How to write a LinkedIn bio that gets interviews

Recruiters spend about 6 seconds on a LinkedIn profile before deciding whether to read more. Your headline and the first two lines of your About section do almost all of that work.

Most LinkedIn bios fail because they read like a job title with extra words. "Senior Marketing Manager passionate about brand building and customer engagement." That tells a recruiter nothing they can't already see from your job history — and it doesn't give them a reason to message you.

This guide gives you a 5-line formula that fixes that, and shows you the five mistakes that kill recruiter interest.

What recruiters actually read

When a recruiter clicks your profile, they scan in this order:

1. Headline — appears under your name. ~220 characters. The single most important field.
2. About section, first two lines — what shows above the "see more" fold. ~300 characters visible by default.
3. Most recent job — title, company, and the first bullet point.
4. Featured content — if you have it. Most don't.

Everything else they read only if the above earned the click. That means about 80% of your hiring leverage lives in three short blocks of text.

Five mistakes that kill your headline

These are the patterns that make recruiters keep scrolling. Check your own headline against them now.

1. Just your job title. "Senior Software Engineer at TechCo" is the visible fact of your current job. It tells a recruiter nothing new and gives them no hook.
2. Vague adjectives. "Passionate", "driven", "results-oriented", "innovative". These are filler. Every candidate claims them. None mean anything.
3. Buzzword soup. "Digital transformation evangelist | Synergy architect | Thought leader". Reads as either a parody or a red flag. Neither helps.
4. All function, no specifics. "Marketing professional helping brands grow." Helping which brands grow? By how much? Doing what specifically?
5. No call to action or hook. "Engineer, climber, dad." Cute but recruiters can't act on it. They don't know what you want or what to offer.

The 5-line bio formula

Replace your About section's opening with these five lines. Recruiters who like what they see will read the rest. Recruiters who don't were never going to message you anyway.

Line 1 — your role + the outcome you produce

Not your title. The outcome of your work, in a sentence a non-specialist would understand.

I help B2B SaaS companies cut their customer onboarding from weeks to days.

Line 2 — a proof point

One specific number, project, or company that anchors line 1 in reality.

Most recently led the onboarding rebuild at [Company], which cut time-to-first-value from 19 days to 6.

Line 3 — what you're working on now

Signals you're still active and growing, not coasting.

Currently digging into how AI co-pilots reshape product-led growth motions.

Line 4 — what you want next (the recruiter hook)

The single most under-used line. Tells them exactly what to message you about.

Open to staff/principal PM roles at Series B-C SaaS companies. Remote-first or London hybrid.

Line 5 — how to reach you

Best way to reach me: [your email] or DM here.

That's the formula. Five lines, ~80 words total, drastically more readable than the wall of buzzwords most profiles open with.

Before and after

Before (typical filler):

Senior Product Manager with 10+ years of experience driving innovation and customer-centric solutions across multiple industries. Passionate about leveraging data to deliver impactful outcomes.

After (5-line formula):

I help B2B SaaS companies cut customer onboarding from weeks to days.

Most recently led the onboarding rebuild at Acme Cloud — time-to-first-value dropped from 19 days to 6.

Currently exploring how AI co-pilots reshape product-led growth motions.

Open to staff/principal PM roles at Series B–C SaaS companies. Remote-first or London hybrid.

Best way to reach me: name@email.com or DM here.

Same person. One version gets ignored. The other gets messages.

Apply it to your own bio

Try writing yours with the formula above. If you'd rather get a polished pass first, paste your current bio into our Bio Rewriter — it'll rework it to be more engaging, more professional, more concise, or any of three other goals, and tell you exactly what changed and why.