The rubric

Eight checks, 100 points. This page is generated from the same code that grades your profile, so it cannot quietly drift away from what actually runs. Nothing here is a secret and nothing here needs your email.

1. Your headline says what you do

   15 pts

   We fail this when your headline is the “Job Title at Company” line LinkedIn writes for you. It is the one line that follows you into every search result, every comment and every invitation, and the default version of it says nothing a reader could not already see.

2. You use the 220 characters LinkedIn gives you

   10 pts

   LinkedIn allows 220 characters. Under 80 we mark it weak — not because longer is better, but because a headline that short has almost always skipped the part that would make someone click.

3. You have an About section

   20 pts

   The heaviest check on the list. A blank About is the most common and most expensive gap on LinkedIn: it is the only place you get to explain yourself in your own words instead of in job titles.

4. A whole thought lands before the “see more” cut

   15 pts

   LinkedIn collapses your About after roughly 200 characters. We fail this when your first sentence has not finished by then, because most readers never expand it — so whatever you were building to is invisible. We mark it weak when it opens on a stock phrase such as “I am a…” or “Experienced…”.

5. Your About is worth the 2600 characters available

   10 pts

   Under 400 characters there is not room to say anything a reader can act on. We pass at 700 characters and up — roughly three tight paragraphs — out of the 2600 LinkedIn allows.

6. Every job has something written under it

   15 pts

   We count any role with under 80 characters beneath it as blank, and we name each one. A job title and a date with nothing under it is a hole, and readers fill holes with the least generous explanation available.

7. Your experience contains evidence, not just duties

   10 pts

   We count the numbers in your job descriptions, ignoring the dates — a year or a month is not a result. Sizes, percentages, counts, budgets and timeframes are the cheapest credibility on the page, and most profiles have none.

8. No stock phrases

   5 pts

   We check your whole profile against a fixed list of phrases that appear on millions of others — “results-driven”, “team player”, “passionate about”, “proven track record” and the rest — and quote back every one we find.

A check that does not apply is left out of the total rather than counted as a failure — if you have no About section, you are not also marked down for its length. Your score is the share of the points that were actually on the table.

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