What Comes After LinkedIn

Eleanor Warnock argues that AI is eroding the value of traditional resumes and brand-name credentials. When machines can handle the rote work that sustained knowledge workers, the survivors will be those who demonstrate judgment, taste, and expertise — qualities invisible on a LinkedIn profile.

Her proposed solution is the portfolio: not a portfolio career, but a curated body of work that proves how you think, the way creative professionals have always done. Brand names like McKinsey or Goldman once served as shorthand for competence, but they no longer signal whether someone was a decision-maker or a pixel pusher.

Warnock, a journalist who writes about people using writing to build things, positions herself as a practitioner of the advice. She points to AI-assisted personal websites and LinkedIn content as portfolio-building tools that let others experience your expertise without meeting you.

The piece is paywalled after the setup, promising examples of knowledge workers abandoning LinkedIn and an account of how an Every staff writer built her personal site with unconventional features.

RDCO mapping: Relevant to our content positioning work — the argument that demonstrating judgment through published work beats credentials aligns with the Sanity Check thesis that showing your thinking publicly is the new moat. Useful reference for any piece about personal brand vs. institutional brand in the AI era.