How to Write a Professional Short Bio (With Examples)

Writing a short bio is an important part of introducing yourself to potential employers, clients or contacts. Your short bio has the potential to help you make positive impressions that can impact your professional development and success. If you are interested in learning to write effective short bios, you will need to know what to include and what an effective short bio looks like.

Short bios are concise, biographical paragraphs that professionals use to introduce themselves. You can often find short bios on social media profiles, personal websites and company team directories. Short bios are typically used to provide a summary of an individual’s accomplishments, an overview of their career history and a description of their professional goals.

Your short bio is often the first (and perhaps only) thing a potential employer, client or contact will read before deciding to contact you, so it is important that your bio be accurate, informative and memorable. It’s a good idea to include:

How to write a short bio

01. Introduce yourself

Begin your bio by stating your first and last name. If you’re writing in the third person, these should be the first two words of the paragraph. This makes your name easy for your audience to identify and remember.

02. State your company or brand name

Think about whether you want your bio to represent yourself on a personal level, or whether you’d like it to come across as more professional. If you have a personal brand or business – for example, a blog, freelance business or eCommerce site – be sure to mention your brand name at the beginning of your bio. Don’t be afraid if the name sounds simple or redundant. It’s perfectly fine, for instance, to say Mary Smith is the founder and CEO of Smith Digital.

Likewise, feel free to mention the name of another company or brand that you work for if you’d like to associate it with your professional accomplishments – e.g., Mary Smith is a consultant at Google and the founder and CEO of Smith Digital.

03. Explain your professional role

Next, briefly explain your current position. This is relevant whether you’re the founder of a company, a high-level specialist or a beginner in your field, and it can be similar to the description you have on your resume. Your website visitors won’t necessarily know what your job involves, so elaborating on your primary responsibilities helps paint a picture of who you are and what you have to offer.

04. Include professional achievements

In addition to explaining what your job entails, highlight milestones that make you stand out. Even if you haven’t won an award or gained external recognition, you can discuss ways in which you’ve contributed to your professional role and touch on new ideas or approaches that you bring to the table.

05. Discuss your passions and values

Once you describe what you do and how you contribute to your role, you’ll need to explain the why. This is one of the most important elements to focus on as you consider how to write a bio.

You can also think of this part of your bio as a kind of mission statement. Perhaps your mission is to serve others, contribute to society, grow your expertise or learn new skills. Whatever your reasons, expanding upon these ideas can help your audience get a better understanding of what truly matters to you.

06. Mention your personal interests

Transitioning to a more casual discussion of who you are outside of work is a great way to conclude your bio. This will present you as a more well-rounded person while making you relatable for your audience.

4. Your personal website or portfolio “About Me” page

Here’s where you want to lay it all on your audience. You can use as much of the bio you wrote from the template above as you see fit and feel free to expand on whatever sections you’d like. Craft your “About Me” page so potential partners or employers understand what you can do for them and why you’re the person they should hire.

Chad Wilborn takes complex technical ideas and distills them into user-friendly visuals to improve digital marketing campaigns for companies along the West Coast. He has an education in traditional advertising and a background loaded with marketing and graphic design projects, centered around modernizing the consumer experience. Chad’s portfolio demonstrates his ability to capitalize on every pixel for the overall benefit of startups or established enterprises trying to reach consumers. His services have won multiple design and branding awards, and he is excited to help add your company to his list of successes.

I am a modern magician, except I transform complicated technical ideas into user-friendly images before the eyes of your company’s customers. I believe in telling relatable stories through graphics, so I studied the basics of traditional advertising before working my magic on corporate marketing projects for companies along the West Coast. My portfolio showcases a lineup of my most recent tricks, which range from visual startup campaigns to Fortune 500 projects—each of which have won design and branding awards. I’m always ready for new design opportunities and have plenty of room up my sleeve for a few more award-winning performances.

• Know your limits: Just as your resume is best when it fits on one or two pages, your bio likely also requires a certain length. Whether it’s two sentences, two paragraphs, or 160 characters, respect the limit or risk it being arbitrarily chopped down.
• Avoid jargon and buzzwords: When you spend nearly a third of your life at work, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the world doesn’t speak your industry’s (or company’s) language. Use your bio to share facts and impact in terms everyone will understand.
• Use your own voice: Write about what you know best and write the way that you talk. If your bio readers ever meet you in person, they should feel as if they already know you.
• Write more than one draft: Don’t just throw something together and send it off. Write it, sleep on it, then come back to it and ask: “Would I want to meet me?” Or better yet: “Would I want to hire or work with me?”
• Don’t forget to update your bio: Your bio should evolve as you do. If you start looking for jobs in different industries, have a new and exciting accomplishment to note, or just feel ready for a refresh, go for it. Now that you’ve got this draft down, it’ll be easy to rework your professional bio.

Kaysie is a freelance writer with bibliophilic tendencies who covers professional subjects, resume best practices, and a mix of lifestyle topics. When she isn’t helping clients weave their words into gold, she serves as an editorial contributor for HelloFlo and as a resume editor for Elevated Resumes (which you can book on The Muse’s Coach Connect). You can also chat with Kaysie on Twitter @cafeaukay.

Source:

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-write-a-short-bio
https://www.wix.com/blog/2020/07/how-to-write-a-bio/
https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-professional-bio-template-that-makes-everyone-sound-accomplished