When it comes to crafting a personal profile for your CV, the age-old question persists: “What should I showcase?” The personal profile is your chance to present a genuine, distinct reflection of yourself – a far cry from the cookie-cutter ‘team player, problem solver, hard worker’ template often seen.
Businesses who are looking to grow their teams are employing people and so your personality needs to shine through.
Here are the important things to remember!
The hiring manager or recruiter needs to know the facts so your personal profile needs to be clear and concise. 6-8 lines should be enough to tell the reader want they want to know and encourage them to read on.
Substantiate Your Claims
Mere words won’t cut it. Bolster your statements with tangible proof. Make your statement and then give it evidence. So for example, ‘I am a problem solver, and made creative and effective changes to the marketing strategy increasing falling membership by 20% in the first 3 months of my current role’ or ‘I’m a team player as demonstrated in my last year at school where I captained the football team and mentored the junior players which led to the youngest side ever winning the inter-school league’.
Include a call to action
A call to action will give the recruiter or hiring manager a clear guide as to what you want from your next role. If you are looking for a job where you can be involved in making strategic plans or a position where you can increase your self-development then tell them by including a line in your CV that explains that. That way the person evaluating your CV will only take your forward for an interview if the role can offer you that opportunity. An example might be ‘I am eager to be challenged in order to develop my leadership skills’.
Why Should They Hire You?
Use your profile to not only tell the hirer that you have the key skills they are looking for but to also demonstrate how you will be a good personality fit for their team. This one can be trickier as there is a balance to be made and professionalism is key, but using your own style of writing, the words and language you feel more comfortable with, will better reflect your personality and indicate if you are the person fit they are looking for. If you get invited for an interview you can be confident that as well the job being a good fit for you, the company and its culture fit too.
For example “I love techy stuff and am constantly taking things apart and putting them back together to understand how they work” might give a better indication of your personality than saying “I have an understanding of technology and enjoy learning how things work by repairing computers’, but then, on the other hand, the latter might be more you.
So choose a style that reflects you. As we said at the start – it’s a personal profile and everyone’s should be just that, personal to them so create your personal profile as a tapestry of your uniqueness – the heart of the matter remains – a personal profile should unequivocally reflect the individual it represents.
