LinkedIn headline generator
Say what you do and who for. You get five headlines that fit LinkedIn's 220 characters.
13 headlines that work, by situation
Freelancers and consultants
- Brand designer for B2B SaaS | I turn a six-page site into one clear promise
- Freelance copywriter. I write the onboarding emails your product forgot to send.
- Bookkeeping for UK trades | You send photos of receipts, I file the VAT
- Fractional CMO for DTC brands under £5M | Paid social, email, retention
Founders and owners
- Co-founder at Kettle & Co | Small-batch coffee roasted in Lisbon, shipped in 48 hours
- I run a two-van removals company in Leeds. 900 moves since 2019.
- Founder, Northside Dental | Six chairs, one waiting list, no upsells
Looking for a role
- Junior data analyst after my first in-house role | SQL, dbt, Looker | Manchester or remote
- Warehouse supervisor between roles | 8 years, 40-person shifts, no lost-time injuries
- Product designer, open to work | Three fintech apps shipped | Portfolio in my featured section
Employed specialists
- Senior backend engineer at a payments startup | Go, Postgres, an on-call rota people can sleep through
- Customer success lead at a 30-person SaaS | I answer the tickets nobody escalates
- Paediatric occupational therapist, NHS | I write the reports schools can act on
This LinkedIn headline generator writes five versions of the line under your name from what you tell it about your work, rather than filling in a template. The field holds 220 characters, and about the first 70 are what people actually see: in search results, next to every comment you leave, and on every connection request you send.
A headline that does its job answers three things, in this order: who you help, what changes for them, and one reason to believe you. “Senior marketer” answers none of them. “Email marketing for DTC brands. I rebuild the flows that stopped converting.” answers the first two in 84 characters and leaves room for the third.
Three shapes cover most of the good ones. Role plus audience plus outcome: “Bookkeeper for UK trades. You send photos of receipts, I file the VAT.” Claim plus proof: “I write B2B case studies. Forty of them last year.” And position plus what you really do inside it, which is the shape to use when the company name carries weight and the job title does not.
Four habits kill a headline. A job title on its own, because it says what you are called and not what you do. Adjective stacks (passionate, driven, results-oriented) that nobody can disprove and everybody skips. Keyword lists separated by pipes, which read as a sitemap. And putting the point after character 70, where the preview cuts it off.
LinkedIn indexes the headline, and it is the only part of your profile that travels into other people's feeds. So use the words a buyer or a recruiter would type: “fractional CFO”, “Shopify developer”, “paediatric occupational therapist”. Write them inside a sentence rather than as a list, because a person still has to read the thing.
220 characters is more room than it sounds, and filling it is not the goal. Two short sentences read faster than one chain of pipes. One emoji can work as a separator; three stop working. If you write in two languages, lead with the one your buyers read, because the preview cut does not care which half matters to you.
Different readers need different headlines, which is why five options beat one. Someone hiring reads for the role, a client reads for the outcome, a peer reads for the specialism. Take the version that fits the audience you want this quarter, and change it when that changes: the headline is the cheapest line on your profile to edit.
Questions
How many characters can a LinkedIn headline be?
220 on the desktop site. The mobile app has been reported to accept a little more, so write to 220 and your headline saves everywhere. Only about the first 70 characters show in search results, on connection requests and next to your comments.
How do I write a LinkedIn headline?
Name who you help, say what changes for them, then add one piece of proof. Put the part a stranger needs in the first 70 characters, and keep it in plain sentences instead of a list of keywords.
What are some good LinkedIn headline examples?
There are thirteen on this page, grouped by situation: freelancers, founders, people looking for a role, and specialists in a job. Each one is specific about the work instead of describing a personality, which is the only thing they have in common.
Should my headline just be my job title?
Only if the title already tells a stranger what you do and for whom, which is rare. “Head of Growth” could mean six jobs; “Head of Growth at a 40-person HR platform. I own paid and lifecycle.” means one.
Does the LinkedIn headline affect search?
Yes. It is indexed, and it is what shows in the search result itself, so the words in it decide both whether you are found and whether the person clicks. Keep the search terms readable rather than stacked.