00 Start

The line under your name gets read before anything else on your profile

It's also what recruiter search matches against. Most people write it once and never look at it again.

A headline is usually written by the person it's about, for the person it's about — a summary of a career, not a reason for a stranger to keep reading. A recruiter scanning search results doesn't see your career. They see one line, and they decide in about the same time it takes to read it whether the profile behind it is worth a click.

What you'll walk away with

• The three mistakes almost every headline makes
• A rewrite aimed at one specific person instead of everyone
• The exact words a recruiter in your field types into search
• A before/after example so you can see the shape before you run it on your own

00 Start

The three mistakes, before we fix yours

Almost every weak headline fails for one of these three reasons — usually more than one at once.

1. Written to nobody

"Marketing professional | Passionate about growth" reads like a badge, not a message. It doesn't say who should stop scrolling when they see it.

2. Lists instead of promises

"Marketing | Sales | Ops | Leadership" is a list of departments, not a reason to click through. The reader has to guess what you'd actually do for them — most won't bother guessing.

3. Your language, not theirs

The words you'd use to describe yourself and the words a recruiter types into search are often different. Get that mismatch wrong and you don't show up in results at all — it doesn't matter how well the headline reads once someone finally finds it.

The next three prompts find which of these your headline has, fix them, and make sure the right words are actually in there.

01 Diagnose

What does your headline say right now?

Paste it exactly as it is — the diagnostic only works on the real thing.

Current headline: [YOUR HEADLINE]
Target: [TARGET ROLE]

01 Diagnose

Prompt 1 — score your headline against the three mistakes

Not "is it good" — specifically, which of the three failure modes it has.

Here's my current LinkedIn headline: [YOUR HEADLINE]

I want to be found for: [TARGET ROLE]

Score this headline against three specific failure modes:
1) written to nobody — is there a specific person who'd recognize themselves as the intended reader?
2) lists instead of promises — does it list what I do, or promise what happens for the reader?
3) my language vs. theirs — does it use words a recruiter in this field would actually search for, or words I'd use to describe myself?

Score each 1-5 and quote the exact phrase in my headline that causes the problem.

02 Rewrite

Prompt 2 — rewrite it as an offer to one person

Not a job title. A reason for a specific someone to keep reading.

Rewrite my headline into an offer aimed at one specific reader: a hiring manager or recruiter looking for [TARGET ROLE].

Structure: [who I help / what I do] + [the result they get] + [what makes it credible, in a few words].

Give me 3 versions — one direct, one that leads with the outcome, one that leads with scale or numbers if I have real ones to plug in. Keep each under 220 characters.

02 Rewrite

Prompt 3 — the words a recruiter actually searches

A great headline that's missing the search terms still doesn't get found.

I want to be found by recruiters searching for [TARGET ROLE].

List the 8-10 exact terms and phrases a recruiter in this field would type into LinkedIn search or an ATS — job titles, tools, certifications, industry shorthand. Rank them by how likely they are to actually be searched, not by how impressive they sound.

Then tell me which of those terms are missing from my rewritten headline from the previous step, and where they'd fit without turning it into a keyword dump.

02 Rewrite

What this looks like on a real profile

An example, so you can see the shape before you commit to your own.

This is an illustrative example. Yours comes out of prompt 2, built from your own words and your own claims — not a template you drop your name into.

03 Level up

Your headline gets you the click. Your resume gets you the call

The same three mistakes — written to nobody, lists instead of promises, your language instead of theirs — usually show up in the resume too.

03 Final

Done. Same career — a headline that actually says something

Where to go next

• Re-run prompt 3 any time you're targeting a different role — the search terms change even when your headline doesn't need to
• Take the same evidence-first logic to your full resume — 4 prompts before a job interview