Roughly half of every Stanford MBA class we ask has nothing in it — people with a decade of work behind them and a blank space where the one part of the profile they fully control should be. Three questions is all it takes to fix.
The most common profile on LinkedIn
A good About section could only describe one person. A bad one could describe anyone. Kramon’s test, via Cherie’s Stanford writing class.
Most profiles list what someone did and never say why. Start with the why — it is the one thing a job history cannot show.
Write it in first person. If the sentence would work on someone else’s profile, it is not finished.
The filler sample quotes the opening the episode calls out as bad. The third-person and finished profiles are ours, written to trip and pass the checks. The episode’s own example profiles are described on air, never read out word for word, so none of them loads here.
This could only describe you. Copy it into LinkedIn.
My mission is to make the ports that move half the world's toys a little less chaotic, because I grew up above my parents' import shop in Queens. I spent 9 years rerouting freight through 14 ports, and cut one retailer's holiday backlog from 41 days to 6. Outside of work: Ranked 3rd in New York State badminton at 16; and Can still pack a 40-foot container by eye. I work across supply chain, freight forwarding, and port operations. Looking to collaborate on port logistics → priya@example.com
A good About section could only describe one person. A bad one could describe anyone. Everything below is a different way of passing that test.
Something beats nothing, and nothing is what most people have. Do not skip ahead to a format you cannot fill.
A single sentence naming four things they helped build — a hybrid car, a top-ranked app, a children's book, part of the page you are reading — closed with a smiley face.
Two lines: the goal they are working toward, then a direct instruction to follow along for what they learn building it.
Five comma-separated descriptors. Two are professional. Three are a martial art, a dance practice, and a barbell.
Bullets beat the wall of paragraphs almost everyone defaults to. Front-load the professional, back-load the human.
A short list headed 'random facts', each line led by an emoji that matches its content: two decades of operating roles, a semi-pro sport abroad, money raised as a young founder, a national ranking in an unusual discipline, a tea obsession, a stretch spent studying meditation.
Mission statement at the very top, a collaboration ask with a real address near the bottom, and a short run of fun facts to close.
An experiment worth understanding and not worth copying literally.
Generic opening lines, then a long tail of search terms — companies, schools, titles, industries — appended with a note admitting they are there to test how LinkedIn's search indexes a profile.
0 of 10 cleared
Cherie Brooke Luo spent five years on LinkedIn’s Profile team and teaches this at Stanford GSB. Part one of the masterclass is where the three S’s, the one-in-a-million test and every profile breakdown above come from.
Open on YouTubeShe spends the episode telling you to put fun facts in your profile, and puts a fair number of hers in the episode. Answer first — the fact arrives afterwards.
Question 1 of 6
Cherie spent about five years at LinkedIn. Which two teams was she on?