The LinkedIn About Section, Written for Buyers Instead of Recruiters

The LinkedIn About section has a hard structural constraint that determines everything about how to write it: only the first two lines appear before the "see more" cut. Everything after that is read by people who already decided to keep going, which means the first two lines are not an introduction. They are the whole pitch.

This is for people whose profile gets read by prospects rather than recruiters.

The First Two Lines

Lead with the problem your buyer has, in their words. Not your credentials, not your career arc, not the company mission.

Good: "Most benefits producers are working a list of companies that might have 100 employees. That is demographic data, and it is why January feels impossible."

Bad: "As a seasoned employee benefits professional with over 12 years of experience, I am committed to delivering best-in-class solutions that drive organizations to..."

The first one earns a click because the reader recognises their own week in it. The second one is a résumé opening, which is correct for a recruiter and wrong for a buyer.

The Four Paragraphs After the Fold

Short ones. Nobody reads eight paragraphs, and the section has a 2,600-character limit you should not attempt to fill.

• Who specifically you work with. "NC benefits agencies under 30 people" is useful; "businesses of all sizes" tells the reader you have not chosen.
• What typically changes. The outcome, in their terms, with a number if you have an honest one.
• One piece of proof. A named result with its baseline and scale: "one 12-person agency went from 40 to 140 qualified employers in a quarter." Anonymize if you must, but keep the scale so the reader can judge whether it maps to them.
• What to do next. One thing. A link in the Featured section, a "message me about X," a direct instruction.

Four short paragraphs, maybe 180 words. That is a complete About section and it outperforms a long one consistently.

Write It in First Person

Third-person About sections, "Sarah is a seasoned revenue leader who has spent fifteen years..", read as a press release in a place where everyone else is talking normally.

There is exactly one context where third person works, which is when the profile is genuinely maintained by someone else and everyone knows it. Otherwise it creates a small uncanny distance that costs you more than the formality gains.

Do Not List Everything You Do

The strongest instinct and the most damaging one. A profile offering nine services reads as a generalist, which is the opposite of the specificity that made the prospect accept your invitation in the first place.

Pick the thing you want more of. The rest will come up in conversation, and a prospect who needs something adjacent will still ask.

This is the same discipline as segment choice in marketing, applied to a profile: narrowing feels like giving up revenue and almost never is.

The Featured Section Is the Actual Call to Action

Worth knowing because it sits directly beneath About and most people leave it empty. It renders as visual cards, above the experience section nobody scrolls to, and it is one of the few places LinkedIn does not suppress links.

Put three things there: a genuinely useful artifact (a template, a benchmark, a checklist), a case study with a real number, and the thing you want them to book or read.

That is effectively a landing page inside your profile, and it converts the readers your About section just earned.

The Test

Open your profile on a phone in a private window and read only what appears before "see more."

Would a stranger in your target market understand what you do for them and why it matters? If not, the fix is those two lines, and nothing you write below them will compensate.