How to Create a Professional Profile for your CV

Many CVs now come with a profile or thumbnail sketch of the candidate at the top. Career Consultant Rowan Manahan offers some expert advice on compiling one for yourself.

Q: How do you write a profile of yourself? I have heard that putting one of these at the top of my CV will really help my chances of getting to interview. What do I include or leave out?

Many CVs now come with a profile or thumbnail sketch of the candidate at the top. Too many of these are stale, unsubstantiated, buzzword-driven tripe:

"I am a dynamic, forward-looking sales professional"

"I am a self-starter, brimming with enthusiasm"

"I have highly developed people skills"

Look at those statements again from the perspective of a tired recruiter who is wading through a tall pile of applications and you can immediately see why they would not work.

A thumbnail sketch should be a tight every-word-included-for-a-reason selling statement which implies the following: "I am exactly what you need. I am making your life just a little easier here. Binning me would be a bad idea." Now those are all useful impressions to leave in the reader's mind.

Build a list of items for possible inclusion in your Professional Profile. A bullet-point approach is generally best as it can be scan-read easily as opposed to a four-line paragraph which may or may not get read.

Point 1: Should be your one-line positioning statement about yourself. Exactly what are you? Clearly, this point needs to fit closely with their perceived needs. Examples include:

· Strategic Financial professional with a strong Commercial and Development record

· Blue-chip-trained Project Management professional with a background in high finance and multi-cultural deals

· Business postgraduate with solid commercial experience gained in a large financial institution

Point 2: A big attention-grabber. Talk about benefits, value and experience. Examples include:

· Built six key brands to market leadership, exceeding parent company expectations

· Breadth of financial experience included IPO, merger, sale of subsidiary and company

· Demonstrable track record in managing complex, pressurized projects with large numbers of participants.

Clearly, the points above are very specifically tailored to positions that the writers have extensively researched. If you know what you are going to be doing on the new job, then pitching your profile to it like this is a cinch. Without that depth of research, you are relying on woolly generalisations and your CV starts to look and smell like junk mail.

Point 3: The big, transferable and relevant skills. Examples include:

· Demonstrable leadership, interpersonal and change management skills

· Excellent analytical, reasoning, budgetary, writing and IT capacities

Point 4: Secondary skills, the competencies you have that get the job done. Examples include:

· Comfortable relating to technical/non-technical management and staff at all levels

· High degree of computer literacy - familiar and effective with all key applications used by (the company you are applying to).

Point 5: What have you been recognised for? Promoted for? Examples include:

· Recognised throughout my career for steep learning curve, professionalism and results

· Consistently recognised for innovation, commitment, customer relations, flexibility

Point 6: The clincher. An example would include:

· Customer-service and quality-focused while working to corporate expectations and tight timeframes

Finally, remember there is a WORLD of difference between "strong," "excellent" and "exceptional" skills so don't be tempted to overstate your case.

Excerpt from Where's My Oasis - The essential handbook for everyone wanting that perfect job, © by Rowan Manahan, 2004. Published by Vermilion (Random House). For more information, please click here.