It can be awkward to try to write your own professional bio. How do you sell yourself while still remaining humble and authentic? And how do you fit so much important information about your personal history and accomplishments into a few paragraphs? The goal of a bio is to provide a snapshot of yourself and your accomplishments while showcasing your personal characteristics.

Here are a few pointers to help get you started on writing a solid personal bio.

Start with the Basics

The first thing that your bio should do is to introduce yourself. Begin with your full name and title. If you are not currently working, you can use the title of your last job or go with any professional certifications that you may have to distinguish your career. If you have a website, blog, or professional social media account, you may also want to include this information in the title of your bio.

Describe Your Current Position

The next thing that you should introduce is what you are currently doing for work. This section is important regardless of where you are in your career path. Include the company, job title, and duties of the position. You always want to put the most important information toward the top of the bio so that readers can learn more about you.

List Professional Achievements

After you have provided a concise statement about your current job, you can get into any past professional achievements. This is where you want to go into the specifics of what you have accomplished as a professional. Examples of professional achievements would be how you helped your organization to save money or improve the bottom line. It is a good idea to get as specific as possible using concrete examples.

Highlight Educational Background

Your professional bio should also highlight your educational background. Any college or graduate degree should be listed, including your field of study, school, and the year that you earned the degree. You may be surprised at how much interest you garner based on your educational background alone, especially if you went to a university with a large and active alumni base.

Note that if you are a recent college graduate, it may make more sense to highlight your educational background ahead of your professional achievements. The longer that you have been out of school and in the working world, the less relevant that your educational background will become.

Get Personal

Once you have listed all of your professional achievements, you may want to dive into some personal tidbits about yourself and your life. Including a few personal details will help the audience connect with you on a deeper level. This could spur an important connection that may prove beneficial later down the road. Good items to include are your favorite hobbies, details about your family, and unique details about your life.

Including personal details is an ideal way to transition to a more casual discussion of yourself. This transition helps to paint yourself in a more personable light while making you more relatable as an individual.

Let Your Personality Shine

Do not be afraid to let your personality shine through in your bio. Using carefully selected adjectives to describe yourself can go a long way in imparting more about you as a person. You may need to edit this based on the audience and purpose of your bio. For a bio used in a professional format, you will want to keep the verbiage more traditional. However, a bio intended for a more casual purpose will afford you the opportunity to get more creative with the words you use to describe yourself.

Every professional should have a personal bio on hand and ready to go when asked. While you may need to adjust it slightly to fit the purpose, a quality template for a bio will always be helpful as you strive to reach all of your career and personal goals. Following these tips will help you to create a more powerful bio, regardless of the audience and the platform that it will represent.