What sets the About section apart from other fields.
LinkedIn profiles consist mostly of structured fields: job title, company, dates, education. These fields have clear conventions — filling them correctly avoids mistakes but makes no statement. The About section is the only field with room for a real argument.
That is both an advantage and a requirement. Using it as a chronological career summary wastes the opportunity. Using it as a positioning text lets the reader understand in three paragraphs what working with this person involves, what makes them different, and what a reasonable next step looks like.
AI search engines draw particularly on the About section when generating summaries. When someone asks for an expert in a niche, the model reads the About text to form an assessment. An empty or generic About means: this person will not be mentioned in such answers — even if their actual experience would be a perfect fit.
The most common misunderstanding.
The most common mistake is not writing for the wrong audience — it is writing for no audience. Many About sections describe what the person has done: positions, companies, achievements in chronological order. That is a résumé, not a positioning text.
A résumé answers the question "what have you done?" A good About section answers a different question: "why are you the right person for my problem?" That is not a question recruiters ask. It is the question a potential client, investor, or partner is asking — while already deciding whether to keep reading.
The difference lies in perspective. Chronological looks backward. Positioning looks toward the reader: which problem does the reader have that this person can help with? What experience gives them the standing to address it? What is the simplest next step? Answering these three questions produces an About section that works.
What actually works.
A structure that holds up in practice: the first paragraph names the target group and the task — concisely, without lists. The second paragraph provides proof: what has been done repeatedly? What results are typical? The third paragraph states what a concrete next step looks like.
This structure is not elegant but effective. It gives the reader the three things that decide everything in three reading moves: is this relevant to me? Does this person have experience? What do I do next? Each question is answered in one paragraph — not all at once, not delayed.
The first line of the About section is especially critical. LinkedIn shows only the first two or three lines before "Show more" appears. These lines have to work like a headline: they decide whether the reader clicks. Many About sections begin with "Welcome to my profile" or "I have been in the industry for 20 years" — both waste the first moment.
Why it is hard to write.
The About section is harder to write than a single post because it has no topical currency. It must hold up over time without becoming outdated. That forces precision: what is stable enough to still be true in a year?
Many founders defer the About section because it requires positioning work first. You cannot write a good About section without knowing what you stand for — and that question is often still unanswered. That makes the About section a diagnostic: someone who cannot write it has not yet established clear positioning. Someone who tries finds out what is still missing.
Builderz never writes the About section as a first step. It emerges at the end of a positioning process — once it is clear which questions should be owned, which experiences substantiate that claim, and which audience is being addressed. Anything else produces text that sounds like an answer but responds to no specific question.
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