A team, a budget line, a client portfolio, a decision that now needs your sign-off. Then add one or two outcomes once you have them, even early ones. If you are only a few weeks in, a single line on the remit is enough, and you can come back to it later.
A useful test: read the two descriptions back to back. The second should make the first look like preparation for it.
For the CV version of this problem, where space is tighter and the layout works differently, see the guide on showing a promotion at the same company on your CV.
Lateral moves, title changes and acting roles
Not every change is a clean step up. A few cases come up often.
Lateral moves. You moved from marketing to product at the same employer, at the same level. Add it as a new position on the same company page anyway. The stack then reads as range rather than a climb, which is still a good story, and the new title becomes searchable.
A new title without a raise. Your pay is not on LinkedIn, so it has no bearing on how you show the change. What matters is whether the work changed. If it did, add a new position. If the title moved because of a company-wide renaming and your work did not, editing the existing entry is probably the more honest option. Mention the former title in the description so it still shows up in searches.
Acting or interim roles. If you covered your manager's job for a stretch, you can usually list it as its own position, with a title such as "Acting Head of Operations" or "Interim Team Lead" and the dates it actually lasted. Keep the word "acting" or "interim" in the title. It tells the reader the role was temporary, which protects you if anyone checks. If the acting period turned into the permanent job, the stack shows that path without you having to explain it.
Notifying your network, and when to post separately
When you add or update a position, LinkedIn usually lets you choose whether your network is told about it. The right choice depends on what you want from the moment.
Notify your network when the promotion is a real step you are happy to have congratulated, and when your network holds people who care: clients, former colleagues, people in your field. Congratulating you costs them a few seconds, and your name lands in front of people who might remember it later.
Skip the notification when you are tidying up. Backfilling roles you never added, fixing dates or relinking old entries does not need to trigger a wave of alerts about a job you started a while ago.
A notification is not the same as a post. If you want to say something about the new role in your own words, write a separate post. That is covered in How to Announce a New Job on LinkedIn, and the logic holds for an internal move too. My view: for a promotion, a short post that thanks the people who helped usually lands better than a list of new responsibilities.
A short fix to make this week
Open your profile and look at your current employer. If your promotion lives inside one edited entry, split it: add the new title as a fresh position on the same company page, restore the old title with its real end date, and write one sentence per role on what changed between them. Then decide, on purpose rather than by default, whether to notify your network.
If your CV needs to match, a tool like Postulit can turn the updated LinkedIn profile into a CV, so both documents tell the same story with the same dates.
One employer, several positions, distinct descriptions. That is how a promotion reads as a promotion.