A LinkedIn summary, the About section of your profile, should say in its first two lines what you do and who you do it for. Then give two or three pieces of proof, say what you are looking for, and tell people how to reach you. Write it in the first person, in short paragraphs, the way you would explain your work to someone you had just met.
The first lines matter more than the rest, because LinkedIn shows only the top of the section until someone clicks to see more.
The structure
- What you do, and for whom. Two lines. A stranger should be able to repeat it after reading it once.
- Proof. Two or three specifics: something you built, fixed, ran or won. Numbers only if they are true and you could explain them in an interview.
- How you work. One short paragraph on what you are good at or what you care about in the work. Show it with a detail.
- What you want. The kind of role, client or conversation you are open to. If you are not looking, say what people can contact you about.
- How to reach you. An email address, or "message me here".
Use the words for your job that someone searching would type: the job title, the tools, the field. Put them in sentences where they belong. A block of keywords at the bottom reads like a block of keywords.
Aim for 100 to 200 words. LinkedIn allows much more, and you rarely need it.
Examples
All five people are invented.
Someone established in their field
I run maintenance planning for a regional bus operator: 140 vehicles, three depots, and a timetable that has to run at six the next morning whatever happened today.
In the last four years my team has moved the fleet from paper job cards to tablets, cut the number of buses off the road waiting for parts, and brought two depots through their audits with no major findings.
I like problems where engineering meets scheduling, and I am good at getting workshops and offices to agree on a plan.
Happy to talk to anyone working on fleet reliability or the move to electric buses. Message me here.
A career changer
After nine years teaching secondary maths, I now work in data analysis.
Teaching gave me two things that carry over. I can explain a number to someone who did not want to hear about it, and I am used to finding out why thirty people got thirty different answers.
Over the last year I have completed a data analytics certificate, built a dashboard of exam results for my old school that the leadership team still uses, and learned SQL and Python well enough to do it without help.
I am looking for a junior analyst role, ideally in education or the public sector.
anita.kowalczyk@example.com
A student or recent graduate
I am a final-year civil engineering student, graduating in June 2027 and looking for a graduate role in water or flood engineering.
Last summer I spent ten weeks with a drainage consultancy, where I modelled surface water for two housing sites and wrote up the results for the planning applications. My final-year project looks at low-cost flood sensors for small rivers.
Outside the course I captain the rowing club's novice squad, which has taught me most of what I know about getting tired people to turn up at 6am.
Open to graduate schemes and placements from July 2027.
A freelancer
I write plain-English help pages and product guides for software companies.
Clients come to me when their support inbox is full of questions the documentation should have answered. I have rewritten the help centres of two accounting tools and a booking app, and I work from the real support tickets, not from the feature list.
I take on two or three projects at a time. If yours starts in the next couple of months, email me at joel@example.com and tell me what your customers keep asking.
Looking for work after a redundancy
Customer support lead with eight years in online retail, most recently running a team of twelve.
My role was made redundant in August when the company closed its UK office, and I am looking for my next support or operations job.
What I do well is keep a team steady when it is busy. At my last company I rewrote the returns process with the warehouse, trained nine new starters, and brought the usual wait for an answer down from days to hours.
I can start straight away. Message me here or at r.okonkwo@example.com.
Phrases to swap
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Results-driven professional with a proven track record | What you did: "I opened four shops in three years" |
| Passionate about innovation | What you work on, and why it interests you |
| Responsible for managing a team | "I manage a team of six" |
| Seasoned expert, guru, ninja | Your job title |
| Excellent communication skills | An example of you explaining or persuading |
| Mr Evans is an accomplished leader | "I", all the way through |
Mistakes to avoid
- Pasting in your CV. The job history is already further down your profile. The summary is where you explain it.
- Writing in the third person. It is your profile. "I" is normal and reads warmer.
- One solid block. Use short paragraphs with a line between them. People read this on a phone.
- No ask. If a reader does not know what you want, they cannot help.
- Leaving it to go stale. Read it again when your job, your goals or your contact details change.
- Claims you could not back up. Anything in your summary can come up in an interview.
Summary and headline
The headline is the line under your name, and it follows you around LinkedIn: search results, comments, messages. The summary is only on your profile. So the headline says what you are, and the summary has room for the proof. They should agree. The LinkedIn headline generator helps with the short one.
If you need the same thing for a website or a conference programme, that is a bio, and the rules are a little different: see how to write a bio.
Writing it with Hemmingway
The LinkedIn summary generator is a short form. Tell it what you do, two or three things you have actually done, and what you are looking for, and Hemmingway writes the About section from those facts in the first person. It uses what you give it and nothing else, so the more specific your notes, the less it sounds like everyone else's.
Read the result aloud. Change any sentence you would not say to a person, check that every fact is yours, and paste it into LinkedIn yourself. In our own blind test of which of two texts sounds like a person wrote it, Human-Likeness, Hemmingway-1 came first of the models we compared. That is our test, not a public one, and the numbers are on the model card.
Once your profile is done, how to write LinkedIn messages covers writing to the people who find it.
Try HemmingwayDownload the app
Common questions
What should I write in my LinkedIn summary?
What you do and who for, two or three specific things you have done, what kind of work or contact you are open to, and how to reach you. Write it in the first person and put the most important sentence first.
How long should a LinkedIn summary be?
Around 100 to 200 words is plenty: three or four short paragraphs. LinkedIn allows more, but only the first lines show until someone clicks to see more, so put your effort into the opening, not the length.
Should a LinkedIn summary be in first person?
Yes. It is your own profile, so "I" is natural and easier to read. Third person suits a company website or a speaker programme, where someone else is introducing you.
What is the difference between a LinkedIn headline and a summary?
The headline is the single line under your name that appears wherever you do on LinkedIn. The summary is the longer About section on your profile. Use the headline to say what you are and the summary to show it.
How do I write a LinkedIn summary with no experience?
Say what you are studying or moving into and what you are looking for, then use what you have: a project, a placement, a part-time job, volunteering, a club you ran. One real example of something you did is worth more than a list of qualities.