WRITING A COMPELLING PROFILE FOR YOUR CV
The main reason for writing a profile is to aid the reader to quickly understand, who you are, what you do and what you want to do. Think of it as maybe what you might say if you were meeting the reader of the CV in person “I’d like you to know this” “However, this definitely isn’t what I am about”.
It really needs to be no more than 4 or 5 sentences, because if the reader sees a large chunky paragraph at the top of their CV, their eyes will skim over it and look for other evidence of what you’re about in the body of the CV, but chances are they won’t quickly understand what you’re at, so may move on to the next CV.
The profile will always the be the last part of the CV that you write, as it is essentially the highlights of everything that you have done to date, condensed into short, sharp, punchy sentences.
SO THE RECIPE IS:
- Who you are – occupational and work experience
- Where – sector knowledge and experience of different organisations
- What – what do YOU specifically have to offer, that makes you the “must hire” candidate or stand-out person for the reader’s team or organisation. To coin and awful phrase – your USP!
AND please, do not ever feel the need to fill up space by using meaningless, empty statements such as “hard working” “reliable” “team player”….you know where I’m going with this! These statements are meaningless. Makes your statements specific – example, “Over a five year period I achieved cost savings of €7.5M, by rationalising our supplier base and consequently improved our ratio of local suppliers to over 75%.
It’s like competency based interview answers, they need to be specific, measurable with an actual achievement/objective.
And finally, with every fresh job application, review the profile as well as the body of the CV, to ensure that the profile correctly encapsulates the salient points, which if you were the reader, you would be looking for!