What to include in a profile
Everything worth recording, and nothing padded out to fill a gap.
Most advice on this is written from imagination. The counts below come from the nineteen profiles published on this site.
What nineteen profiles contain
Every one of the nineteen has an opening account and a work history. Eighteen list education. Fifteen link out to somewhere else they can be found. Credentials, board roles and listed sources appear on a handful rather than most.
The spread of work history is wider than the advice usually suggests. One profile covers a single role. Another runs to twelve. The middle of the set sits at four. There is no correct length, which is why a page that renders only the sections you have material for beats a template with gaps in it.
Sections that earn their place
In rough order of how often they are worth having.
An opening account
Who you are and what you are responsible for, in a few paragraphs. This is the part most readers finish before deciding whether to carry on.
Work history with scale
Titles and dates are the easy part. What makes it readable is the size of what you ran: territories, headcount, budget, volume.
Education and credentials
Degrees, certifications, licences. Worth stating plainly with the awarding body, because these are the lines people check.
Writing, talks and appointments
The things that fall off a CV because it is organised around jobs. A page has somewhere to put them.
What to leave off
Skills lists, rated out of five or arranged as bars, tell a reader nothing they can verify. Objectives and statements about being passionate belong to applications, and this is not one. Anything you would be uncomfortable seeing quoted back to you should not be published at all.
The harder discipline is leaving out a section you have no material for. An empty heading draws more attention than its absence ever would.
Questions
How far back should the work history go?
As far as it stays relevant. Early roles can be compressed to a line each once they stop adding anything, rather than dropped entirely, because gaps invite questions.
Should I explain a career break?
A short, factual line is better than a silent gap. Readers notice gaps and tend to assume something worse than the truth.
Do I need a photograph?
It helps a reader confirm they have the right person, particularly if you share a name with somebody. It is not compulsory and some published profiles manage without one.
What about sources?
Anything a reader might reasonably want to check is stronger with a source beside it. Two of the nineteen published profiles carry a source list, usually where there are figures or appointments involved.
Can I add to it later?
Yes, and most people do. A new role, an article, a talk: send it over and the page, the PDF and the contact card are updated together.
Start with what you have
A resume or CV, a network export, a few links, or a conversation. Gaps are fine.