The About section is collapsed by default, so only the first two or three lines show before a reader has to click. Most people never click. That makes the summary a headline problem more than an essay problem: the opening has to be worth expanding, and everything after it is for people who already decided you are interesting.
The other rule is specificity. A summary made of adjectives could belong to anyone. A summary with a number, a named industry or a real example belongs to you.
Opening lines that get expanded
- I have spent nine years making warehouse software less awful.
- Most of my job is translating between engineers and finance.
- I got into this by accident and stayed on purpose.
- I work with three kinds of client, and I am upfront about which one you are.
- Fifteen years in hospitality, now doing the same work in software.
- I write documentation that people actually read.
- I have hired 200 people and rejected many more, badly at first.
For job seekers
- I am looking for a product role at a company that talks to its customers.
- Currently between roles after a restructure, and open about it.
- Ten years in operations, strongest in the messy first year of a process.
- I am the person who inherits the spreadsheet nobody understands and replaces it.
- Available from November, happy to talk before then.
- My last team took support response time from days to hours.
For freelancers
- I take on four projects a quarter and I turn down more than I accept.
- Here is what working with me looks like, in three steps.
- I work with independent brands, not agencies, and the pricing reflects that.
- My best work is the second version of something that already exists.
- I do one thing: make websites load faster.
- Clients usually come to me after trying it themselves.
For founders
- We started this because our own invoicing was a disaster.
- Second company. The first one taught me what not to build.
- I spend half my week talking to customers and it shows in the roadmap.
- We are eleven people and intend to stay small for a while.
- I do the parts nobody else wants, which right now is pricing.
For managers and leaders
- I manage managers, which is a different job than most people expect.
- My teams ship slowly at first and quickly for years afterwards.
- I have run this function at 20 people and at 200. They are not the same job.
- I care most about how a team handles the week something goes wrong.
- I hire for curiosity and train for everything else.
Closing lines
- If any of that is useful to you, message me, I answer.
- Best way to reach me is email, it is on my profile.
- I am not looking right now, but I always reply to good questions.
- Happy to talk to anyone making this transition, it was hard for me.
- Open to advisory work, one or two at a time.
- If you got this far, you probably should just message me.
What to leave out
- Third person descriptions of yourself
- Lists of adjectives with no examples behind them
- Every skill you have ever touched
- Vague statements about being passionate
- Anything you would not say out loud in an interview
Second and third paragraphs
- Right now I am working on a project that touches three teams and no budget.
- The work I am proudest of is the process nobody notices any more.
- Before this I spent eight years in an industry that taught me to write plainly.
- I am the person who reads the contract properly.
- Most of my week is spreadsheets and conversations, in that order.
- I have made every mistake in this list at least once.
Writing your own
Start with the sentence you would say if somebody at a conference asked what you do. That is your first line, and it is almost never the sentence you would write if you started from a blank box. Follow it with two or three short paragraphs: what you actually work on, one concrete example with a real detail in it, and what you want next. Write in first person, because third person reads like a press release. Break the text up, since LinkedIn renders a wall of prose badly on phones. Finish with a plain instruction on how to reach you and honor it. If you want a draft to argue with, an AI LinkedIn bio generator will produce a few versions, and a general AI bio generator is handy if you are rewriting several profiles at once.