LinkedIn About Section: Write a Story, Not a Résumé

You opened the About section of your LinkedIn profile and typed “I am a manager with 15 years of experience in the sector…”. Stop right there. That’s the exact moment you lose the reader.

The problem isn’t that you’re being dishonest. The problem is that you’re writing for people who already know you — and those people don’t need to read your About section at all. The ones who don’t know you, who land on your profile after seeing one of your posts or receiving your connection request, need something entirely different: a reason to stay.

The mistake almost everyone makes

The LinkedIn About section gets used as a CV. Years of experience, sectors covered, skills listed. Often written in the third person, as though it were a speaker bio for a 2008 conference.

This approach has a structural flaw: it’s built around you, not around the reader. Whoever is reading your About — a potential client, a recruiter, a journalist looking for a source — wants to understand one thing and one thing only: does this person solve my problem or not?

A list of job titles and company names doesn’t answer that question. A story does.

What “story” actually means here

This isn’t about writing a memoir. You don’t need to talk about your childhood or the defining moment you discovered your calling. A story, in the practical sense, has three elements:

• a recognisable starting point
• a turning point or tension
• a destination that makes clear where you are today and what you offer

For the finance director of a small manufacturing company, it might look something like this: they started out as a controller at a business turning over €8 million, found themselves managing a liquidity crisis in 2012 with inadequate tools, and from that point built a method for reading cash flow six months ahead. Today they work with companies between €10 million and €50 million that want to stop chasing the numbers and start getting ahead of them.

Seventy-five words. No bullet points. Entirely concrete.

The structure that works

Open with a problem, not with yourself

The first paragraph of your About is what appears before the “…see more” cut-off. It’s the only thing many people will read. If it starts with “I am…”, you’re wasting that space.

Start instead with the tension you resolve. “Mid-sized companies miss internationalisation opportunities not because they lack resources, but because they lack a method.” If you work in export consulting, that sentence immediately hooks anyone who has that problem.

Bring yourself in only after

The second paragraph can be about you — but through your trajectory, not your credentials. Where did you develop that perspective? What have you seen that others haven’t? One concrete example is worth more than three adjectives.

A sales director who spent ten years working for a German company before returning to their home market can explain precisely how B2B purchasing processes differ between the two. That kind of specificity is what sets you apart.

Close with a clear action

Not “open to collaborations”. Too vague. Better: “If you manage a sales network and you’re trying to reduce the dropout rate of new agents in their first six months, let’s talk.” Anyone who recognises themselves in that description knows exactly what to do.

Why the third person is almost always wrong

Third-person About sections come from a legitimate intention: to sound authoritative, detached, professional. The effect is the opposite. Reading “John Smith is an expert in…” on a profile written by John Smith himself creates a short circuit. The reader knows perfectly well that you wrote it.

First person is more direct, more human, more credible. And LinkedIn is a platform where a personal register works far better than a press release.

There are exceptions: if a profile is managed by a communications team on behalf of a public figure, third person can make sense. But for the manager or entrepreneur running their own profile, it doesn’t.

The detail that makes the difference

In stories that work, there is always at least one specific, unexpected element. Not “I have worked in the pharmaceutical sector” but “I launched three OTC products in markets where pharmaceutical distribution is still fragmented and analogue.” Not “I work in management training” but “I work with teams that have just gone through a merger and need to learn to work together from completely different corporate cultures.”

That specificity does two things at once: it narrows the audience you’re speaking to and increases your credibility in the eyes of that narrower audience. It’s a counterintuitive choice, but it’s the one that brings the right connections.

How long it should be

LinkedIn allows up to 2,600 characters. You don’t need to use them all. An About section of 150–200 well-written words is worth more than one of 500 poorly written ones.

The ideal length depends on how much you actually have to say — not on how much space you have available. If after three paragraphs you’ve said everything, stop. The reader who wants to know more will go and look at your experience section. The reader who isn’t convinced after three paragraphs won’t be won over by a fourth.

Before you rewrite, ask yourself this question

Take what you have now and ask yourself: if this section didn’t have my name on it, would it be clear it was about me?

If the answer is no — if it could be the About section of anyone in your field — then you haven’t found your story yet. You’ve written a category description, not a portrait.

The About section is not the place to play it safe behind a list of competencies. It’s the place where you decide whether you want to be remembered or simply filed away.