Bio

Work these verbs in to your resume or Linkedin profile and you will inspire the reader to take action!
 
Accomplished
Achieved
Adapted
Arranged
Attained
Built
Captured
Commandeered
Completed
Converted
Crafted
Created
Cut
Delivered
Demonstrated
Designed
Developed
Devised
Directed
Distributed
Doubled
Drove
Earned
Eliminated
Encouraged
Enforced
Engineered

Two often neglected sections of a LinkedIn profile are the summary and specialities. The summary is is where you can really blow your own horn and sell yourself, it serves as your Linkedin bio. The specialities is a bunch of keywords that recruiters, customers, suppliers will use to search and find your profile. In spite of this, all too often people don’t even bother to fill either section in.
 
Summary section
 
Why should you fill it in? For starters, it gives the reader a quick overview of who you are, what you do, what you are looking for and most importantly, what you can do for them. No one is going to scroll down and scrutinize every position you have ever had or take their time to deduce what skills you possess by looking at your groups and associations.
 
You want to start out your summary with who you are and what you do most of the time. Then write what you can do for others and why people would want to engage with you. This is likely to be a list of achievements, and if so make sure you quantify them as much as possible. You want your summary to stand out and the reader to think they need to take action and speak with you pronto. In the example I have once again used Chris Brogan, his summary is a bit on the long side but then again he is spinning a lot of plates at one time.
 
Example: Chris Brogan’s Summary
 

A short professional bio has become increasingly important as most of us suffer from information fatigue and cannot be bothered to read lengthy documents about anybody. Experts such as Matthew Levy reckons your bio is the most important document you will ever write.
 
A bio is useful for a host of reasons such as applying for a job, publishing an article or guest blog post, general networking etc. It’s basically a great vehicle for quickly communicating who you are and what you do.
 
You are likely to have a bio somewhere on the Internet already. If you write a blog, it will be your About page. If you are on LinkedIn, it will be your summary. If you are on Twitter, it will be your, wait for it… Bio! These three most probably have different lengths, with the minnow being Twitter that only allows for a 140 letter bio.
 
As writing a professional bio is the hottest thing since sliced bread, you best get on with it and follow these simple steps to do your personal brand proud. Here are the a few tips followed by a sample bio by Chris Brogan.
 
1. Identify your purpose
 
Why are you writing this bio? Who will read it? You need to take some time to think about your readers and what you want them to think about you. People write anything from professional bios for getting free lance work, a comedy bio full of in-jokes for your friends or a bio for the back of their next piece of pulp fiction. Keep your audience in mind when authoring your bio.
 
2. Third person perspective
 

Most job seekers understandably think that their resume is their most important written job search tool. Why? Because most people associate resumes with landing their next job. Resumes are important, even critical, to your ultimate goal of landing your next job. However, resumes are best used only when you are applying for a specific position. After all, that’s the purpose of a resume – to articulate your background, skills, abilities and credentials – with the hopes of garnering an interview.

However, any savvy job seeker in this current employment market knows that blindly applying for jobs using your resume is a recipe for a long bout of unemployment. Generally accepted statistics demonstrate that only 20% of all jobs are filled via job boards and newspaper ads. And of that 20% the majority of the time the hiring manager knows who they want to hire before the posting goes up. The other 80% of jobs are filled through networking with friends, family, current or former co-workers, or through extended professional networking through LinkedIn and professional organizations.