Should I write a profile for my CV?
This is quite a difficult question to answer for a number of reasons;
1. If you consider the role of the person tasked with reading your CV after it has passed through the ATS then these days the emphasis for a CV is usually matching skills and achievements under a description of the role you fulfilled within the company you worked for.
2. Writing a paragraph of detail described as a profile preceding this will invariably find the reader ignoring it as they prefer all information in a relative section.
3. Further to this, if your career to date has not amounted to much or you are of a level below a management position it’s a probably a waste of time writing a profile because at junior levels the profile requirement diminishes even further.
Except none of this is actually completely correct.
Here’s why;
Every recruitment organisation uses a management system called an ATS to either filter responses to adverts or to manage a database of candidates and this is where you can use the profile paragraph to your advantage. The ATS will filter suitable candidates based on keyword matches. If you write a keyword rich profile this will only help you get noticed in the database and will not hinder your choices in any way.
This is also the reason why an Executive CV should always have a profile – it is an opportunity to highlight detail early in the document and thus entice the reader to look further into the CV. This also correlates with the way Linkedin is currently using the summaris(z)e paragraph.