The LinkedIn About Section: Structure and Examples

Your first two lines are your About section. LinkedIn folds the rest behind a "see more" that most visitors never click. Everything after that only works on the people those two lines convinced.

Why this section goes wrong so often

Three faults recur, and they share one cause: the section is written like a CV paragraph.

The first is the third person. "Jane Doe is a rigorous project manager…" On a CV the convention is defensible; on a profile it reads like a biographical note written by somebody else.

The second is stacked adjectives. Rigorous, passionate, results-driven. These do not check out, add no search keyword, and occupy the space that would have convinced.

The third is no next step. The section closes on a general sentence, without saying what the person is looking for or how to reach them.

The four-block structure

Block 1, the first two lines

They have to stand alone and earn the expand — roughly 220 characters. An opening that works says what you concretely do for whom, not your job title.

I build data platforms that finance teams actually trust. Over the last eight years I have taken three reporting stacks out of spreadsheets.

Block 2, the evidence

One or two paragraphs of fact. Figures where you have them, scope where you do not: team size, budget, volume, region, duration. This is where a credible profile parts company with an assertive one.

Block 3, the how

How you work, what interests you, what you decline. This is the block that makes the profile human and separates it from ten profiles with an identical career. Two or three sentences is enough.

Block 4, the next step

What you are looking for, and how to reach you. One line. The most frequently forgotten block, and the one that turns a reader into a contact.

Full examples

Experienced technical profile

I build data platforms that finance teams actually trust. Over the last eight years I have taken three reporting stacks out of spreadsheets.

At Northbeam I cut month-end close from nine days to two by rebuilding the ingestion layer. Before that I delivered the warehouse that now serves 200 internal users at Kestrel.

What interests me is the boring part: data lineage, backfills, and on-call rotas teams can actually sustain.

I am listening for data platform lead roles in Lisbon or remote. Message me here or at alex@example.com.

Career changer

I spent six years running budgets in financial control. I found that half my time went on making data trustworthy, and that this was the part I preferred.

For the past eighteen months I have been retraining in data analysis: a Power BI certification, self-taught SQL, and two automation projects in my current role that removed three days of manual rework a month.

I am looking for a first data analyst role in a small company, where being a generalist is an asset rather than a gap.

Recent graduate

I am a software engineer, class of 2026, and I have been writing Java since my second year.

During my final placement at Sogema I took over a billing service that crashed once a week. After three months it had not gone down once in production. It is the project I am proudest of, precisely because there is nothing spectacular about it.

I am looking for a first back-end role, in Manchester or remote.

Where the keywords go

The About section is one of three places your role keywords must appear, alongside the headline and your experience descriptions. LinkedIn search ranks on the whole profile: a word present in one place counts for little.

The constraint is that they have to read naturally. A keyword list pasted at the end of the section is visible, reads badly, and adds nothing a sentence would not.

What length tells you

LinkedIn allows 2,600 characters. There is no ideal length, but there are two useful thresholds: a two-sentence section says nothing, and a section that hits the limit is almost never read to the end.

Three to five short paragraphs, with line breaks, is the most-read shape. LinkedIn offers neither bold nor lists in this field: line breaks are your only structural tool.

Checking yours

The fastest test: open your profile in a private window, logged out. You see what a recruiter discovering you sees — including the exact point where your section folds.

For a criterion-by-criterion read, export your profile to PDF and have it analysed. Our LinkedIn profile analysis scores the section's presence, the strength of its first two lines, its quantified evidence, its call to action and its voice separately — and returns a rewritten version, ready to paste.

FAQ

What should the LinkedIn About section say?

Two opening lines worth expanding, then concrete evidence rather than adjectives, and a closing line saying what you are looking for and how to reach you. All in the first person.

How long should a LinkedIn About section be?

LinkedIn allows 2,600 characters. Three to five short paragraphs is enough: what matters most is that the first two lines work on their own, since the rest sits behind a "see more" link.

Should the About section be in the first person?

Yes. A CV addresses one application and reads in the third person; a profile addresses everyone, permanently. An About pasted from a CV is the most common fault on LinkedIn.