How to Write Your LinkedIn About Section

LinkedIn's "About" section serves a purpose similar to your resume summary, but it has a different tone: here you can use a slightly more personal, first-person approach that's open to storytelling. For general summary writing, see How to Write a Resume Summary — this article covers what's specific to LinkedIn.

The Difference Between a Resume Summary and a LinkedIn About Section

• A resume summary is short (2-3 sentences), formal, and offers a direct professional overview.
• A LinkedIn About section can be longer (a few paragraphs), can use first person, and gives you room to introduce yourself as a person too.

Suggested Structure

1. A Strong Opening Line

The first 2-3 lines are what's visible before someone clicks "see more" on LinkedIn — so put your most attention-grabbing information here.

"I've spent 5 years building backend systems for e-commerce platforms and I'm passionate about scalable API design."

2. Describe Your Experience and Area of Expertise

Summarize your career's overall story and which areas you've gone deep in, in 2-3 sentences.

3. Add a Concrete Achievement or Approach

Briefly touching on one of your strongest achievements from your resume (see How to Write Work Experience on Your Resume) makes the text more concrete.

4. State What You're Looking For or Open To

If you're job hunting or open to certain opportunities, state this clearly but without exaggeration:

"I'm currently open to new opportunities in backend and platform engineering."

5. Note How to Reach You (Optional)

Some professionals include their email address or an invitation like "feel free to reach out."

Full Example

"I've spent 5 years building backend systems for e-commerce platforms. Working in the Node.js and PostgreSQL ecosystem, I've gone especially deep into API performance optimization and microservice architectures.

I recently redesigned the architecture of a payment service, significantly improving the system's stability under heavy traffic.

I'm currently open to new opportunities in backend and platform engineering — happy to chat."

Common Mistakes

• Copying your resume summary word for word. Not using LinkedIn's more personal tone means missing an opportunity.
• Writing too long and unfocused. 3-4 short paragraphs are enough; a page-length "About" text doesn't get read.
• Filling it with generic phrases. Using words like "passionate" or "innovative" without backing them up with concrete examples loses its impact.

Conclusion

Your LinkedIn About section is a more personal, storytelling-friendly version of your resume summary. A text written with a strong opening, a concrete achievement, and a clear close leaves a lasting impression on anyone visiting your profile.