How do I write a LinkedIn About section as a CEO?

Write it in the first person, open with what you do and who you do it for, and treat the first two lines as the whole job, because for most readers they are. LinkedIn hides everything after those opening lines behind a "see more" link that the majority never click, so a strong About is not a paragraph that eventually gets good. It is one that earns the expansion in its first breath and then keeps the promise. For a chief executive, this is the difference between a profile that reads as a holding page and one that makes an investor, a recruiter or a journalist lean in.

Most CEO About sections fail in a predictable way. They are either blank, left as whatever LinkedIn defaulted to, or they are a dense block of third-person corporate prose that sounds like it was approved by a committee. Neither tells a reader what they actually want to know, which is simple: who are you, what do you do, and why should I take you seriously. Answer those three things clearly and you are already ahead of almost everyone at your level.

What the About is actually for

Your headline is the line everyone sees; your About is where the people who are interested go next. By the time someone opens it, they are deciding whether you are worth a message, a meeting or a mention. So the About is not a biography for its own sake. It is the case for why you are worth their time, written in a voice that sounds like you rather than like your press office.

That framing changes what you put in it. You are not trying to record everything you have done. You are trying to give a busy, slightly sceptical reader enough to think, yes, this is someone I should talk to.

A structure that works for a chief executive

You do not need a rigid formula, but this shape is reliable.

• Open with the point. One or two lines that say what you do and who you do it for, in plain words. This is the part that shows before "see more", so it carries the most weight. Lead with it.
• Back it with proof. A short paragraph on the track record that makes the opening credible: what you have built, led or turned around. One or two real markers beat a list of ten.
• Say what you believe. A sentence or two on how you think about your work or your industry. This is what separates a CEO with a point of view from a job title, and it is increasingly what gets you quoted and followed.
• Add a human note. A line that signals there is a person here, not just a role. It need not be personal in a confessional way; it just has to sound like you.
• Close with a quiet direction. Where relevant, a simple line on what you are open to, board conversations, speaking, the right partnership, so an interested reader knows the next step.

Keep the paragraphs short. Dense text is where good About sections go to die.

The opening lines, where it is won or lost

Because of the "see more" cut-off, the first two lines deserve more attention than the rest of the section combined. They should be specific and human, not a mission statement. A few patterns, none of which name a real person, to adapt rather than copy:

• "I run [company], where we help [who] do [what]. Before that, I spent fifteen years [doing the thing that makes this credible]."
• "I am a chief executive in [sector]. My job, simply put, is to [the outcome you are responsible for] without [the thing that usually goes wrong]."
• "I build [kind of company]. This is my [second] one, and most of what I know came from the first."

Notice that each says something concrete in the first line and gives a reason to read on in the second. That is the entire job of the opening.

The mistakes to avoid

A handful of habits quietly undercut an otherwise senior profile. Writing in the third person, so it reads like someone else is describing you. Stacking adjectives, "dynamic, visionary, results-driven", which say nothing and signal insecurity. Turning it into a CV, with a list of roles and numbers and no thread holding them together. And leaving the strongest, most human line buried in the final paragraph, where the "see more" cut-off means almost no one reaches it.

Get the opening right, write it as yourself, and give a sceptical reader a clear reason to keep going. If you want the rest of the profile to carry the same weight, the same thinking applies to your headline and the wider profile, and to the longer professional profiles that sit behind it. The About is simply where a serious reader decides whether the rest is worth their time.

Related: Social profile optimisation, Professional profiles.