How to Write a LinkedIn About Section That Recruiters Actually Read

The Two-Line Test

Open LinkedIn on your phone right now and look at anyone's profile. The About section shows you roughly the first two lines before "... see more." That is how much text a recruiter reads before deciding whether to keep scrolling or tap the follow-up button.

Two lines. Maybe 220 characters. That is the actual length of the part of your About that most people will ever read. Everything below it needs to be good enough to justify the tap — but the two lines are the only thing you are guaranteed a reader for.

Most LinkedIn About sections fail this test. They open with "Results-driven professional with a passion for..." or "Experienced leader specialising in..." Both phrasings are generic enough that they have been functionally invisible to recruiters for years. The best profiles write the opening as if nothing below it will ever be read.

What Recruiters Are Actually Looking For

Before the structure, the context. Recruiters using LinkedIn Recruiter search by keyword and filter by role level, industry, location, and skills. They open a profile, scan the headline, glance at the About, look at job titles, and decide in well under a minute whether to reach out.

The About section's job, for a recruiter, is three things. First, confirm you are the level of person they thought you were from the headline. Second, quickly tell them what you actually do — in language that would match what they might tell a hiring manager. Third, indicate whether you are interested in new opportunities and what kind.

This is different from the About section's job for peers, for customers, or for your network. Those audiences want more context and more personality. Recruiters want a short, direct, scannable summary.

The practical consequence is that you should write the About for recruiters and trust that the rest of your profile will do the work for other audiences.

The Structure That Works

The format below is simple and it is boring. That is the point. It is optimised to be read, not to be admired.

Line 1-2: What you do, for whom, with what outcome. One sentence. This is the two-line headline. A product marketer at a B2B SaaS company whose work drove a particular expansion outcome writes something like: "I lead product marketing for B2B SaaS companies, turning technical products into messaging that sales teams actually use and customers actually buy." A senior engineer writes something like: "I build backend systems for high-traffic consumer apps, with a focus on performance and on keeping on-call rotations quiet." The pattern is role + audience + the outcome that matters.

Paragraph 2: The substance. Three to five sentences. What you have specifically done, at what kind of companies, with what results you can talk about. This is where you earn the rest of the reader's attention. Avoid adjectives. Use nouns and verbs. "Shipped a pricing page redesign that increased trial-to-paid conversion" beats "passionate about conversion optimisation."

Paragraph 3: The reference points. Two or three sentences. The specific skills, tools, or frameworks you work with. Keywords matter here not because you are gaming a search algorithm but because recruiters do search by keyword, and if your "Figma" or "SQL" or "change management" does not appear anywhere in your profile, you will not surface for those searches.

Paragraph 4: What's next. One or two sentences. What you are looking for, or what you are open to. If you are actively looking, say so. If you are open to specific kinds of conversations — "open to senior IC roles in fintech or healthtech" — say that. Vague profiles produce vague inbound.

Optional closing: How to reach you. A single line. Email is fine. LinkedIn DMs work. The point is removing ambiguity about the best way to start a conversation.

The Parts To Leave Out

Most About sections contain material that would make them better if deleted. A short, opinionated list:

Long career histories. That is what the Experience section is for. The About should not be a summary of jobs; it should be a summary of you.

Personality disclaimers. "When I'm not at work, I enjoy..." adds very little for a recruiter and usually feels forced. If there is something genuinely distinctive about you that a recruiter would find relevant — you speak Japanese fluently, you have a decade of volunteer nonprofit board experience — put it in. Otherwise skip.

Self-praise adjectives. "Passionate," "results-driven," "dynamic," "strategic." These words cost you credibility because every weak profile has them. The reader cannot distinguish you from the noise.

Mission statements. A mission statement in an About section tends to read as corporate speak. If your mission is important enough to state, it is important enough to state in ordinary words that describe what you actually do about it.

Emoji runs. One or two, used with intent, are fine. Ten in a row looks less than serious.

Writing for the Inbox, Not the Billboard

The best way to write the About section is to imagine the recruiter who will open it is already half-distracted. They have six other tabs open. They are on their fourth coffee. You have one shot to make them think "yes, this person might be worth thirty minutes of a conversation."

Write for that reader. Short sentences. Concrete nouns. Specific outcomes. Plain language. The goal is not to impress. The goal is to be obviously relevant.

A useful test: read your first two lines aloud. If you sound like a brochure, rewrite. If you sound like a person describing their work to another person, you are close.

Handling Gaps, Pivots, and Transitions

A common fear is that any non-standard career path will look bad in the About. The opposite is closer to the truth. A well-framed transition or gap is more memorable than a linear career summary.

The principle is to name it directly and frame it as choice, not as circumstance. "After eight years in management consulting, I moved into product management at a Series B healthtech company" is better than no mention of the pivot. "Took a year off to care for a family member, now returning to senior engineering roles" is better than pretending the gap did not happen.

Recruiters are generally more sympathetic to non-standard paths than candidates assume, provided the candidate owns the story. The About section is where you get to own it.

Keywords Without Keyword Stuffing

Recruiter search uses boolean and keyword matching. Your profile needs to surface for the searches that matter for roles you want.

The guidance is not to stuff your About with every possible keyword. It is to ensure that the actual tools and skills you work with appear in natural sentences somewhere in your profile. Write the About in prose, then scan it and check: does the word "SQL" appear if you work with SQL? Does "product management" or "engineering management" appear if those are your titles? If not, quietly work them in.

Your Experience section and Skills section carry a lot of the keyword load. The About section just needs to confirm the picture.

A Before and After

A typical generic About reads something like: "Experienced marketing professional with over ten years of experience driving growth for dynamic organisations across multiple industries. Passionate about building authentic connections with customers and mentoring high-performing teams."

That sentence could describe a hundred thousand people. A recruiter's eyes glaze over. There is nothing to latch onto.

A stronger version reads: "I lead demand generation for B2B SaaS companies, with a focus on building pipelines that sales teams trust. Most recently at a Series C martech company, I rebuilt the inbound function from scratch and took qualified demo volume from roughly fifty to three hundred per month. Before that I ran growth at an early-stage company and spent five years in consulting. I work most often with HubSpot, Salesforce, and a content-led motion. Open to Director or VP-level roles at growth-stage B2B companies."

The second version tells a recruiter exactly who this person is and what kind of role would fit them. The About has done its job.

The Refresh Cadence

LinkedIn's About is not a set-and-forget asset. Review it every six months and after any significant role change. What was specific and strong a year ago may have drifted out of date.

A five-minute twice-yearly refresh is the minimum. A thirty-minute rewrite when you start actively job searching is worth the time. The About is the shortest part of your profile that a reader is likely to read, which means every sentence earns or loses you opportunities.

A Short Checklist

Before you publish, run the About against these:

The first two lines say what you do, for whom, and the outcome that matters, in concrete language.

A recruiter for the role you want would keep reading past line two.

Every paragraph has at least one specific, testable claim rather than an adjective.

The keywords for the tools and skills you actually work with appear somewhere in the profile.

You have said, directly, what you are looking for next.

If all five boxes tick, your About is doing the work it is supposed to do.

For the rest of the profile, see our guide on building a personal brand while job searching. And if you're targeting leadership roles where the About needs to convey executive presence, The Leader's Table has practical frameworks for how senior leaders describe themselves in writing.