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Let's be real: almost everyone hates writing their professional bio. It feels like bragging, which makes you cringe, which makes your writing stiff and robotic. So you end up with a few dry resume bullets slapped together and called a bio. Not exactly a great first impression.
Here's the thing, though — your bio shows up everywhere. LinkedIn, conference programs, company websites, speaker pages. It's often the very first thing a future employer, client, or collaborator sees before they ever meet you. So it's worth getting right.
The good news? You can make this a lot less painful by breaking it down into steps.
Start by brainstorming in pieces, not all at once. Every good bio has a few core ingredients: your background and credentials, the skills and expertise you want to be known for, and some sense of who you actually are as a person. Set a timer and brainstorm each category separately. Go a little wild — the goal is to surface options beyond the obvious ones, so you can pick the best details for the final version. And push yourself to find at least one unexpected, specific detail about yourself. That's often what makes a bio stick in someone's memory.
Find bios you like and use them as a template. Look up colleagues on LinkedIn, browse speaker bios at industry conferences, or find profiles of people you admire. You're not comparing yourself to them — you're reverse-engineering what works. Turn a bio you love into a fill-in-the-blank structure, then plug in your own details. Most bios follow a pretty similar formula anyway, so this shortcut works better than you'd think.
Pretend someone else is writing it. If writing about yourself still feels impossible, channel a colleague or friend. How would they describe you? It's genuinely easier to write about someone else — so either imagine you're that person, or actually ask them to do it. You can sweeten the deal by offering to return the favor, or just ask them to talk through your bio out loud and use their words as a rough draft.
Use AI — but actually make it yours. AI tools can be a huge help here, especially when you need a bio fast or need to tailor one for a very specific context. Just give it detailed instructions, and then edit the output until it sounds like you, not like a press release. The goal is a bio that feels human.
Customize for every context. A bio that works on LinkedIn might not work in a conference program. Each time you adapt it, ask yourself: what's this bio trying to do? Get someone to hire me? Follow me? Read my work? Adjust the length, tone, person (first vs. third), and details accordingly. Tweaking an existing bio is always faster than starting from scratch.
Here's the bigger picture: struggling to write your bio isn't a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's a sign that you're taking it seriously. People with nonlinear careers, career changers, freelancers, and anyone re-entering the workforce will find this harder — and that's exactly why the effort is worth it. Wrestling with how to tell your professional story on paper helps you understand it yourself.
Your bio isn't set in stone. Update it as you grow. But having a version you're proud of before someone asks for it? That's a genuinely good thing to have in your back pocket.