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LinkedIn Profile · How to / How not to

How to Write a LinkedIn Profile (and How Not To)

Most LinkedIn profiles are a hostage video where the hostage is a thesaurus.

By Cynical SallyIssue Nº 1

LinkedIn is the one place on the internet where everyone agrees to lie in the same dialect. 'Results-driven.' 'Passionate.' 'Strategic.' A whole platform of people describing themselves the way a stock photo describes a human being. The tragedy is that the work is usually real and the writing is the only thing standing between you and the recruiter who almost messaged you.

This is what you getA real Full Truth, in full
Cynical SallyLinkedIn Profile

The Full Truth

on A mid-career marketer's LinkedIn profile

4.3
out of ten
Your headline says 'Marketing Professional' which is the LinkedIn equivalent of introducing yourself at a party as 'a person who attends parties'.
The Investigation
  1. 01

    The headline is a title, not a hook

    Critical

    'Marketing Professional | Driving Growth | Storyteller' is three nouns holding hands and saying nothing. Lead with the specific thing you move for a specific kind of company, so a recruiter scanning 200 tabs stops on yours.

  2. 02

    Numberless bullets describing duties, not results

    Critical

    Every role lists what you were 'responsible for' and not one says what changed because you showed up. 'Managed the content calendar' is a chore. 'Grew organic traffic 60% in a year' is a reason to hire you.

  3. 03

    The About section is a buzzword smoothie

    Notable

    'Passionate, results-driven marketer leveraging data to drive impactful, scalable growth.' That sentence could be pasted onto 90,000 profiles and nobody would notice. Say one true, specific thing only you would write.

The Copy Clinic

Marketing Professional | Driving Growth | Brand Storyteller | Data-Driven

I help B2B SaaS teams turn boring product launches into pipeline. Last one did 60% of Q3 revenue.

Responsible for managing social media strategy and content across all channels to increase brand awareness and engagement.

Rebuilt the content engine from one blog a month to a weekly cadence, growing organic traffic 60% and sourcing 30% of inbound leads in 12 months.

The Action Plan
  1. 1Rewrite the headline to name what you do and who you do it for, then delete every word after the second pipe.
  2. 2Go role by role and add one hard number to the top bullet of each. If you cannot find a number, you have found the real problem.
  3. 3Rewrite the About section in first person, three short paragraphs, with one opinion only you would hold. Cut every adjective you have read on another profile this week.
  4. 4Strip the skills list to the eight things you would actually be tested on in an interview. Delete 'Microsoft Office', 'Communication', and anything you would be embarrassed to defend.
Yours for the price of a coffee.Printed with disdain
Your turn

That was a stranger's linkedin profile. Drop yours, I will go just as hard.

One coffee, from €2,99. No mercy.

The fix is not more adjectives. It is fewer, and load-bearing ones. A good profile reads like someone who did the job, knows exactly what they moved, and is mildly annoyed they have to explain it to you. Specificity is the whole game. Numbers, verbs, and the spectacular courage of saying what you actually do instead of what your job title gestures at.

How to do it right
  • 01Open the headline with what you do and who you do it for, not your title. 'I make B2B software companies sound like humans' beats 'Senior Marketing Manager' every time.
  • 02Put a number in the first line of every role. Revenue moved, percentage grown, cost cut, team size. A claim without a metric is a wish.
  • 03Write the About section in first person, like a person. 'I' and 'me', short paragraphs, one genuine point of view. The third-person 'Jane is a passionate leader' reads like an obituary.
  • 04Lead each bullet with a verb that did something: 'Launched', 'Rebuilt', 'Cut'. End it with the result. Cause, then effect, then stop talking.
  • 05Cut every word that survives deletion without changing the meaning. 'Responsible for managing' is just 'managed' wearing a coat.
How not to
  • The headline that is just your job title and company, so it matches 400,000 other people and says nothing about what you are actually good at.
  • An About section written in the third person, as if a publicist you cannot afford is narrating your life from a respectful distance.
  • Listing 'Microsoft Office' as a skill in a marketing role. So is breathing. You don't list that either.
  • The word 'passionate' deployed three times, attached to things no human is passionate about, like 'cross-functional alignment'.
  • Bullet points that describe your job description instead of your work. 'Responsible for the social media strategy' tells me your duties. It does not tell me you grew it 40%.