An “online professional summary” communicates a vital message about you, your tax expertise and motivates people to take action. This is the first glimpse of your technical tax skills, your career accomplishments and goals. The primary goal of an online professional summary is to present your tax expertise in a way that motivates readers to take an interest in you and/or take action.

The start of successful companies starts with an elevator pitch that draws attention to the persons business. As a business professional, it is important to promote your tax expertise with a short written elevator pitch we call an online professional summary.

My counsel to tax professionals “If you do not promote your tax expertise, who is out there promoting you?” The best way to get ahead is through promotion of your tax skills and expertise to as many people that you can. Otherwise, you remain invisible to the world which ensures you have obstacles to your success. The reason the many tax professionals I personally counsel are more successful than on their own is because of my expertise packaging tax professionals in ways they get noticed.

An elevator pitch is an impactful presentation about who you are and what tax expertise and soft skills you offer. An online professional summary is vitally important to your success throughout your tax career. It is the “first impression”  others have of you online. The goal is to write a tightly focused professional summary that motivates others to want to know and contact you.

How do you write an online professional summary?

Your pitch should center around these four questions:

1. What problem(s) do you solve?
2. What is it that you actually do?
3. What kind of success have you demonstrated?
4. What is your goal?

The message must be strong and unique enough to get people to pay attention to you. What tax problems do you address? What are your top three accomplishments in your career? Give examples of  problems you have solved for companies. You gain a significant professional advantage when you build an online professional summary that motivates people to take an interest in you because of what you have accomplished for others. Here is a sample template to help you build your own.

Example Template – Build A Compelling Professional Summary

My name is (Your Name) and I am a (Tax Title) with more than (years of experience) in (three areas of tax expertise).

Successfully represented company on major tax audit that saved a Fortune 500 multinational more than 1B over ten years on a transfer pricing matter. This is an area of particular interest since I have never lost a transfer pricing audit during my tax career. Recently,my company was acquired which frees me to consider a new lead tax executive opportunity in a corporation. The ideal opportunity would enable me to work remotely for a company weekly via online video conferences and visit periodically in person.

You will learn I have the technical and business skills to save  a corporation valuable time and money. If you would like a more extensive list of my career accomplishments, please send a message and I will respond to your request for additional information.   You can also access my online Tax Library on my TaxConnections Tax Professional Profile Page for examples of my writing and publications.

Your inquiries are respected and encouraged.

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Everyone has an online professional summary that should be periodically updated and improved. This template is ideal to serve  as a guideline to improve and update your online professional summary. It is the best tool to gain an advantage in presenting yourself online.

Want someone to write your online professional sumary? Each month we select tax  TaxConnections Members and rewrite their online professional summary for them with annual membership.