The tell: a résumé with “I” bolted on
Here’s a version of an About section you’ve read a hundred times, because almost everyone writes a version of it first:
I am a marketing professional with 8 years of experience. I have worked in SaaS companies including several well-known startups. I am skilled in SEO, content strategy, and paid acquisition. I hold a degree in Communications.
Nothing here is wrong, exactly. Every sentence is grammatically fine. But read it again and notice what it actually is: a CV entry with “I” swapped in where a résumé would normally leave the subject implied. Each sentence stacks one fact on the last with no connective tissue — no reason the reader should care about sentence two once they’ve read sentence one.
This isn’t really a grammar problem. It’s a register problem, and it’s an unusually easy one to fall into if you learned formal self-presentation in another language first, where CVs and “About me” statements often share the same institutional tone even when written in first person. You already know how to translate content from one language to another. This is the same skill applied one level up: translating a genre, not just a sentence. A LinkedIn About section isn’t a document — it’s closer to what you’d say if someone asked “so what do you do?” at a conference and you had thirty seconds before the next session started.
Lead with what you do, not when you started doing it
Résumés are chronological because the reader is scanning for gaps and progression. Nobody reading your About section is checking your timeline for gaps. They’re deciding, in the first two lines, whether they want to keep reading — and a date is never the most interesting thing about you.
So don’t open with “In 2018 I joined X as a Junior Analyst.” Open with the actual work, stated plainly:
I help SaaS companies figure out which paid channels are worth the spend, not just which ones report the best numbers.
That’s one sentence and it already tells a reader more than three chronological ones would — what you do, and implicitly, what you think is wrong with how other people do it. History still matters, but it belongs in a clause near the end, compressed: “Before this, I ran growth at two Series A startups” — not narrated step by step.
Say it the way you’d actually say it
A useful test: read the sentence out loud. If it sounds like something you’d say to a colleague over coffee, keep it. If it sounds like something stamped on a form, rewrite it.
I possess strong analytical skills and effective communication abilities.
nobody says that. What they’d actually say:
I’m good at making a spreadsheet make sense to someone who doesn’t want to look at it.
Same claim. One of them has a person behind it. The difference usually comes down to two things: verbs instead of nouns (“I built,” “I run,” “I fixed” instead of “responsibility for,” “involvement in,” “management of”), and letting a small opinion or specific number through instead of a generic adjective. “Passionate about solving customer problems” is a phrase that could describe literally anyone; “I’ve sat in on more support calls than most PMs at my level, because half of what customers say they want isn’t what they need” is a sentence only one person could have written.
A full rewrite, side by side
Before:
I am a product manager with 6 years of experience in B2B software. I have led cross-functional teams and managed the full product lifecycle from ideation to launch. I am passionate about solving customer problems and delivering value. I have a strong background in Agile methodologies and data-driven decision making. Previously, I worked at Company A as an Associate PM and at Company B as a PM.
After:
I spend most of my day asking “but will anyone actually use this” before a feature ships, not after. Six years in B2B product, mostly spent translating what sales hears on calls into things engineering can actually build. I’ve taken four products from zero to their first paying customer — and killed at least as many before they got that far, which I think is the more useful number to put on a profile. Before this I was at Company A, learning the hard way that a roadmap nobody argues about is a roadmap nobody’s read.
What changed isn’t the facts — it’s the order and the register. The opening claim is specific instead of a job title. “Passionate about solving customer problems” became an actual habit (sitting in on calls). The vague “strong background in Agile” disappeared entirely, because it wasn’t saying anything a reader could use. And the closing line does something a bulleted CV never does: it admits a mistake, which is the fastest way to sound like a person instead of a brochure.
What to cut on sight
A short list of words that function as formal register-markers but carry no information for an English-speaking reader, so they get skimmed past every time: results-driven, passionate, proven track record, dynamic professional, detail-oriented. If you notice you’ve translated one of these directly from a phrase your own language uses for formal self-description, that’s usually the signal to cut it rather than polish it — the honest content is somewhere underneath, in a specific thing you actually did.
Also cut: your full job history (LinkedIn already lists it right below, in Experience) and any sentence that starts with “Responsibilities included,” which is passive-voice CV language trying to sneak back in.
If you’d rather draft the honest version first — in your own language, or in whatever mix of English gets the meaning down fastest — and then turn it into something that reads in this register without losing what you meant, that’s the specific gap Copynote’s rewrite tool is built for: it keeps your meaning, adjusts the register, and shows you the change as a diff rather than just replacing your words silently.
