Ten rules for composing your LinkedIn summary

个人简介该怎么写？我读了LinkedIn上多位名人的个人简介，尽管他们的写作风格各不相同，但我还是从他们的经验或教训中总结出了十条写出精彩个人简介的法则。

It has taken me 13 years and 414m people have got there before me, but last week I finally sat down to compose my summary for the networking site LinkedIn. The beauty of being such a late adopter is that all you have to do is find one person who has mastered this practically impossible form of composition and crib[1] them.

[1]crib: to copy or take someone else's work 抄袭，剽窃，作弊 

I sometimes wonder what TV show he cribbed that line from. 

由于抄袭前座的答案，我被逐出了考场。

My first stop was the summary written by a woman who I hope will soon be the most important in the world. Hillary Clinton's effort goes like this.

"Wife, mother, grandmother, women and kids advocate, FLOTUS(First Lady of the United States), FLOAR(First Lady of Arkansas), Senator, secretary of state, dog person, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado[2], 2016 presidential candidate." Is this a spoof[3]? Can the former FLOTUS really think her role as a grandmother (of which there are an estimated 35m in the US alone) is more interesting to LinkedIn members than her shot at the White House? And as for the dogs and trouser suits, I can see she is trying to seem humorous, but it doesn't work. I shan't be copying Mrs Clinton, but she has taught me my first two lessons: no jokes and stick to the point.

[2]aficionado: someone who is very interested in and enthusiastic about a particular subject 酷爱…者；…迷 

a club for model railway aficionados 

铁路模型爱好者俱乐部

[3]spoof: a funny and silly piece of writing, music, theatre, etc. that copies the style of an original work （对文章、音乐、戏剧等）滑稽模仿的作品 

They did a spoof on/of the Nine O'Clock News. 

他们搞了个“九点档新闻”的模仿之作。 

Next, I tried Reid Hoffman. As he founded LinkedIn, he really ought to know how to do it. His summary begins: "All aspects of consumer internet and software. Focus is on product development, innovation, business strategy, and finance, but includes general management, operations, business operations, business development, talent management, and marketing." He lost me after a dozen words, but at least gave lesson three: don't be boring.

After that I hopped from one profile to another, and discovered that no one has a clue how to write one. Some summaries are maximalist, others minimalist. There is Arianna Huffington padding out[4] an already long one with an entire paragraph listing every TV show she has ever gone on from Charlie Rose to The O'Reilly Factor. There is another lesson here: don't be self-indulgent. Bill Gates, on the other hand, keeps his short.

[4]pad out:If you pad out a piece of writing or a speech with unnecessary words or pieces of information, you include them in it to make it longer and hide the fact that you have not got very much to say. 拉长…的篇幅

The reviewer padded out his review with a lengthy biography of the author...

评论者在他的评论中添加了冗长的作者生平以拉长篇幅。

"Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Chairman, Microsoft Corporation. Voracious[5] reader. Avid[6] traveller. Active blogger." He teaches lesson five: you are only allowed to mention your hobbies if, like Mr Gates, you have made them your life.

[5]voracious: very eager for something, especially a lot of food 饥渴的；渴求的；（尤指）贪吃的

He's a voracious reader of historical novels (= he reads a lot of them eagerly and quickly). 

他如饥似渴地阅读历史小说。

[6]avid: extremely eager or interested 渴望的；急切的；热衷的；劲头十足的 

an avid football fan 狂热的足球球迷 

She hadn't seen him for six months and was avid for news. 

她已6个月未曾见到他，正望眼欲穿地盼着他的音信。

Not only is there no agreement on length, nor is there any on something even more basic: first person or third? Almost all grand business figures go for third, pasting in their official bios: "Jack Welch is one of the world's most respected and celebrated CEOs, known for his unmatched track record of success, enormous love of people, fierce passion for winning, and unbridled desire to change the world for the better . . ." From the former head of GE, I extract lessons six and seven. The third person is too stiff for a social networking site. And bragging like this is not just flagrant[7], it is borderline fraudulent[8]. Unmatched record? Enormous love of people? Says who?

[7]flagrant: (of a bad action, situation, person, etc.) shocking because of being so obvious 骇人听闻的，公然的；罪恶昭彰的 

a flagrant misuse of funds/privilege 

明目张胆的滥用资金／特权

[8]fraudulent: A fraudulent activity is deliberately deceitful, dishonest, or untrue欺骗性的;欺诈性的

They claim that the fall in unemployment is based on a fraudulent manipulation of statistics. 

他们声称失业率下降是对统计数据进行欺骗性操纵的结果。

David Cameron, by contrast, goes for the first person. "I became Prime Minister after the General Election in May 2010," he begins simply enough, ending: "I am married to Samantha, and we have three young children, Nancy, Elwen, and Florence."

This establishes rule eight, which says you can only refer to your family on LinkedIn if you are the prime minister, in which case your luckless wife and children are part of the package. Otherwise, leave them out.

All these famous people have it easy as we know who they are already, while the rest of us have to try to stand out. Steven Burda, an unknown consultant, became the most connected man on the site in 2013 on the basis of a summary that said "I move mountains . . . One day I'll take over the world. Nothing is impossible for me." This leads me to rule nine. A lot of people on LinkedIn must be twits.

The only thing I'm sure about is the headline; I'm simply going to use my title at the FT. To anyone who thinks that is too dull, I direct them to the horror composed by a senior banker at Lloyds: "Shaper Planter with strong Adaptive Dealer behaviours".

As for the rest of it, I am still chewing my pencil. But that might be because I don't know what the site is really for. Some people use it to find jobs. Others use it to connect — but some don't even do that. Michael Dell ends his official third-person summary with the first-person plea: "Please do not request to connect with me unless we know each other or have worked together."

For him the site isn't for connecting, but one-upmanship[9]. In that case there is a better way of doing it — to steer clear. Declining to be on LinkedIn is a position occupied by the Queen, the governor of the Bank of England, Philip Green, Warren Buffett, the Pope, the editor of the Financial Times — and by a man I sincerely hope will not shortly become the most important in the world — Donald Trump.

[9]one-upmanship: If you refer to someone's behaviour as one-upmanship, you disapprove of them trying to make other people feel inferior in order to make themselves appear more important.取巧占上风的伎俩；总是想要胜人一筹的尝试

It was the expression of a man who'd won a trifling game of one-upmanship.

这是一个人在无关紧要的较量中取巧获胜时流露出的表情。