How an HR Professional Started LinkedIn Consulting: Rs 22,000 Monthly Part-Time

Preeti had been reviewing LinkedIn profiles for seven years.

Not as a consultant. As an HR manager. Her job was sourcing candidates — which meant opening 25 to 35 profiles daily and deciding in about 8 seconds whether someone warranted a closer look.

She never thought of this as a marketable skill. It was just her job.

Then her cousin asked: "My LinkedIn profile is pretty good, right?"

Preeti opened it. Within three minutes she had listed 11 specific problems: headline too generic, about section writing in third person, experience section listing duties instead of results, no recommendations despite eight years of work history, profile photo too casual for the finance roles she was applying for.

Her cousin said: "People actually pay to know this?"

Turns out, yes.

---

The pinned post experiment

Preeti's first move was simple. One pinned LinkedIn post: "I have 7 years of HR experience reviewing profiles from the recruiter's side. I offer written LinkedIn profile reviews for Rs 999 within 48 hours. DM if interested."

Six days of silence.

On day seven, a message came from someone recently laid off who was struggling to get callbacks. She completed the review, sent the feedback document, and heard nothing for four days. Then he messaged again — a company had called for an interview.

He referred two people. One of them referred another.

Month one: 4 clients, Rs 4,800. Month two: 7 clients, Rs 11,200 (including one full profile rewrite at Rs 3,500). By month three the monthly average settled at Rs 18,000 to Rs 22,000 — still working the same full-time HR job.

---

What the work actually involves

The service Preeti offers most often is the profile review. The client fills out a short intake form: current role, target roles, industries of interest, specific concerns. She reviews the profile from the lens of a recruiter evaluating for those exact targets and produces a written document covering every section — headline, about, experience, skills, recommendations, activity.

Not generic advice. Specific rewrites.

"Your current headline: 'HR Manager at XYZ Corp.' Suggested: 'HR Manager | Talent Acquisition, Employee Relations | 7 Years Building Scaling Teams in Tech.' The second version tells a recruiter your function, your specialisation, and your seniority in one line."

That's the level of specificity clients pay for. Not the formula — the application of the formula to their actual profile.

Full rewrites go deeper. Preeti collects the client's career history through a detailed questionnaire, writes the actual text, and the client edits or approves. These take longer (3 to 4 hours) but the outcome is a profile that doesn't sound like the person wrote it while distracted.

---

Who the actual clients turned out to be

Preeti expected freshers and junior professionals. What she got, mostly, was mid-level and senior professionals — 5 to 14 years of experience, trying to navigate a career change or push for a promotion that wasn't coming.

Senior people have specific problems. They're not entry-level candidates who need basic guidance; they're experienced professionals who know their field but don't know why they're not getting callbacks despite being qualified. That gap between qualification and visibility is exactly where HR knowledge adds value.

And honestly, those conversations were interesting in ways the profile-review work itself wasn't. A doctor transitioning into healthcare management, a civil engineer moving into project management consulting, a journalist moving into content strategy. The subject-matter variety was something Preeti hadn't expected to enjoy.

---

What actually drove growth

Three months in, something changed in how new clients found her.

Initially all clients were coming from her personal network or referrals. Then LinkedIn's search and feed started sending people who had never interacted with her before.

The reason: she had been posting once or twice a week. Not promotional content — genuinely useful things. Common profile mistakes recruiters notice. How to write experience bullet points that show impact. What "open to work" actually does to recruiter perception.

That content built a visible track record of knowledge. Strangers could read 10 posts and decide she knew what she was talking about before spending any money. That's a lower-friction sale than cold outreach.

---

The honest constraint

One thing that Preeti found hard to manage: scope creep. Clients who paid for a profile review sometimes wanted the review session to expand into a full career coaching conversation. Boundaries around what the service includes — and what costs extra — needed to be explicit from the beginning.

The second constraint: she can't scale beyond roughly 8 clients a month without it affecting the quality of the work or her full-time job. Both take real concentration. The ceiling on part-time consulting income is real.

But within that ceiling, the income is consistent, the work is genuinely interesting, and the clients come primarily through referrals rather than active selling.

---

Full-time consulting is on the horizon for Preeti — maybe 18 months away, she thinks, if volume continues building at the current pace. She hasn't committed to a timeline yet.

What she says is useful information: the most valuable thing about doing this alongside an HR job is that each informs the other. Consulting sharpens her thinking about what actually works in job searches. The HR job keeps her current on how hiring decisions are actually made. The combination is more useful than either would be alone.