How to write a profile that gets drink invites

Most profile advice misses what a profile is actually for. It treats the profile like a personal brand — something to optimize, something to make stand out, something to “win” with. But the person on the other end isn’t a recruiter. They’re someone with a finite drop of profiles, deciding whether to spend a real evening with you.

A good profile makes that decision easier. That’s it. Here’s how to write one.

Lead with a real day, not a slogan

Compare these two openers:

• “Looking for someone to share adventures with.”
• “On Saturdays I make sourdough and read in Prospect Park if it’s warm.”

The first one tells the reader nothing. The second one gives them something they can picture — and decide, very quickly, whether they’d want to be in that picture. The trick isn’t being clever. It’s being specific.

Specifics that work: a place you go, a thing you make, a small habit, a corner of the city you walk through. Specifics that don’t: hobbies as nouns (“hiking, cooking, traveling”), age ranges (“late twenties looking for something real”), or anything that sounds like a LinkedIn bio.

Show up in your photos, not your filter

The single most common photo mistake is over-curated: too many group shots, too many sunglasses, too few faces at normal distance. The reader is trying to figure out what dinner with you would actually feel like. They need:

• One clear face shot, no sunglasses, decent lighting. Not a glamour shot — just you.
• One full-body. So they know what you look like in real proportions.
• One you-doing-something — the bar you go to, the dog, the bookshop, the kitchen at 9 PM.
• Verified photos. (On Hunch this is required. On other apps it’s optional, which is why people stop trusting the photos.)

What to cut: any photo more than two years old, any photo where you’re hard to identify, any photo that requires you to explain it (“that’s me on the right”).

Make at least one prompt do real work

If your prompts are all jokes, the profile reads like it’s hiding something. If they’re all earnest, it reads like a personal ad. Mix them — but make at least one give the reader something concrete to start a conversation about, or to confirm a small compatibility.

Examples that pull weight:

• “I’ll know we’re going to get along when… we both want the corner booth.”
• “The first thing you should know is… I do, in fact, talk to my plants.”
• “My current order at the corner bodega is…”

Each of these gives the other person a hook. Either a small shared taste (the corner booth, the bodega order), or a tiny piece of personality that’s hard to fake. Compare that to “I love trying new restaurants” — which means nothing because everyone says it.

Don’t audition for chemistry

The biggest temptation is to write the profile as if you’re trying to prove you’d be a great date. You don’t need to prove it. The drink invite is the test, not the profile. The profile just has to give someone enough information to send the invite confidently.

Trying too hard reads as trying too hard. A profile that says “I’m equally happy at a divey music venue or a museum” sounds like it’s covering all the bases. A profile that says “I have strong opinions on which wine bar in Bed-Stuy is best, ask me” sounds like a person.

On Hunch, the profile does a slightly different job

Hunch profiles get a longer look than profiles on unlimited-feed apps. The drop is small (ten a day, max), every profile is photo-verified, and the people seeing your profile have at most three open conversations. They’re paying attention. So the profile doesn’t need to grab attention with a thumbnail — it needs to reward the few seconds someone actually spends on it.

That’s good news. You don’t need a hook line. You need to be a specific, recognizable person. Specifics are easier to write than slogans.

A small checklist before you publish

• One clear face shot, no sunglasses
• One full-body
• One you-doing-something
• A specific opening line (a place, a habit, a small thing you do)
• At least one prompt with a concrete hook
• Nothing that sounds like a CV
• Verified ✓

If your profile passes this list, the drink invites will follow. The product will do the rest.