Each section of your CV – the employment section, education section, skills section and so on – should stand out on its own merits. However, using a CV profile, personal profile, career objective summary or competency statement is a useful way of ensuring that the purpose of your CV is absolutely clear to the reader from the very outset.

When used correctly a personal profile adds real value to a CV. Conversely when it is poorly thought-out and poorly written it can instantly turn a reader against you.

So how does one go about ensuring your personal profile hits home?

First of all let’s drill down and try to understand some of the specific terms that are sometimes referred to under the topic of a personal profile. A personal profile can indeed be called precisely that – i.e. you can make a section – usually at the very head of your CV – entitled ‘Profile’. Actually calling it ‘Personal Profile’ is probably superfluous, so stick with the shortened form. In this profile you would present some or all of the following elements:

- A brief prose summary of your career (with particular emphasis on what you are doing now).

- A list of competency statements. A competency statement is a short description of your experience of a particular skill or employment function – e.g. sales knowledge, financial knowledge, technical knowledge, organizational skills, motivational skills, leadership qualities etc. Save details for later keep this to the abbreviated form here.

- A career objective statement – i.e. what you want to do and how your previous work experience or education recommends you for this. The career objective statement can be as precise or as general as you like. This will usually depend on the type of position you apply for.

Any or all of the three elements above could be combined together under a general profile header. Alternatively you could split these out into discrete sections, however save the detail to be included later in your CV.

The key to making a personal profile work lies in closely analyzing an employer’s requirements and mapping your experience, skills and objectives onto these as precisely as possible. Using responsive language – i.e. feeding back to an employer the language and terms they themselves use – is one of the most important ingredients in constructing a winning CV.

Please visit our site CV Profile and get free CV profile example that is preferred by 93% Recruiter and Employer.

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Rudolf Coetzee

CV Profile, OnePlace

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