The LinkedIn About Section Run, From Your Records to a Measured Fold

This playbook rewrites your LinkedIn About section starting from your own records. It is for job seekers who need the text above "see more" to name a target role and prove it. You finish with a published About of 150 to 400 words. You will have measured its opening lines on your own phone and desktop, taken its terms from a tally of at least 20 postings, and matched every claim to your headline, Experience entries, and resume. Budget three and a half to four and a half hours across one or two sittings.

What the LinkedIn About section has to do

The About section has three jobs. It shows one target title and one proof figure before "see more". Its body backs up your headline and Experience entries. And it says nothing your resume contradicts. Most templates handle only the first job, and they guess where the cutoff falls.

Three terms, defined once:

• The fold is the point where LinkedIn cuts the About text short and shows a "see more" link. Below it, only people who click will read anything.
• A proof figure is a number from your own records, with a unit and a timeframe, showing you did the work the target title implies. "A 40% sales increase", stated exactly as your resume states it, is a proof figure. "Results-driven" is not.
• Summary is LinkedIn Recruiter's name for the About section. LinkedIn's help pages use both names.

The field holds 2,600 characters, and spaces and line breaks count toward that cap. LinkedIn's help pages do not state the limit. It comes from third parties, and one of them says it checked the figure against the live profile field. LinkedIn also does not document how the field gets cut off on desktop, in the mobile app, or on mobile web. That gap is why this playbook measures the fold instead of trusting a number.

The 150 to 400 word target is a working range, not a LinkedIn rule. That is long enough to back up two or three Experience entries and short enough that each sentence can carry a source tag. Check the final character count against 2,600 before you paste.

Where does "see more" fall on the About section?

Nobody has published a measured About cutoff with a stated method. Claims run from about 220 to 350 characters on desktop and about 200 to 230 on mobile. The only fold you can defend is the one you screenshot on your own devices after you publish.

Much of the disagreement between ranking guides comes from mixing up two different elements. The 140 and 210 character figures are feed post cutoffs: about 210 on desktop and about 140 in the mobile app. They are not About figures. Even the claims that really are about the About section disagree with each other:

The highest desktop claim is 1.6 times the lowest, and none of these pages explains how it measured. Characters are also the wrong unit to count on their own. Line breaks pull the fold earlier: an opener with one word per line can trigger "see more" well before 210 characters, and at least one source says to count lines, not characters. A narrow phone screen also wraps the same sentence onto more lines than a desktop screen does.

Draft to a working assumption, then check it. Put the title and the figure inside the first 200 characters and the first two lines, which is the low end of the mobile claims. Do not stack one-word lines. Step 6 of the procedure checks whether the assumption held.

Should you write for mobile first?

Probably, but that is a judgment, not a measurement. Here is the evidence on how much LinkedIn traffic comes from mobile:

The only first-party figure dates from 2015. The newer figures count website visits only and leave out the app. That means a falling number may just show people moving to the app, not leaving mobile. Nobody has publicly established what share of profile views happen on mobile. The real argument for designing to the shortest fold is cost. An opener that fits a phone fold also fits a desktop fold, so you lose nothing.

Does the About section count in LinkedIn recruiter search?

Yes. LinkedIn's Recruiter help says search keywords are highlighted on the profile card, in the Summary section, in the Experience section (header, description, or location), and in the Skills section. So your About text is part of what a recruiter's keyword search reads.

There is also a second layer that matches on meaning. LinkedIn Engineering's MUSE system powers Hiring Assistant across 1.3B+ member profiles, matching on meaning rather than exact strings. In A/B tests it reported a +2.7% highly-relevant candidate rate, +4.1% InMail sends per seat, and +1.8% InMail accepts. MUSE turns each profile into an embedding, a numeric representation of what the profile means, and refreshes those embeddings daily from whatever has changed. My inference from that daily refresh, which LinkedIn has not documented as a delay: an edit to your About can change what you match on within about a day. LinkedIn has also published a paper, "Semantic Search At LinkedIn", covering its AI Job Search and AI People Search.

One mechanical detail matters for phrasing. Recruiter's Keywords filter drops stop words, meaning common words like "after" that the filter ignores. LinkedIn's own example: "after sales" returns profiles that contain only "sales". A phrase built around a common word will not match as the phrase you meant. Put the distinctive noun in your text, and expect recruiters to search for that noun.

The posting tally (step 2) tells you which terms recruiters are likely to search. Your records (step 1) tell you which terms you can back up. Where a term lands on those two axes decides where it goes:

The bottom-right quadrant is where profiles get into trouble. A term that is common in postings but missing from your records is exactly the term you will be tempted to add, and exactly the one that pulls in searches you cannot win.

What "open to work" signals, and what to write between roles

In Refolk's index, putting "open to work" in the headline is rare: 9 of 67,367 US Product Manager profiles do it, about 1 in 7,485. That makes the phrase stand out, but it says nothing about fit. The opening lines of your About have to carry the proof.

The full breakdown from Refolk's index of professional profiles:

The keyword matches against headlines, and the percentages are derived from the counts. The UK figure cannot be turned into a rate, because I did not query a UK baseline. Employers in the 25-profile US sample include Ramp, Brex, Intuit, and Wiz.

The last stage is the useful one. One of the nine open-to-work Product Manager headlines sits on a current title of "Research Analyst". That is a legitimate pattern if the headline clearly marks Product Manager as the target. It becomes a problem if a reader takes it as a claim about the current job.

What to put in the About section when unemployed

• Lead with the target title, not your status. The headline or open-to-work setting already says you are looking. The opening lines are for proof.
• Use a proof figure from your most recent role, in the past tense, with the employer named exactly as it appears in that Experience entry.
• Mark a target title as a target. If your headline names a role you have not held, write the About opener so the difference is obvious, for example "Moving into product management after..." rather than presenting the title as your current job.
• Do not fill the gap with adjectives. One plain sentence about what you are targeting and why beats a paragraph of traits nobody can verify.

The About section procedure, step by step

Run these eight steps in order. Template guides start by writing a hook, and keyword guides start from job postings. This procedure starts from your records, because a hook or a keyword you cannot source is a liability. It also ends with measurement, because the fold cannot be known until the text is live.

Step 1: Gather your records (30 to 45 minutes)

Collect your current resume, your Experience entries exactly as they appear on your profile, performance reviews, and any written metrics. Pull out 3 to 5 proof figures. Next to each one, write its source: the document and the line. A figure with no source does not go in. You are done when no figure on the list is missing its source.

This step stalls most often because records are scattered across old files and inboxes. Refolk writes your resume from your own work history, so your figures and their sources start out in one document instead of five tabs.

Step 2: Tally the postings (60 to 90 minutes)

Paste at least 20 target postings into a sheet, one row each. Record the title exactly as posted in one column, then mark each skill term the posting names. Count each term and rank them. Twenty is this playbook's floor. Fewer than that, and one unusual employer can skew the ranking. You are done when you have a ranked list of titles and terms with counts.

Step 3: Fix the title and the proof (15 minutes)

Choose the highest-ranked title you can defend from your records. Then choose the proof figure from step 1 that fits that title best. Confirm your headline uses the same title string, character for character.

You are done when the title and the figure are written at the top of your draft file.

Step 4: Draft (45 to 60 minutes)

Write the opening lines before anything else. Line one holds the title and the proof figure. Then write a body of 150 to 400 words using the top-right terms from the matrix above. Tag every sentence with its source while you draft, not afterwards.

[Target title from tally] who [proof figure, stated exactly as on the resume]. [SRC: resume line]
[One sentence on the kind of problem you are best at and for whom.] [SRC: Experience entry]

At [Employer, as named in Experience], I [action] that [result with figure]. [SRC: Experience entry, resume line]
At [Employer], I [action using a top-tally skill term you actually used]. [SRC: Experience entry]
Before that, [one sentence connecting earlier work to the target title]. [SRC: Experience entry]

Tools and methods I use day to day: [3 to 6 terms from the tally, all backed by step 1]. [SRC: resume skills line]

I am looking for [target title] roles in [domain or team type]. [SRC: headline]

You are done when every sentence carries a tag and the opening lines hold the title and the figure inside the first 200 characters.

Step 5: Optional AI draft, Premium only (10 minutes)

LinkedIn's writing assistant is available only to a select group of Premium subscribers, in English, Spanish, German, French, and Portuguese. You open it through Write with AI in the Edit about text box. The current help page does not say what the assistant draws on. Launch coverage said it analyzes the content already in your profile and told users to check the output for accuracy. Treat its draft as raw material. You are done when every surviving sentence maps to your step 1 list.

Step 6: Publish and measure (15 minutes)

Publish the About section. Then open your own profile on the phone app, on mobile web, and on desktop. On each one, write down the last words before "see more" and take a screenshot. If the title or the figure falls below the fold anywhere, move it up, remove line breaks from the opener, shorten the opener, republish, and measure again. You are done when all three screenshots show both the title and the figure.

Step 7: Consistency sheet (20 minutes)

Profile search reads the whole profile, and recruiters read it for disagreement. Fill in one row per claim.

Claim | About wording | Headline | Experience entry | Resume line | Match?
Target title | | | | | YES / NO / TARGET
Current or last title | | | | | YES / NO
Employer name | | | | | YES / NO
Dates, last role | | | | | YES / NO
Proof figure 1 | | | | | YES / NO
Proof figure 2 | | | | | YES / NO
Proof figure 3 | | | | | YES / NO
Top skill term | | | | | YES / NO

You are done when every row reads YES, or reads TARGET where the difference is deliberate and the profile labels it clearly. If you tailor resumes per posting, each tailored version is another column to check. Refolk tailors the resume to each posting from the same base history, which keeps the figures identical even when the emphasis shifts.

Step 8: Cold read (10 minutes)

Show someone who does not know your work only the phone screenshot from step 6. Ask: "What job is this person after?" They pass if they name your target title, unprompted, in under 10 seconds. Treat this as a practical test. The 10-second limit borrows from resume research, not from any study of LinkedIn profiles. If they name a different role, rewrite the opener and run steps 6 and 8 again.

How the About rewrite goes wrong

Most failures pass a quick look. The text reads fine on the screen you wrote it on, and the terms look like the postings. The checks below catch what that quick look misses, and each failure mode lists what it looks like when it fools you.

1. Measuring the fold once, on one screen. Line breaks and narrow screens cut the text earlier. False positive: it looks fine on desktop, but on a phone the proof figure is hidden. Check: screenshot all three surfaces after publishing.
2. Keyword stuffing. Recruiter's Keywords search reads the whole profile, so stuffed terms pull in the wrong searches. A recruiter can turn up in a "Kubernetes" search because their profile says "I hire Kubernetes engineers". False positive: you list skills you managed or hired for, not skills you used. Check: every term traces back to something you did yourself.
3. Phrases containing stop words. "After sales" matches on "sales" alone. False positive: the phrase looks distinctive to you, but the filter reads it as generic. Check: run a Recruiter-style search on your exact phrase and see what the filter keeps.
4. Figures that drift between documents. A 40% sales increase on your resume becomes 75% on LinkedIn. False positive: both numbers feel true because they come from different periods. Check: the step 7 sheet, with the period stated next to every figure.
5. Headline and title disagree. In Refolk's index, 1 of 9 open-to-work Product Manager headlines sits on a "Research Analyst" title. False positive: you see an aspiration, but a recruiter sees a contradiction. One senior recruiter told Mandy Liu that with mismatched titles, "I can't move forward with them because of the inconsistency." Check: the headline title equals the current Experience title, or the profile clearly marks it as the target.
6. Publishing the AI draft unchecked. LinkedIn's own sample output reads almost like the beginning of a cover letter. False positive: fluent prose that sounds like you but claims things your records do not show. Check: every sentence maps to step 1.
7. Citing the wrong statistic. The 7.4-second figure from Ladders' 2018 study measured resumes, not profiles, and the published report does not say how many recruiters took part. Its 2012 predecessor, which produced the 6-second figure, had only 30. The 25.76% mobile share leaves out app traffic. False positive: a confident number that does not measure what you are using it for. Check: state the scope next to every number you rely on.
8. Unicode "bold" formatting. Some guides recommend styled Unicode characters for emphasis. Whether they affect search matching is not established publicly. False positive: the line looks emphasized but may not match a plain-text search. Check: wait a day after publishing, then search for the plain version of your styled phrase.

Keeping the About section current

The About section is current when it still matches your latest resume, your fold screenshots are from the live text, and your posting tally still describes the roles you are applying to. Re-run the relevant steps whenever one of those changes. You do not need a calendar date.

Triggers and the steps they reopen:

• You change target title. Re-run steps 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8. The title has to change in the headline, the About opener, and the Experience framing together.
• You gain a stronger proof figure. Add it to the step 1 list with its source, then re-run steps 4, 6, and 7.
• You edit your resume. Re-run step 7. Drift between documents usually starts with a resume edit that never reaches the profile.
• The app or site layout changes. Re-run step 6. Since LinkedIn does not document how About is cut off, your screenshots are your only record of where the fold sits.

Given the daily profile refresh described earlier, allow about a day after any edit before you judge whether it changed which searches you show up in. That timing is an inference, so test it on your own profile rather than relying on it.