The editor's read
A LinkedIn personal branding expert who reads your profile the way a stranger does
You know what you do, so your profile makes sense to you. The person deciding whether to reply has eight seconds, no context and three other tabs open. They read the headline, the first lines of About, and maybe the Featured row. That is the whole audition.
Our work is editorial. We read your profile cold, mark where a stranger stops understanding, and rewrite until the first screen says who you are, what you do and why anyone should believe it. Then we make sure the rest of the internet agrees.
Three short videos on the profile, the positioning check and the Featured row
What you get, briefly
In short: a LinkedIn personal branding expert at Ra-Aha does three things. We diagnose your profile as a stranger reads it, field by field. We write one positioning line with you and rebuild the headline, About, skills and Featured around it. And we check that your website, speaker bios and Google result tell the same story, because a stranger who checks twice and finds two versions of you trusts neither.
This is for individuals: founders, executives, consultants and anyone whose name is checked before a decision. If you want the full sequence in one list, the ordered profile checklist for founders is the free version.
The stranger's read, field by field
We read every profile in the same order a stranger does, and we stop where they would. These are the most common places a reader gives up.
| Field | What the reader is asking | Common failure | The edit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline | What do you do? | A title with no object: "Founder", "Strategist", "Helping people grow" | Role, who you serve and the result, in that order |
| About, first lines | Why should I keep reading? | An opening about passion, journey or years of experience | The positioning line first; the story after the fold |
| About, below the fold | Is this real? | Claims without one checkable proof | One named result, book, client type or publication |
| Top skills | Is this their actual field? | Ten unrelated skills, the main one missing | Five at most, all pointing at one subject |
| Featured | Show me | Old posts, broken links, or nothing | Your own site first, then the strongest piece of proof |
| Experience | Does the story hold? | Job descriptions copied from a CV | Two lines per role on what changed because you were there |
The Ra-Aha Read Test runs this sequence on your own profile for free. If your profile gets views and no messages, the reason is almost always in the first two rows; see views but no messages.
The fold is where most profiles fail
LinkedIn shows only the opening of your About section before the reader has to click to see more. Most people spend that space warming up. Paste yours below and see exactly what a stranger reads before deciding.
Free tool
The About section fold test
LinkedIn shows only the opening of your About section before the reader has to click. Paste yours and see what a stranger actually reads.
The lead video on this page makes a second point about About sections: whatever the style, the subject you want to be found for should appear several times, in different natural forms, so both LinkedIn's search and a reader can see what you are about. That is not keyword stuffing if every sentence still says something. It is just staying on subject.
For worked examples, see About section examples for consultants, annotated.
Who reads it, and what they decide
You rarely know when someone has checked you. The best long-run figure we have comes from hiring: CareerBuilder's surveys, run by The Harris Poll, tracked how many employers screen candidates on social media.
The latest year in the series is 2017. We use it because nothing larger has replaced it, and because the direction of travel is the point.
Source: CareerBuilder survey conducted by The Harris Poll, 2,380 hiring managers, June 2017.
Buyers behave the same way. In LinkedIn's 2025 research with Edelman, more than half of B2B buyers said they use what people publish to judge vendors.
- Use it to evaluate 56%
- Do not 44%
Thought leadership here means published writing by people at the vendor, which is read alongside their profiles.
Source: Edelman and LinkedIn, 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, via LinkedIn's research blog, 2025.
For senior roles the reader is often a search firm or a board; our profile for senior executives covers that case. For recruiters who never get in touch, see three different failures.
Positioning that holds up outside LinkedIn
A good profile used to be the end of the job. Now it is one witness among several. When someone searches your name, Google shows your LinkedIn result next to your website, articles and interviews, and AI assistants read the same pages. We call the work of making all of those agree Person Engine Optimization, PEO.
The third video on this page shows the test: search a name and read the short descriptions under each result. When the same few phrases repeat, the positioning is doing its job. When every result describes a different person, the reader has to guess.
If you have searched yourself and found very little, the build order is in nothing comes up when you Google my name. The AI side of positioning is on our AI personal branding page.
How we work through a profile
- The cold readWe read your profile logged out and note where we stopped understanding. You get those notes word for word.
- The positioning lineA short session to agree one sentence about you. Everything else is written from it.
- The first screenHeadline, About opening, Featured. Rewritten, tested with the fold tool, and checked on a phone.
- The rest of the profileSkills narrowed to one subject, experience rewritten as outcomes, Services page if you sell services.
- The outside checkYour website bio, speaker bios and Google result compared against the new line, with a list of what to change.
Most profiles are done in two to three weeks. If you are weighing doing it yourself against hiring help, six ways to fix your LinkedIn profile compares cost and speed honestly, and what a profile writer costs gives the market range.
The strategist in the videos
The videos are recorded by Bhavik Sarkhedi, a three-time entrepreneur and best-selling author whose writing has appeared in The New York Times and who has a verified Google Knowledge Panel. The lead video is unusually candid: he opens real profiles, including his own, and talks through what each About section does well and badly.
"As soon as you start creating your personal brand it's very important and necessary to see that the brand positioning that you are doing is aligned."
That alignment is the standard we hold every profile to. His channel: youtube.com/@bhavik_sarkhedi.
Questions people ask about their profile
What should my LinkedIn headline say?
What you do, for whom, and ideally the result, in plain words a stranger would search for. A job title alone leaves the reader to guess.
How long should my About section be?
Long enough to prove the first line, short enough that every paragraph earns its place. The first two or three lines matter most because they show before the click; test yours with the fold tool above.
Should I write my About in first person?
Usually yes. First person reads as a person talking; third person reads as a press release. The exception is a profile mostly read by boards or search firms, where a more formal register can fit.
How many skills should I list?
Pin no more than five as top skills and make them point at one subject. A long list of unrelated skills tells LinkedIn and the reader that you are not sure what you do.
Does my LinkedIn profile affect what Google shows for my name?
Yes. Your LinkedIn page often ranks for your name, and its headline and About opening frequently appear in the result. That is why we check your Google result as part of the work.
How do I start?
Email the team from this page with your LinkedIn URL. We do the cold read first and reply with what a stranger sees.
Send us your profile. We will read it cold.
One email with your LinkedIn URL. We read it the way a stranger would and reply with the first three places they stop.
Email the teamOr write to wr.sarkhedi@gmail.com. The email opens with a short note already written; add a line about you and send.
More from Ra-Aha
- Ra-Aha home
- AI personal branding: what AI repeats about you
- The Ra-Aha Read Test
- The Ra-Aha blog
- Profile checklist for founders, ordered
- About section examples for consultants
- Profile views but no messages
- LinkedIn profiles for senior executives
- Fractional executive profiles
- Why recruiters are not contacting you
- Nothing comes up when you Google your name
- Ways to fix your profile, by cost and speed
- What a LinkedIn profile writer costs
- The profile as a source of inbound leads
- Profile articles