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name: linkedin-profile-optimizer description: > Audits and rewrites a LinkedIn profile from pasted text: headline, About, experience, skills, Featured, banner and photo. Use when reviewing a profile, fixing a headline or About, or preparing a profile before posting more. license: MIT + Commons Clause metadata: version: 1.0.0 author: borghei category: tools domain: linkedin updated: 2026-10-07 tags: [linkedin, profile, headline, personal-branding, career]

LinkedIn Profile Optimizer

Most profiles are a CV pasted into a different box. The headline is a job title and an employer, the About is a third-person paragraph of adjectives, the experience entries list duties, Featured is empty and the banner is the default. None of that is wrong, exactly. It simply gives a visitor nothing to act on, and the headline, which travels beside every comment the person writes, says nothing to the people who will never open the profile.

This skill treats the profile as one argument aimed at one reader. It fixes the goal first, inventories the evidence, scores each section against a rule catalogue, and rewrites in priority order so the hour available goes to the sections that matter for that goal. It works offline: it reads profile text the user pastes and answers the user gives about the visuals. It does not fetch profiles, log in, post, or call any service.

Scope boundary. This skill covers the standing profile only. It does not write feed posts (linkedin-post-writer), strip machine-sounding phrasing from drafts (linkedin-humanizer), or test opening lines (linkedin-hook-analyzer). It does not write comments or handle replies and threads (linkedin-comment-writer, linkedin-reply-manager, linkedin-thread-tracker), plan or recycle content (linkedin-content-planner, linkedin-content-repurposer), or draw stories out of a person (linkedin-story-interviewer). Rolling profile standards out across a team is linkedin-employee-advocacy; working out who a post reached is linkedin-engagement-analytics. Each of those stands alone, as this one does.

When to use this skill

• Someone asks for a profile review, a headline rewrite or a better About
• A person is about to post regularly and the profile those posts lead to is CV-shaped
• A job search, a move to independent work or a new role changes what the profile is for
• A founder or hiring manager wants the profile to attract candidates or customers
• A profile was rewritten once and needs a quarterly check
• A draft headline or About exists and needs a second opinion before it goes live

Inputs the skill expects

• The profile as text: headline, About, each experience entry, skills (and which are in the top slots), Featured items, recommendations, public URL. A link is not enough; nothing here opens it
• Answers about the photo and banner, given while looking at the live profile on a phone (references/featured-and-visuals.md §8 lists the questions)
• The goal: clients, job search, authority or hiring
• Two to four search terms the target reader would type, and how that reader describes themselves
• Evidence the person can stand behind and is allowed to publish

Clarify First

Before auditing or rewriting, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

• The single goal (clients, job search, authority, hiring) — sets the section weights, the Featured slots and the closing action; a profile aimed at two goals argues for neither
• Who the reader is and what they would search for — without it the headline and skills checks have nothing to test against, and the rewrite defaults to generic wording
• What evidence exists and what may be published — decides whether the rewrite can use figures, must fall back to scope, or has to stop and collect proof first
• Whether the pasted text is the whole profile — never score a section that was not supplied, and never infer content from a URL or a name

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the artifact.

Workflows

Workflow 1 — Quick start: audit a profile

1. Copy assets/profile_template.json and paste the profile text into it. Fill in goal, target_keywords and audience_terms; the keyword and audience checks are skipped when those are empty.
2. Answer the photo and banner fields by looking at the live profile on a phone. The tool cannot see images.
3. Run the auditor. Read the scorecard for where the weight is, then the fix list from the top.
4. The agent reports the scorecard, the five highest-priority fixes with their evidence, and any section it could not assess because the text was missing.

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/scripts/profile_auditor.py \
  --input tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/assets/sample_profile.json

Workflow 2 — Rewrite in priority order

1. Complete sections 1 and 2 of assets/profile_rewrite_worksheet.md (goal and evidence inventory) before writing a sentence.
2. Headline: draft the blocks, assemble three candidates, run the three tests in references/headline-and-about.md §4, choose one.
3. About: write the five moves, then read only the preview on a phone.
4. Experience: convert each duty line with the four questions in references/experience-skills-and-credibility.md §3. Verify that every figure is accurate and cleared for publication.
5. Skills, Featured, visuals and credibility: work the remaining worksheet sections in the order the fix list ranks them.
6. Deliver before and after for each rewritten section, with the assumptions and any evidence still to be confirmed listed at the top.

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/scripts/profile_auditor.py \
  --input tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/assets/sample_profile.json \
  --goal job_search --top 8

Workflow 3 — Re-audit and hold the line

1. Put the rewritten text into a second JSON file and run the auditor again.
2. Compare scores section by section. For every finding left open on purpose, record the reason in worksheet section 10.
3. Use --fail-under as a quality gate when a team wants a floor before profiles are linked from a campaign.
4. Validate the platform limits in the product on the day of publishing and pass any change with --headline-limit or --about-preview.
5. Set a review date: quarterly, and after any change of role or goal.

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/scripts/profile_auditor.py \
  --input tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/assets/sample_profile_rewritten.json \
  --fail-under 75 --format json

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-profile-optimizer/scripts/profile_rules.py --list-rules

Decision frameworks

Where the hour goes, by goal

The auditor weights sections by goal. These are editorial weights, not platform facts; change them in scripts/profile_rules.py if your situation differs.

Goal	Rewrite first	Then	Leave for last	Why
Clients	[RECOMMENDED] Headline, About, Featured	Visuals	Skills	A prospect decides from the top of the page; Featured carries the proof and the door
Job search	[RECOMMENDED] Experience, then headline and skills	About	Featured	Recruiters and hiring managers read the work history and search by role terms
Authority	[RECOMMENDED] Featured, headline, About	Credibility	Skills	The reader wants to know what you have said and where to follow it
Hiring	[RECOMMENDED] About, headline	Featured, experience	Skills	Candidates read the manager's profile to judge the team

Headline decisions

Situation	Recommendation	Reason
Headline is a title and an employer	[PROVEN] Keep the title as the anchor and add audience plus one proof block	The title is what people search; alone it gives no reason to click
Tempted to replace the title with a benefit statement	[RECOMMENDED] Do not drop the anchor	A headline nobody can classify or find is worse than a plain one
Unsure whether to fill the character limit	[RECOMMENDED] Use what the blocks need, front-load the first line	Most surfaces truncate; the opening words are the headline for most readers
Considering emoji, capitals or decorative separators	[RECOMMENDED] One separator style, no capitals for emphasis	Decoration costs characters and reads as noise at thumbnail size
Want to signal availability	[EXPERIMENTAL] Put it in the About's closing action, test the headline without it	The product has its own availability signals; a headline spent on status says nothing about the work

Evidence decisions

Evidence available	What the rewrite uses
Figures that are yours and public	The figures, with the base they were measured on
Figures that belong to an employer or client	Scope and before-and-after in words, until permission is given
No figures	Scope, frequency, firsts, named artefacts, adoption
Nothing the person can point to yet	Stop. Collect evidence before rewriting; adjectives are not a substitute

Reading the score

Overall score	Meaning	Action
Under 50	Several sections are in their default state	Workflow 2 in full
50 to 79	Structure is there; proof or visuals are thin	Work the top eight fixes
80 and over	No obvious rule failures	Human read for tone and truth; the tool cannot judge either

A clean report means no rule fired. It does not mean the profile is good. The sample rewrite scores 100 and still needs a person to confirm every figure in it.

Anti-Patterns

Rewriting before choosing a goal

Mistake: The headline is polished to attract clients while the About and Featured still argue for a job search, because each section was rewritten on its own. Why it happens: The request arrives as "fix my headline", and a headline can be improved in isolation in five minutes. Instead: Fix the goal and the reader first (worksheet section 1). Every later choice, including the section weights the auditor applies, follows from that. If the person has two goals, pick the one with a deadline.

Deleting the job title to make room for a promise

Mistake: The headline becomes "Helping ambitious teams unlock sustainable growth" and the role disappears. Why it happens: Common advice says to lead with value, and the title feels like the dull part. Instead: Keep a searchable anchor and add to it. The title-only headline fails because it stops too early, not because it names the job. Rule HL-02 flags the bare title; the fix is more blocks, not fewer.

Manufacturing numbers

Mistake: Duty lines are converted to results by attaching plausible percentages nobody measured. Why it happens: "Add metrics" is the best-known profile advice, and a rewrite with figures looks finished. Instead: Inventory real evidence before writing. Where no figure exists or the figure is not the person's to publish, use scope, frequency or a named artefact (references/experience-skills-and-credibility.md §4). Never invent or round up a figure on someone's behalf; a former colleague can check it in seconds.

Scoring what was not shown

Mistake: The audit rates the banner, the photo or a missing section from a profile link or from assumptions. Why it happens: A complete-looking scorecard feels more helpful than one with gaps. Instead: Score only supplied text and the user's own answers about the visuals. Say which sections were not assessed and what is needed to assess them.

Treating the score as the deliverable

Mistake: The profile is edited until every rule passes, including keyword terms forced into the headline, and the result reads like a checklist. Why it happens: A number that goes up is satisfying, and the rules are easy to satisfy mechanically. Instead: Use the fix list to find problems and the references to solve them. Leave a finding open when fixing it would make the profile worse, and record why. The rules detect absence; they cannot detect quality.

Appending a keyword list

Mistake: The About ends with a "Specialties" line of twenty comma-separated terms. Why it happens: It is the fastest way to make the keyword check pass, and the effect on search cannot be seen from outside. Instead: Use two to four terms inside ordinary sentences, and put the full vocabulary in the skills section where a list is expected.

Files

Tools overview and reference documentation for this skill:

File	Purpose
scripts/profile_auditor.py	Scores a profile JSON across seven sections, weights them by goal, and prints fixes in priority order; --fail-under turns it into a gate
scripts/profile_rules.py	Rule catalogue, goal weights, platform limits, filler and duty-language vocabularies, the visuals check and shared text helpers; --list-rules prints them
references/headline-and-about.md	Headline block model, patterns by goal, three pre-publish tests, the five-move About, preview writing, a worked example
references/experience-skills-and-credibility.md	Duty-to-result conversion, what to do without numbers, publication checks, skills selection, recommendation requests, public URL
references/featured-and-visuals.md	Featured slot model by goal, titles and thumbnails, rotation triggers, banner and photo guidance, the self-assessment questions
assets/sample_profile.json	Invented CV-shaped profile that triggers most rules
assets/sample_profile_rewritten.json	The same invented profile after a rewrite, for the re-audit workflow
assets/profile_template.json	Blank profile to fill in with pasted text and visual answers
assets/profile_rewrite_worksheet.md	Fill-in worksheet: goal, evidence inventory, section rewrites, re-audit record