Creating Your Professional Profile

3rd Jan 2016

Creating Your Professional Profile

In the new world of social network and search, managing your business profile can be a daunting task. It becomes very apparent when you see the volume of CVs that we do that it's easy for even the best people to get it very, very wrong. So to start, make sure you get the basics right.

The basics

Make sure your digital presence is up to date and matches CV – the first place a perspective employer will look is at your LinkedIn profile
The further you are into your career the more brutal you need to be with the stuff at the beginning (no-one is that interested in all your GCSEs)
List your work experience in reverse order (with education at the end)
Explain any gaps
Put dates (month & year) / job titles / companies in the same format.
Check your spelling and grammar, and if that's not your forte, get someone else to check it for you!

Keep it short

The honest truth is that most people will spend just moments glancing over your CV, so be ruthless about what you include. One to two pages is ideal.

Care about how it looks

Find a typeface that works for you – clear and modern (Calibri or Arial) and then think carefully about how you structure headings, sub-headings and bullet points. When you're happy with it save it as a .pdf to make sure that no-one can fiddle with the content and have a copy ready without contact details to give to recruiters to send out.

Concentrate on achievements not responsibilities

You will obviously need to outline your responsibilities but please avoid including a list of responsibilities that amounts to a job description in a CV. Instead, think about what you've achieved: quality of work, relationship, profitability. What are you most proud of? Think about your personal contribution, not just what the team or organisation delivered.

Be market specific

With the sheer volume of CV’s and candidates in the market think about what it is that gives you context Vs your peers. What industry standard KPI’s do you work towards on a monthly and quarterly basis that give an indication of your success? If you are a sales person – tell us how much you have sold and to who (clients and agency patch). If you are an Account Manager – tell us how many clients and campaigns, revenue you manage or how yu optimise. If you work in Ops – tell us what platforms and technologies you have experience of using, a lot of the time clients will ask us for operations candidates with specific tech experience e.g. AppNexus, DBM, DFA, MediaMath etc etc

Assume no one knows what your company does

The fragmented nature of the digital ecosystem means there are hundreds of companies from Media Owners, Ad Tech companies, Programmatic Platforms, DMP’s to Agencies and Trading Desks, so it is highly likely that the person reading your CV may not know what the company you work for actually do. So let’s give them a clue but keep it simple – do not regurgitate the marketing guff from the website (in our industry it is possible to say a lot without actually saying anything!). If you cannot communicate exactly what type of company you work for, it's market position, differentiators and across which channels you work in 2 lines, then it does not bode well.

Write a personal profile

They are difficult to write, but can be very effective. To work they need to avoid the 'team player who is happy to work independently' clichés – avoid the third person as well because it sound forced (and you sound like a boxer). Taylor your personal profile towards the role!

Use positive language

Formulate strong statements that demonstrate your skills and experience in action, using terms that show you’re positive and pro-active rather than flimsy phrases.

Good luck, and happy job hunting.