Close up detail of a businessman working at a desk with a smartphone and laptop computer, taken on January 31, 2019. (Photo by Neil Godwin/Future via Getty Images)
Future via Getty Images
Most people hate writing about themselves, and nothing causes this discomfort more than a professional bio. Writing one feels uncomfortably like bragging, which makes you feel awkward, which makes your tone awkward. So you end up making your bio short and clinical, devoid of personality. It reads more like a robotic list of a few resume highlights than an authentic introduction—which is how you should think of it instead.
Some version of your professional bio appears in a lot of places over the course of your career, such as LinkedIn, conference programs or speaking events, and your company’s website. This document is often the first impression you make on future employers, colleagues, and clients.
Nailing your bio will help to shape your personal brand and professional reputation before you enter a room. And while yes, the bio is for your audience’s benefit, it’s also a proactively self-reflective practice that will help you discern how you want to define yourself as a professional—with a nod to where you come from and a wink at where you want to end up.
Writing a bio can be less painful if you break the process down scientifically. Here are five techniques that will make your bio easier to write and better to read.
1. Break your professional bio down into its parts and brainstorm for each one separately.
Whether they are formal or casual, all professional bios have a few standard components: choice details about your background and credentials (your education, previous work experience, publications, etc), keywords indicating your expertise or professional skills, and a sense of who you are as a person (what drives you, whether you took a traditional path or an unexpected one, etc).
A bonus category is “fun facts.” This one is tough—many people struggle to think of interesting facts or unique achievements that seem relevant but not corny or overly personal. But it’s the unexpected or delightfully specific detail that can make your bio memorable to your audience, so try to push yourself to include this element.
Before you write your bio, first set a timer for each category and brainstorm lists of details. Be as thorough as you can, and even a bit silly. The point is to unlock options beyond the immediate or obvious ones that come to mind and then choose the most compelling details from your lists to include in the final bio. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) include everything you brainstorm.
2. Analyze other professional bios you like and use them as a blueprint for yours.
Look up colleagues’ LinkedIn pages or websites, speaker bios on your industry’s annual conference website, or the bios of famous CEOs or public figures you admire. The point isn’t to compare yourself to these people. It’s to find bios you like and then turn them into templates for your own. (You’ll also see, the more you read, that most bios are pretty formulaic.) Turning someone else’s bio into a fill-in-the-blank template gives you a starting point. Add in your own details from your brainstorming session, and make little adjustments to the formula and flow as you go, fitting the bio to your own story and purpose.
3. Imagine someone else is writing your professional bio.
If writing your own bio feels insurmountably cringey to you, channel a friend or close colleague. How would that person describe you? It’s much easier to write about someone else than yourself, so either pretend to be someone else writing about you, or actually ask someone else to do it for you.
If you feel uncomfortable asking them to put time and effort into this task, you could make the favor easier by giving them the plug-and-play template you created in step two, offering to write one for them as well, or asking them to simply talk through your bio aloud. For that last option, you can take notes or record it and use the transcript as a draft.
4. Use AI to help you write your professional bio.
A lot of people give up on writing a bio because, well, it feels really tricky. I think deliberately engaging with that difficulty is a useful practice, especially since preparing a written bio will also help to prepare you to introduce yourself verbally. However, generative AI tools can be extremely useful here, especially if you need to produce a bio fast or create a highly specific version of one that’s very different than your go-to version.
Remember to give the AI thorough instructions, and bonus points if you put in the work to define your authentic, personal voice and edit the AI output to sound like YOU—not like a robot, and not like the person whose bio you’re using for inspiration.
5. Customize your professional bio for different occasions.
Make sure you tweak your bio for specific platforms and audiences. Each time you tailor it, ask yourself a few questions about its purpose. What is your goal for this bio? Is it to get someone to hire you? To follow you? To read your work? To contact you? A 1st person version will be more personable and suitable for something like LinkedIn, and a 3rd person version will be a better fit for a conference website. Adjust the length, tone, and combination of details to fit the circumstances. Editing a bio you already have and like will always be easier than writing it from scratch, again, every time you need one.
The challenge of writing your professional bio is engaging with your career story thoughtfully.
If you find yourself struggling with writing your professional bio, don’t get discouraged—struggling with it means you’re being thoughtful. Writing a bio may be a straightforward task if you have a traditional, linear career trajectory. But it may be a lot more challenging if you are a freelancer, or re-entering the workforce after time away, or looking to make a career change. Taking the time to wrestle with representing your professional value in writing is worth the effort because it will help you frame your story for yourself as well as for your audience.
Remember, your professional bio isn’t a static document, just like you aren’t a static human. You can revisit and adjust it throughout your career. But having one on hand before you need it means that when someone asks you for your bio, you’ve already got something you’re proud of.
link