Rewrite your LinkedIn profile line by line — with examples
Headline, About, Experience: the exact before/after patterns recruiters search for. A 20-minute job.
Recruiters run searches on LinkedIn like a search engine. They type phrases like HR operations AI tools and profiles rank by exact keyword matches. This guide rewrites the three sections in order of impact: headline first, then About, then Experience. Budget 20 minutes; open five recent job ads in another tab — they are your keyword source.
Headline — the highest-weight section
Pattern: [Role] | [2-3 hard skills with keywords] | [proof point].
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Experienced HR professional | HR Operations Specialist | ATS, Onboarding, AI Screening Tools | Cut time-to-hire 22% |
| Administrative assistant seeking new opportunities | Executive Assistant | Calendar Coordination, Travel, Meeting Ops | Support 6 executives across 3 time zones |
No emojis, no guru, no passionate. Every word should be a phrase a recruiter would actually type. Do not stuff every keyword you find — five to seven phrases total is plenty; a stuffed headline reads desperate and LinkedIn's own ranking penalizes keyword repetition.
About section — three short paragraphs
- Para 1: who you serve and the outcome you deliver. Example: I help 50-person startups hire 30% faster without burning out HR.
- Para 2: three bullet achievements with numbers.
- Para 3: one clear CTA. Example: Open to HR operations roles — message me about ATS implementation.
Full before/after for an admin assistant: Before: Hard working assistant looking for new opportunities. After: I run the operational backbone of a 40-person team: scheduling across three time zones, executive travel, and meeting follow-through. In 2025 I cut executive scheduling time 30% by moving calendar coordination to a shared template.
Experience section — each role, 4-6 lines
Formula: verb + task + context + number.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Responsible for scheduling and meetings | Scheduling & Operations: coordinated calendars for 6 executives across US/EU; introduced a shared-briefing template that cut meeting prep time 25%. |
The 20-minute checklist
- Rewrite the headline using three keywords pulled from five recent job ads.
- Trim the About to 150 words with one CTA at the end.
- Rewrite your last two roles with the verb-plus-number formula.
- Turn on open-to-work in recruiter-only mode.
Re-check every six months. Search keywords drift as tools and titles change, and a headline that ranked well in January can quietly slip by June.
How it works
- Open five job ads in your field and circle the repeated keywords — those go in your headline.
- Rewrite headline, About and last two roles using the patterns above.
- Publish, then ask one trusted peer to read the first screen and tell you what they think you do.
Yes, the three to five tools you actually use weekly. Recruiters search for tool names the way they search for job titles. Avoid listing twenty tools you tried once — it reads as padding.
About 150 words — three short paragraphs. Visitors see only the first three lines before the see-more fold, so put your strongest outcome in the first 40 words, not at the bottom.
Use the open-to-work feature in recruiter-only mode: recruiters holding a LinkedIn Recruiter seat see the badge, but your employer and coworkers do not. Never set the public green banner unless you want everyone to know.
A lot less than your headline and About. Three specific recommendations from recent colleagues beat twenty generic endorsements. Ask one person per year for a short recommendation with a concrete result.
Once a quarter, and any time you change roles or ship a measurable result. Profiles with stale experience dates fall in recruiter search; small quarterly refreshes keep you visible.
Who this tool is for
This page is for people whose title undersells the job: operations coordinators, executive assistants, HR generalists, customer success leads and project coordinators. Their work is real, but the profile reads like a duty list, so recruiter searches slide past them. The guide assumes you can name five outcomes from the last two years; if you cannot, gather those facts before editing anything.
It also fits three narrower cases: returning after a career break, moving from a small company with invented titles into one with a fixed ladder, and freelancing while wanting longer contracts. It is not for students with no work history, or for licensed roles where a regulator sets the CV format. If you already get three recruiter messages a week, change one section, not three.
How to read your result
The guide produces three rewritten blocks — headline, About, Experience — not a score. Read them in this order, because a weak headline hides a strong About.
- Stranger test. Read the headline to someone outside your company. They should be able to repeat your role, your level and one strength.
- Keyword coverage. Highlight phrases that appear in at least three of five saved job ads. Keep five to seven of them in the headline.
- Fold test. Only the first three lines of About show before see-more. Those forty words need your audience and your outcome.
- Evidence test. Each experience bullet needs a verb, a scope and a result. A bullet that fits anyone in your department is not evidence.
- Consistency test. Titles, dates and skills must match the resume. A new headline above an old skills list looks like a rushed edit.
Wait two weeks before judging. Profile views are a direction, not a daily target. Keep the old text so next quarter you can see what actually moved.
A worked example
Priya coordinates operations at a 120-person logistics company in Leeds. Six years in, she wants an HR operations role at a company of 300 to 800 people. Her five saved ads repeat: HR operations, onboarding, HRIS, employee lifecycle and process improvement.
Headline before: Operations Coordinator at Northline Logistics | Organised | Team player.
Headline after: HR Operations Coordinator | Onboarding, HRIS Admin, Employee Lifecycle | Cut manual onboarding steps from 14 to 6.
About, first forty words before: I am an organised operations professional with six years of experience, looking for a new challenge in a forward-thinking company.
About, first forty words after: I run onboarding and HR admin for a 120-person logistics team: 40 hires last year, one shared checklist, six steps instead of fourteen.
Experience bullet before: Responsible for onboarding new starters.
Experience bullet after: Onboarding: rebuilt the new-starter checklist with HR and IT, removed eight duplicate approvals, and completed 40 hires in 2026 with no missing equipment orders.
The output is about fifteen words of headline, a 140-word About and four bullets for each of her last two roles. She invented nothing; she reordered the same facts. The phrase HR operations now appears three times, which reads as focus rather than stuffing. Change the headline first, then the opening of About — her Experience section already held the numbers and only needed the order fixed.
Common mistakes
- Keyword pile-up. Fifteen phrases dilute every term. Five to seven is the working range.
- Writing for colleagues. Internal shorthand such as owned the QBR cadence helps only if ads use it. Translate it.
- Leading with availability. Seeking new opportunities spends the highest-weight field on your situation, not your work.
- Borrowed voice. Results-driven professional describes nobody. Replace it with a fact you can defend in an interview.
- Numbers without scope. Improved efficiency by 40% invites the question of what. Add volume, time or team size.
- Confidential detail. Never publish client names, unreleased revenue or anything under an NDA. Describe scale and sector instead.
- Rewriting once. Tool names and titles drift; put a quarterly reminder in your calendar.