Your Professional Bio: How to Introduce Yourself

Presentation originally given to the Philly GDI Teacher Meetup on how to craft your professional bio. You want to represent yourself honestly and start a conversation. Included here is a quick exercise to get you started.

Transcript

1. Your Professional Bio How to introduce yourself
3. Your bio = Introduce yourself + Start a conversation
4. You need a bio for lots of professional things • Twitter • Linkedin summary • Personal Website • Slack profile • Resume summary • Conference and meetup talks
5. Hello, my name is Y Ask me about X
6. Know your audience • What do they need to know about you? • What do they care about? • Are you trying to convince them of something? • What do you want people to come up and talk to you about?
7. Know yourself • What can you do? • What makes you stand out from your peers? • What do you care about? • What tech, practices, brands, or ideas do you want people to identify you with?
8. • Actually need short version and long version • Short: the shorter the better, 2-3 sentences • Long: for blog posts or talk advertisements. Still one paragraph, maybe 5 sentences. Keep it short
9. Audrey Troutt ------------------------------------ Energetic mobile and backend developer. Passionate about crafting clean code, delivering value, and building healthy communities.
10. Audrey Troutt -------------------------------------- Energetic mobile and backend developer and manager. Currently Software Engineering Manager at Tune building tools for mobile marketers and app developers to optimize user engagement. Previously, Director of Mobile Development at SnipSnap and before that led iOS and Android SDK development at Artisan Mobile. I value clean code, automation, and lean, iterative processes. I love to tackle the most difficult technical, organizational, and product puzzles. My superpower is creating highly productive, innovative, and happy teams.
11. Avoid cliches, jargon, and hyperbole • Brag, but don’t exaggerate ◦ “Audrey is the best mobile developer in Philadelphia” • Avoid words like ninja, master, expert, wizard, unicorn, rockstar, or guru. • Try not to sound like http://www.cipsum.com/ ◦ “Leverage agile frameworks to provide a robust synopsis for high level overviews. Iterative approaches to corporate strategy foster collaborative thinking to further the overall value proposition. Organically grow the holistic world view of disruptive innovation via workplace diversity and empowerment.”
12. Activity 1 Make a fun bio Head over to http://twitterbiogenerator .com/ for inspiration. • Be truthful, but silly • Name your superpowers • Declare your passions • Avoid cliche and hyperbole
13. Activity 2 Make a long and boring bio It’s your abbreviated resume in paragraph format. Be truthful without worrying about being interesting. For the intended audience, what is everything you want them to know about you?
14. Activity 3 The hard part What you want is something between the fun bio and the boring bio. Give an honest intro. Encapsulate what makes you stand out as a professional. Create an opening for further conversations.
15. Next steps: Get headshots! If you need a bio, chances are you need a headshot too • Pros are not expensive if you get a group together • You *can* do it yourself • Maybe a local meetup could organize an event?
16. Next steps: Consider a professional • I paid Dave Fecak at Resume Raiders http://www.resumeraiders.com/ to review my resume and linkedin ◦ He suggested great edits to my intro ◦ They can do everything from critique to rewrite for you ◦ It’s well worth the investment
17. Next steps: Put this somewhere you can easily find it • Create a folder in your google drive/dropbox/whatever ◦ Text file for bios ▪ short and long bios ▪ Links to profiles (github, website, blog, twitter, linkedin) ◦ Resume (comes in handy) ◦ Headshots ▪ Large versions ▪ Small versions ▪ Square versions