The About section gives you 2,600 characters, but only the first three lines or so render before the 'see more' fold — so the opening must carry your role, your edge, and a reason to keep reading. Write it in first person, structure the middle as short skimmable blocks, and end with what you want the reader to do next.
On both desktop and mobile, LinkedIn truncates the About section after roughly the first three lines and hides the rest behind a 'see more' link. Most visitors never click it. That means your About is functionally a three-line pitch with an optional appendix, and the common pattern of opening with a warm-up sentence — 'I've always been passionate about technology...' — spends the only guaranteed real estate on words that could belong to anyone.
Open instead with the concrete: who you are professionally, what you are unusually good at, and one result. 'I lead payments infrastructure at a 400-person fintech; my team cut settlement failures 40% last year.' A reader who stops there still got the message. A reader who clicks 'see more' was earned, not begged.
After the opening, write for the skimmer. Short paragraphs of two to three sentences beat walls of text; a plain-text list of specialties or a 'things I do well' block gives keyword search something to index while giving humans something to scan. Cover, in some order: what you do now and for whom, the two or three problems you solve better than most, evidence — numbers, named outcomes, recognizable employers — and what you are looking toward next.
Write in first person. The About section is the one place on LinkedIn where third person ('Sarah is a results-driven leader...') reads as strange, because the platform frames the section as you speaking. First person also forces plainer, more verifiable sentences. Keep buzzword density near zero: 'passionate', 'results-driven', and 'strategic thought leader' are the most common words on the platform and therefore carry the least information.
End the section by telling the reader what to do with you. If you are job hunting: the roles you are targeting and how to reach you. If you are hiring: what your team looks for. If you are building an audience: what you post about. A closing line like 'Open to senior platform engineering roles in the UAE — fastest way to reach me is a connection request with a note' converts profile views into conversations.
Revisit the About twice a year. It decays faster than any other section because it is written in the present tense about a moving target. The dates on your experience update themselves; your About does not.
The field allows 2,600 characters; strong About sections typically use 1,000 to 2,000 of them. Length matters less than the first three lines, which are all most visitors see before the 'see more' fold. Front-load the substance and let the rest be appendix.
First person. LinkedIn presents the section as you speaking about yourself, and third person reads as distant or ghost-written. First person also tends to produce more concrete, checkable claims.
Yes — the About text is indexed for LinkedIn keyword search, so naming your actual skills, tools, and role phrases there gives recruiters more surface to match on. Write them into natural sentences or a plain specialty list rather than a comma-stuffed block.
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