I'm a student and my LinkedIn About section is empty. I don't know what to put in it.

What an About section is for when you are a student

An empty About section is common at your stage, and it costs you a little. When a recruiter or an alumnus opens your profile, the About section is the one place where you get to say in your own words what you are doing and what you want. Without it they have a list of course names and dates and have to guess.

On a profile only the first couple of lines show before “see more”, so those lines carry the section. The rest only gets read if the start earns it.

Here is a plan you can steal. The character counts are a rule of thumb for students, not a LinkedIn requirement. Keep the whole thing between 700 and 1,300 characters; the 2,600 ceiling is for people with ten years to cover.

Hook: one or two sentences, 100 to 250 characters. Who you are and the thing you tend to do. Proof: two short paragraphs, 300 to 700 characters in all. Two things you did, each with a number. Direction: one or two sentences, 120 to 250 characters. The role, the field, a start date and a city or remote. Contact: one line, under 100 characters. An email address or an invitation to message you.

A worked example, with the counts

This is a sample for a made-up third-year economics student. It runs 768 characters in five paragraphs.

“I’m a third-year economics student who keeps ending up as the person who builds the spreadsheet.” (96 characters, the hook)

“Last summer I interned at a 30-person logistics firm and rebuilt their weekly delivery report in Excel. It went from about 3 hours to 40 minutes, and the operations manager still uses it. For a statistics module I cleaned 12,000 rows of public bike-share data and wrote up why Monday trips run shorter than Friday ones.” (319 characters, proof one)

“Outside class I look after the budget for our film society: £2,400, 14 screenings, no overspend.” (96 characters, proof two)

“I’m looking for a graduate analyst role starting in September 2027, ideally in operations or pricing. I work in Excel and SQL and I’m learning Python.” (150 characters, direction)

“If you hire analysts, or you’ve made this move yourself, I’d be glad to hear from you: [your email]” (99 characters, contact)

Notice what is not there: no “passionate”, no “seeking opportunities to grow”, no list of every module. Each paragraph holds something a stranger could ask a follow-up question about.

What to use when you have no job experience

Pick your two pieces of proof in this order and stop at two. First, any paid or unpaid job, including a part-time job, with what you did and one number. Second, a project: a course assignment, a capstone, a thing you built or a dataset you worked through. Third, a role in a club, a team or volunteering where you were responsible for something. Last, something you taught yourself, if you can say what you made with it.

Then apply one decision rule: keep the two that sit closest to the job you want, even if a different one sounds more impressive. A barista job with a sentence on how you cut the queue time beats a vague mention of a prestigious society.

Leave out your grades unless the field asks for them and you are proud of them, the full module list and any skill you could not talk about for two minutes in an interview.

Hook before and after. Before: “Motivated and hard-working student seeking opportunities to learn and grow.” After: “I’m studying graphic design and I spend my weekends redrawing the signs in my town’s market.” The second one gives the reader something to picture.

What HidenGPT's Career format does with your notes

Pick Career and set the type to LinkedIn About section. The writer works in the first person and keeps the text to 2,600 characters or fewer, the limit it checks against; a draft that runs over is sent back for a repair pass. The first two lines are written as the hook, because they are what shows before “see more”. The rest covers what you do, who you help, how you differ, two or three concrete achievements and an invitation to get in touch, in short paragraphs.

It uses only what you give it. If you leave out a number, the draft carries a placeholder such as [X%] or [N people] and does not invent one. Stock claims like “team player” and “hard-working” are ruled out, and a light red pen pass cuts stock phrases and shows a naturalness score before and after. That score is an editing aid, not an AI detector.

The Target role field takes your goal. The job posting field is not used for the About type, so write what you want in your own words in the main box. Your headline is a separate type in the same format: it gives you five options of 220 characters or fewer each.

Before you paste it in, run this checklist. Is every number true? Could you explain every sentence in an interview? Does the first line sound like something you would say aloud? Is there one clear next step for the reader?