How to Write a Business Bio

  Business biography is the precise description of your professional history, which informs others about your expertise, unique features of working with you and benefits of employing you. It's the intelligent response to some of the most frequently asked questions, "What do you do?" or "Tell me something about yourself". A business biography makes people interested in your professional skills thereby eventually generating business. Making an effective business biography needs concentration and an objective assessment of your capabilities. You should describe the field of your expertise and how you started in it. Follow it up with relevant skills and the unique features of your services that make you stand apart from competitors. Mention any awards or special recognition you might have received from clients or appropriate professional organizations. Make note of the most difficult situations you encountered professionally and the way you resolved it. Try to include information that will generate interest in readers, every one of whom is a potential client. As a business owner, it will be extremely important for you to be able to confidently tell others about your life or the history of your company. Take some time to review, or draft, your personal/professional biography or a biography for your company. Your biography has one goal: to get more clients or customers. Marketing your skills and qualifications with effective wording will make your skills and accomplishments leap off the page and into the minds of your readers. Unlike a résumé, which lists isolated facts, a business bio tells a story. A bio takes the form of a paragraph, or two or three, that portrays who you are and what you've done. It tosses completeness and chronology to the wind and includes only what is relevant to your story. Think of a business bio as the sort of blurb about you that might appear on the back inside flap of a book jacket, if you were an author. A bio should begin with an overview statement, which provides a big-picture summary of your unique combination of skills and experience. Then you furnish the most pertinent facts that round out the picture. The two abbreviated examples below should give you a clearer idea. Notice how they offer just enough detail to make claims believable and concrete. · MaryAnn Gerhardt's twenty-two years of design experience encompass media ranging from print to outdoor signage to television. As the owner of Gerhardt Design, she works with clients to create, extend and change corporate identities. Trained in illustration at the New York Museum School, she has received no less than seventeen awards for client work, three gallery exhibitions and scores of mentions in national publications. Gerhardt lives and works in a Victorian mansion that she redesigned and that also serves as a showcase for her work. · Harold Wen has been called "a lifesaver," "a miracle worker" and "a revival artist" for his ability to revive companies near death. His 37 years in finance, marketing and operations give him an unusually broad base of experience with which to diagnose and remedy a company's problems. Clients run the gamut from food processing firms and family farms to Fortune 100 conglomerates.   Exercises I. Translate the text. Match the words and word groups from the first column with their translation from the second column:

precise description benefit professional skills objective assessment capabilities competitors encounter(v) potential client goal accomplishments relevant blurb overview pertinent facts encompass revive   run the gamut

цель уместные, подходящие, относящиеся к делу факты точное описание способности, возможности относящийся (к делу) профессиональные навыки потенциальный клиент охватывать диапазон объективная оценка конкуренты заключать (в себе) достижения, совершенства выгода возрождать беглый обзор (неожиданно) встретиться, столкнуться издательское рекламное объявление, реклама (обычно на обложке или суперобложке книги)

II. Read the text again and answer the questions:

What is the major difference between a resume and a business bio?

What grammar tenses are used by the authors of the sample bios to show their accomplishments?

What grammar tense would you use if you wanted to tell about your school years or the place where you were born?

III. Think about the most important things that you would like to say about yourself so that it would enlarge your range of opportunities for doing business successfully. Make up no more than 4 – 5 sentences.

IV. Choose the best tense in each case (Past Continuous, Past Simple or Past Perfect):

A large corporation had just hired a new CEO. As the old CEO was leaving, he discreetly presented his successor with three envelopes numbered one, two and three.

`If you have a problem you can`t solve, open the first of these,` he …….(tell) the new CEO.

Well, at first things went smoothly, but after six moths sales …(fall) by 10% and the shareholders were getting very impatient. The CEO …(begin) to despair, when he remembered the envelopes the old CEO …(give) him.

He went to his office, closed the door and opened the first envelope. The message read, `Try blaming your predecessor`. The new CEO … (call) a press conference and tactfully blamed the previous CEO for the company`s problems. The shareholders and the press were satisfied with explanations, and e few weeks later the CEO was relieved to see that the sale …(improve) by 12%.

About a year later, the company was having serious production problems. The CEO …(learn) from his previous experience: as soon as he …(close) his office door, he opened the second envelope. The message read, `You ought to reorganize.` he immediately reorganized production, and the company quickly recovered.

A year or two after that, costs … (rise) day by day and the company was in trouble again. The CEO went to his office, … (close) the door and opened the third envelope. The message read, `You might want to prepare three envelopes`.

V. Read the following business anecdote and determine the tense of the predicate in each sentence.

Peter Principle

In 1969, after being rejected by no fewer than twenty publishers, Professor Laurence Peter finally saw his first book roll off the presses and into the book stores. Within a year, the hard-bound version was being printed for the fifteenth time and the first pocketbook edition was on the way.

Ironically, the publishers who had rejected the book might have done well to study its contents. The book was an examination of the so-called Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”.

VI. Ask questions to the underlined words or word groups (the number of questions is in the brackets) paying attention at the Active or Passive Voice used in the sentence.

Using the Internet helped him to reduce company costs. (1)

Mr. Brown was involved in industrial relations. (1)

Last year the situation in the food industry stabilized. (2)

A trainee sales representative was sent to Italy. (1)

In 1985 Simon Bell began his computer business at the University of Southhampton.(2)

John met the president yesterday. (1)

Twenty components to the new machinery were produced at our factory. (2)

Neil Armstrong landed on the surface of the Moon in 1969. (3)

The first fax machines had been installed in 1988, which was before her daughter was born(1)

They sent out invoices regularly. (1)

Prices had been raised by 1999. (1)

Yesterday a thief broke into our head office. (1)

Radium was discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1902. (1)

Last month our company made enormous profits.(2)

The Annual Report was being discussed when we came. (2)

Text B

Sample Professionals` Bios

Read and translate the following professionals` bios and relevant information and make up a similar bio for yourself in the third person.

(1)

Michael Alin
Executive Director, American Society of Interior Designers
608 Massachusetts Avenue NE
Washington, D.C. 20002
Ph: 202-546.3480
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

Alin has served as ASID’s executive director since 1998. Before joining ASID, Alin spent more than 20 years in academic and museum continuing education. His previous work includes service as assistant vice president and director of the Center for Professional Development at the University of Maryland, University College; and director of Continuing Education at the Johns Hopkins University; and associate director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Resident Associate Program. He is a graduate of the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and served in the U.S. Navy.

(2)

Ray C. Anderson
Founder and Chairman
Interface, Inc.
100 Chastain Center Blvd., #165
Kennesaw, GA 30144
Ph: 770.420.6649
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

Anderson has embarked on a mission to make Interface a sustainable corporation by leading a world-wide effort to pioneer the processes of sustainable development. Named one of America’s “100 Best Companies to Work For,” in 1997 and 1998 by Fortune magazine, Interface is a global organization with sales in 110 countries and manufacturing facilities on four continents. Anderson’s awards include: the Millennium Award from Global Green (presented by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1996); Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year for the Southeast region. He was named co-chairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in 1997. He was the first corporate CEO to be honored with the George and Cynthia Mitchell International Prize for Sustainable Development. Anderson is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

(3)

Penny S. Bonda
Director, Environmental Communications
EnvironDesign Works
800 25th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Ph: 202.669.8632
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

As a practicing interior designer with 27 years experience, Bonda has headed her own firm and worked for Rita St. Clair Associates, the Hillier Group and Burt Hill Kosar Rittelmann. EnvironDesign Works is producer of Green@Work magazines and is in charge of the annual environmental design conference for the building and business communities. In 1996, she served as national president for ASID. As an interior designer, Bonda worked for an impressive array of clients from a variety of market sectors including government, corporate, health care and hospitality. Many projects have won design awards and have been featured in national design publications. She is a graduate of the American University in Washington, D.C.

(4)

Ben Crawford, AIA
Pickard Chilton
980 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Ph: 203.786.8600
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

Crawford is a designer and architect with a variety of project experience. He began his career with FKP Architects of Houston as a project designer on major healthcare projects including the Ambulatory Care Clinic Building of the Texas Children’s Hospital and the renovation of the 1927 Chemistry building at Rice University, to create modern laboratory and classroom space.

In 2001, Crawford moved to Pickard Chilton, where he leads design teams on corporate office projects including Potomac Yard, a 1.05-million sf development in Arlington, Va.; and the State of Minnesota Departments of Agriculture & Health Office building. He is a 1991 graduate of Rice University.

Unit 3

Text A

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