What Recruiters See Before "See More" on LinkedIn

LinkedIn gives your About section room for 2,600 characters. That is roughly 400 words, enough for a career story, a few results and a line about what you want next.

Most people who open your profile read a fraction of it. On a desktop browser, LinkedIn shows about four lines of your About and then cuts it off with "… more". In the phone app, the same four lines hold about half as much text. Your roles fold after about two lines each. In a search result, your headline stops after two lines with a "…".

So before asking whether your About is good, ask what someone reads before they click "see more", and whether that makes them click.

Where LinkedIn folds your profile

Here is what a visitor sees by default, before expanding anything. The character counts are approximate, measured at LinkedIn's standard widths with ordinary English prose.

LinkedIn's own maximums, read from its edit forms in October 2026, are 220 characters for the headline, 2,600 for the About and 2,000 for each role description.

The fold on a phone is about half the fold on a desktop, and plenty of people check a profile from their phone. The role descriptions fold sooner than most people expect, so the first sentence of each role matters more than the bullet list beneath it.

Why we say "about"

LinkedIn counts lines, so the number of characters that fit depends on the words you use.

• Word lengths. A line of short words fits more characters than a line of long ones, and a long word that will not fit moves to the next line whole.
• Capitals and numbers. "MBA, CFA, ACCA" takes more width per character than lowercase prose.
• The device. Window width, the app version and the font your system uses all shift where a line breaks.
• LinkedIn itself. LinkedIn tests and changes its layouts. Four lines is the desktop About fold today, and LinkedIn can change it whenever it likes.

Treat the numbers as a budget with some slack in it. If your opening only works at exactly 450 characters, it will break somewhere.

Blank lines eat the fold

The fold counts lines, and a blank line is a line.

A popular way to open an About looks like this:

Hi, I'm Sam.

I help finance teams close the month faster.

Here's how:

That is five lines, and the fourth is blank, so on a desktop profile the fold lands right after the claim. A stranger reads a greeting and one sentence, then "… more". The teaser never shows. Of the roughly 450 characters the fold could hold, this opening uses about 55.

The same information written as one paragraph:

I help finance teams close the month faster. At a 900-person logistics firm I cut
month-end close from six working days to two by moving reconciliations out of
Excel and into BlackLine, and I've since run the same project at two clients.

That fits inside the fold with room to spare, and it names a job, a result, a system and some proof that it was repeatable.

Short lines and white space can help readability lower down, once the reader has chosen to expand. Above the fold, every line break costs you a full line of width.

Bullet points behave the same way. Four short bullets at the top of your About show four bullets and nothing else, and each one uses a full line however short it is.

What to put above the fold

Whatever sits in those four lines has one job: tell a stranger what you do and give them a reason to believe it. In practice that means two things.

Your job, in words a recruiter would search. "Payroll manager", "backend engineer", "primary school teacher". If the fold does not name a job, the reader has to guess from your titles.

One concrete result or detail. A number, a named system, a named client type, a scale. Something a former colleague could confirm.

What tends to waste the fold:

• Greetings and welcomes. "Hi there, thanks for stopping by" spends a full line on manners.
• Quotes. A line from Steve Jobs tells the reader what you like to read, and nothing about your work.
• Adjective stacks. "Driven, curious, collaborative professional" could open any profile on the site.
• A career summary that starts at the beginning. "I started my career in 2009 as a graduate trainee" puts your oldest, least relevant job in the most valuable spot.

Here are two openings of the same length:

Before: I'm a passionate and results-driven marketing professional with a strong track record of delivering impactful campaigns across a range of industries and channels. I thrive in fast-paced environments and love

After: I run paid search for B2B software companies. At Pipeworks I took a £40k monthly budget from a 9% to a 24% demo-booking rate in a year, mostly by cutting broad-match spend. I now lead a team of four.

Both are about 200 characters, right at the edge of the phone fold. The second spends them on a job, a number and a team.

If you want examples of whole bios built the same way, our professional bio examples include LinkedIn versions at several lengths.

Your role descriptions fold too

Most attention goes to the About, but every role on your profile has its own fold: two lines, which is about 190 characters on desktop and about 100 in the app.

That changes how you should open each one. A role description that starts "Key responsibilities include:" followed by a list shows the label and maybe one item. One that starts with what you did shows the thing a recruiter is looking for.

Folds badly: Responsible for a wide range of duties across operations, including but not limited to

Folds well: Ran inbound logistics for three UK warehouses, about 2,000 pallets a week, and brought damaged-on-arrival rates under 1%.

Your current role and the one before it get read most, so start there. The detail underneath can stay as a list. The first sentence is the one that has to stand alone.

What search shows of your headline

Your headline shows in full under your name on your profile. In a people search result, LinkedIn stops it after two lines with a "…", about 170 to 190 characters of your 220, so a long headline loses its tail. Most headlines fit, and the trouble is what they spend the space on:

Strategic Leader | Change Agent | Keynote Speaker | Mentor | Author | Board Advisor | Investor | Dad of 3 | Marathoner

All of it fits in the search row, and not one item is a job. Lead with your job title and level, then one specialism or result. Our resume headline examples cover the same pattern for CVs.

Does anyone click "see more"?

Some do. Recruiters who already like the look of you will expand the About and the role you are being considered for. A hiring manager preparing for an interview might read every line.

The fold mostly decides who becomes that interested reader. Someone skimming ten profiles from a search reads the headline, the first lines of the About, and the top of the current role, then moves on. Research on how recruiters skim a CV in a few seconds points the same way: the opening gets read and the rest has to earn it.

That is also why a long About is fine. Everything below the fold is for people who chose to read it, so the longer story can live there. Your About has no ideal length. If it fits inside four lines, LinkedIn shows it whole with no "see more" at all.

How to see your own fold

Your fold depends on the screen, so check it on both:

• On a phone. Open your profile in the LinkedIn app and read only what shows before "…more". That is the strictest fold you have.
• On a desktop. Use a full-width browser window and read the About and your top two roles, stopping at each "… more".

Or let the free LinkedIn profile checker draw it for you. It takes the PDF LinkedIn makes of your profile (on a computer: Resources, then Save to PDF) and lays it out at LinkedIn's own widths, on desktop and in the iPhone app view, with a line marking how much recruiters see without clicking. It folds your About at four lines and each role at two, the way LinkedIn does, and flags stock phrases that read as filler.

It also checks whether you'd turn up in a recruiter's search for your job title, each check pass or fail, and writes three new headlines and picks your top skills. It reads English profiles, needs no account, and deletes the profile text within about a day. For the rest of the review, from job titles to top skills, our step-by-step LinkedIn profile review walks through each check in the order a recruiter meets them.

A quick fold check before you apply

1. Read the first two lines of your headline. Job and level first.
2. Read the first four lines of your About on desktop. Do they name your job and one concrete result?
3. Read the same About in the phone app. Does the first sentence still work on its own?
4. Remove blank lines and bullets from the opening, and keep the white space for further down.
5. Read the first sentence of your two most recent roles. Does each say what you did?

The full writing guide for the About, from first person to how to close, is in our LinkedIn profile guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many characters show before "see more" on LinkedIn?

On a desktop profile, about four lines of your About show, which is roughly 450 characters of continuous prose. The LinkedIn phone app shows about half that, and line breaks reduce both.

How long can a LinkedIn About section be?

LinkedIn allows up to 2,600 characters in the About section. The headline allows 220 and each role description 2,000.

Should I use line breaks in my LinkedIn About?

Not in the first few lines, because LinkedIn folds by lines and a blank line counts as one. Use paragraphs and white space further down, where the reader has already chosen to expand.

Can I get rid of the "see more" link?

Only by keeping your About short enough to fit in the visible lines. That is about 450 characters on desktop and about 200 in the phone app, so anything longer still folds on a phone.

How much of my LinkedIn headline shows in search?

In a people search result, LinkedIn shows two lines of your headline and ends with "…". That is about 170 to 190 characters of the 220 allowed.