What Is a Professional Biography?

The business world has become a completely different place in the past few years. Business owners and entrepreneurs have to engage the world in a way they never had to before. Once upon a time, having a bare bones resume and being good at your job was enough to get you the attention you needed in almost anything you might do. Nowadays, that simply isn’t true anymore. Even a sole proprietor of a business needs to know the basics of a professional biography.

Defining a Professional Biography

A professional biography is a summary of who are you as an employer, business person, or professional. A professional biography is the art of presenting yourself in the best possible and most interesting light, without actually engaging in anything that smacks of a hard sell.

A professional biography may be used for:

• A description of you on your website
• A description of you in a brochure
• A description of you on a book jacket, should you write a book
• A description of you as an employee in a company Facebook or other company literature

Why Write a Professional Biography

Your customers (and a possible employer or partner) need to know who you are. A professional biography isn’t merely a resume. It’s a statement, short or long, of who you are, and it’s written in such a way as to be amusing, engaging, and informative. It’s meant to draw the reader or listener into the subject, which of course is you!

It’s a sales pitch that doesn’t read like one. These days, everything is marketed to potential purchasers, and people you meet fall into the same category. You ignore this type of personal marketing in this day and age at your peril.

Elements of a Professional Biography

Sum up your early life in an amusing or interesting sentence or two. Next, it’s time to put in the information about your education. Did you win academic awards? Were you a member of an honor society? Did you also work while you went to school?

That kind of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” ability is much prized by employers, potential business partners, and anyone who might be thinking of working with you or lending you money. They like knowing you care about the value of a dollar. Any true statements that tell the world that you are the kind of principled, discerning, and hardworking person of character they want to place their money with will do much to get your the kind of business relationships you are hoping for.

Tips for Writing a Professional Biography

• Brevity is everything. Try to keep your history to a page or less, much the same way you should with a resume. You have only seconds to capture a reader or listener’s attention, and you should write your biography with that in mind.

• Don’t let the necessity for weighing words carefully stop you from being spontaneous. The thing about writing, especially on a computer, is that it only takes a few strokes to erase and edit what you’ve done.

• Don’t self-edit to the point where you can’t put a word on paper. This kind of writing freeze has tabled the best of writers on occasion. You’re not an expert, so you need to put down more than you will eventually wind up with. That’s what editing is for. Don’t edit yourself before you’ve written a word.

• Remember: shorter is better, breezy is fine, but too informal won’t sell.

• Be serious, but be friendly. Make your history accessible to the people learning about you.

It is important not to bore your audience. Write the kind of biography you’d like to read if it were written about someone else. Using your own good taste and judgment will do a lot to win potential business colleagues to your side.

Third Person Please

When writing a biography, you should never use the word “I” in it. Always talk about yourself as if you are writing about someone ELSE.

Remember the person reading or listening to your biography doesn’t want to feel like he stole your diary. Use your imagination and turn yourself into a person you are observing. Use that special insight gained by sitting back and watching to write your professional biography.