The CV personal profile, in four worked examples
Three or four lines at the top of a CV, sometimes called a personal statement, profile or summary. They are the same thing. Its only job is to make a stranger want to read the next section — and most of them are written in a way that makes the reader skip to it instead.
No numbers on this page. Our other CV pages open with a count from live job adverts, because adverts say what skills and experience employers want. No advert tells you whether to put a profile at the top of your CV, so there is nothing to count — and a statistic invented to match the house style would be worse than none. What follows is judgement and examples, labelled as such.
Do you even need one?
It is optional, and a bad one is worse than none. Four lines of adjectives at the top of page one is the worst place on the CV to say nothing, because it is the place a reader decides how carefully to read the rest.
Write one if you have something a reader could not work out from the layout — you are changing direction, your degree does not obviously lead to the job, or your strongest evidence is a project rather than a job and would otherwise sit halfway down page two. Skip it if the answer to "what are you and what do you want" is already obvious from the first two sections.
Four starting points
"Graduate" is not one situation. Each pair below is the same person written twice — first the way nearly everybody writes it, then usefully.
A finalist with a dissertation and a part-time job
A hard-working and motivated final-year student with excellent communication skills, seeking a challenging graduate role where I can utilise my abilities and grow professionally.
Economics finalist at Leeds, writing a dissertation on routing waste in food bank collections — the modelling cut half-empty van runs by two thirds in testing. Two years on a supermarket service desk alongside it. Looking for an operations or analyst scheme where the problems are logistical rather than theoretical.
The first could belong to any of two hundred thousand people. The second names the subject, the thing they did, the result and the kind of role they want, and every clause is checkable.
Someone with no placement and no internship
Recent graduate with a strong academic record and a passion for business, eager to begin a career in a fast-paced environment.
History graduate (2:1, Manchester) who spent three years running the bar rota for a 400-member society and two summers in warehouse logistics. Comfortable with early starts, awkward conversations and spreadsheets that other people have broken. Looking for a graduate scheme in operations or supply chain.
No invented experience, no inflation — it just describes what actually happened with enough specificity to be believed. The third sentence does more than any adjective because it sounds like a person rather than a template.
A technical graduate
Highly motivated Computer Science graduate with experience in several programming languages and a keen interest in software development.
Computer Science graduate (Bristol, 1st). Python and SQL day to day; built the fixture scheduler the university league still runs on, which handles about 300 matches a season. Interested in backend and data-heavy work rather than front end.
“Several programming languages” is unverifiable and everybody writes it. Two named languages plus something running in production that other people depend on is the whole claim, proved, in one line.
Changing direction after the degree
A versatile and adaptable graduate with transferable skills, now seeking to move into a new industry.
Biology graduate moving into data work after the analysis half of my degree turned out to be the half I wanted. Taught myself SQL and pandas for the dissertation, then used them on a volunteering project cleaning six years of attendance records for a youth charity. Looking for a graduate data or analyst role.
A change of direction invites one question — why — and the profile is the right place to answer it in a sentence before the reader starts guessing. “Transferable skills” answers nothing and signals that there is nothing to say.
What the good ones have in common
A noun in the first four words. "Economics finalist at Leeds", "Computer Science graduate". The reader knows what you are before the sentence ends, and every word after that is adding rather than delaying.
One specific thing you did, with enough detail to be asked about. Not a list — one. The CV holds the list.
What you are looking for, named. "An operations or analyst scheme", not "a challenging role". This is also the sentence that stops you sending the same profile to a marketing job and a lab.
Nothing a reader would assume anyway. If deleting the clause loses no information, it was not a clause.
Five lines to delete
“Hard-working, motivated and enthusiastic”
Nobody has ever described themselves as lazy and unmotivated, so the words carry no information. They also use a line you could have spent on something true.
“Excellent communication skills”
Asserting communication skills in a badly written sentence argues against itself. If the profile is clear and specific, you have demonstrated it; if it is not, saying so does not help.
“Seeking a challenging role in a dynamic environment”
It names no role, no sector and no employer, and it appears on so many CVs that a recruiter reads past it without registering it. Say what you actually want — it also filters out the applications you would not have taken.
“A passion for…”
Usually followed by something nobody is passionate about. Passion is shown by what you chose to do without being asked, which belongs in the experience, not in an adjective at the top.
Anything in the third person
“Sarah is a dedicated graduate who…” reads as though somebody else wrote your CV. First person, no pronoun: “Economics finalist at Leeds…”
Rewriting it per advert is the actual work
A profile that names what you want has to change when what you want changes, which means rewriting the top of your CV for every application. Gradovio does that against the specific advert — the same facts, led differently — then drafts the cover letter and fills the form on the employer's site.
Start a free trial — 13,279 live graduate roles to point it at.
With the numbers: which skills graduate adverts ask for, how long a CV should be and what counts when you have no experience.