PS Tip 85: CV personal statement

The CV personal statement is a different beast entirely, and is usually known as a profile – a sort of short personal bio that appears at the top of most CVs. If you’ve ever shortlisted candidates for a job, as I have many times, you’ll know how badly these are usually written; often they either they simply reiterate information that is explained more thoroughly elsewhere, or they’re seemingly meaningless gibberish that presumably sounded good to the author at the time of writing.

And believe it or not, that’s not intended to be a criticism – It’s the recognition of a problem. CV personal statements, or profiles, are simply very difficult to write well.

For a start, they’re usually written in the third-person, which almost nobody ever uses for anything else. Beyond this, most people are utterly unaware of what should be included, so in the absence of this critical information, they clearly never had a chance of writing something effective in the first place.

Thankfully, Paul has written on this subject extensively in his acclaimed CV book, so please check that out if you want detailed tips and advice from arguably the UKs leading CV writer. Paul has also included some additional CV tips on his blog, as well as some other additional advice pages.

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