Friday, October 9, 2015

Write A Professional Biography For A College Student

A well-crafted personal biography can help you land the job of your dreams.


A professional biography is a brief explanation of your professional or working life. It includes information about you that a prospective client or employer might want to know before hiring you. Even as a college student with little work experience, you can write a professional biography that will highlight your best skills and experiences and provide a glimpse into your professional capabilities.


Instructions


1. Use a professional and detached tone. Write your professional biography as if you were an outsider writing a biography; not a person writing his own autobiography. Use third person to describe yourself, and use actionable verbs. For example, write things like "John Smith served as the director of Smith Dormitory at Smith University," rather than "I was the director of Smith Dormitory at Smith University."


2. Start with your professional credentials. Include your most recent experiences first, then move backward through time to detail your past experiences. Even if you weren't paid for the job you did, you may have information you could include in this section, such as internships or volunteer services? If you don't have any professional work experience, write about your degrees instead. If you have work experience, list that first and put the degrees second. For example, "Jane Smith spent four summers working as a camp counselor at Camp Kayak in Michigan; during that time she supervised groups of 20 campers and planned their instructional and extracurricular activities every day. She is majoring in Elementary Education at Smith University, and expects to graduate in the Spring of 2011."


3. Describe specific interests you have that might relate to future jobs. For instance, if you have written more than one paper on a particular topic, list that as a research interest. If you have taken additional skills courses outside of school, include that information. For instance, you might write, "John Smith has researched the correlation between employee performance and job satisfaction extensively. Outside of school, he has taken courses in tax education and is a certified income tax preparer." Only list the information that might be pertinent to your career; your pottery classes probably aren't relevant to your future career in finance.


4. Include a few brief tidbits about your personal life. Make sure they make you sound well-rounded, and don't spend too much time elaborating on them. For example, "When not in school, Jane Smith enjoys whitewater rafting and volunteering at her local animal shelter." The whitewater rafting shows that you are active and try to engage in healthy pursuits; the animal shelter shows your compassionate and charitable side. Both of these things are relevant to your overall persona and might impress a future employer. This is not the time to mention the day you won the hot-dog-eating contest or to describe your rock collection in detail.


5. Keep your biography brief and to the point. Write approximately three paragraphs: one about your professional experience and education, one explaining other relevant experiences, and one about your personal interests. Each paragraph should only have a few sentences in it and directly describe your professional life without a lot of extra explanation. Prospective employers do not want to waste an hour reading about every detail of your life; if they want to know more than what you have written, they will ask you about it in an interview.

Tags: your professional, about your, professional biography, Smith University, work experience, about your personal