Using Your Profile: Everything on Writing a Maritime CV Bio and More

Have you recently created a Crewlinker account? A very welcome to the worldwide seamans jobsite! We are happy to have you on board. The adventure to find you a suitable offshore job has started from now on. Signing up is step one. What’s next is completing your profile. In this article, you learn how to write a bio, use tags, get a 100% completion score and how to share your maritime cv.

Your free Crewlinker profile is the starting point. Make sure to complete the resume format for seaman, so you'll be found easily by employers. On the right top of your empty profile, you find a sad smiley with a zero score out of a hundred (0/100).

The smiley needs to look happier and happier. When clicking on the information button next to the smiley, you find a checklist to follow. After finishing the tasks, the smiley turns into clapping hands, meaning your profile is complete!

Completing your profile is important. While many of the tasks will be self-explanatory, there are some elements that you might run into. Writing a biography, using additional project tags, and sharing your profile requires some more explanation.

How to write a bio for your maritime cv?

Before you can start filling in your sea services from your sea career, we need to have some personal details. A personal description is required, as no shipping manager or maritime recruitment agency will approach you as long as you haven’t a personal profile. Who's the person behind all the experience? What distinguishes you? Next to giving your name, age, and nationality, we ask you to write a biography.

While a bio is optional in your maritime cv on Crewlinker, we highly recommend you to write one. Your personality can set you apart from other seafarers with the same profile. In addition, maritime employers want to know what they are up against, concerning your character and collegiality. Before going into details of writing one, what is a biography?

A biography means a description of your life. Of course, you don’t have to reveal your private life. Consider your bio as a brief introduction about yourself. And notice, it needs to be short - we give you a maximum of 400 characters. People tend to write an essay about themselves, including their whole maritime cv. Showing your sea career is what the rest of your profile is for. You need to be selective. We explain how.

So, what do you tell? Important here is that you make it more personal than the other parts of your Crewlinker profile, but not too personal. Don’t write about your pets or where you like to go on vacation. Instead, let your characteristics come to the fore, those features that will come in handy during your work on a ship. Moreover, tell us where your strengths lie - what are your skills? Find below an example of a short but powerful bio.

How to use additional project tags?

Alright, the basis of your profile has been laid. Have you seen the expression of your smile changing? The small face is not happy yet :(. Let’s start filling in your sea services. Quite fast you will notice that additional project tags are asked. These are one or two words - it can be an abbreviation or one-word composition - that serve as a way to describe the sea project and your position during the specific job at sea.

Offshore companies don’t read large texts. That’s the reason why we made relevant tags to show in a glance your offshore work experience. In this way, you stand out and you will be found more easily, as marine employers will be able to search for you on Crewlinker via these tags. If you are a driller offshore, you can for example fill in ‘drilling’.

We already made a list of optional tags you can attach, but also add some yourself. Again, don’t write sentences, but keep it general with one or two terms. Besides being more easily found, short general tags are useful for your colleagues, as seafarers with the same sea work experience as yours will be able to use the labels you’ve created. And vice versa. Read more about the additional project tags in our blog post on why less is more.

How to share your profile?

When you've crossed off all tasks from your to-do list, your profile is complete! It's ready to be noticed by marine employers, to find you a suitable sea job. It's the reason you’ve made a Crewlinker profile! We’re busy with giving offshore companies the possibility to create a Crewlinker account to directly search for and get in contact with you via our platform. We’re not there yet, but…

Before that time, you are still better off with a Crewlinker profile than with your traditional CV and loose added documents. There are two ways to share your profile. One of them is necessary to undertake: download your marine skilled resume and send your cv for shipping company pdf to employers you want to get/with whom you are already in touch. Click on ‘Share Profile’ at the top next to your name and click on ‘Download CV’.

Next to sharing a pdf, share the link of your profile by clicking on ‘Share Profile’ and then selecting ‘Create link’. You send the link together with your pdf to maritime recruitment agencies and shipping managers. They will register on Crewlinker to check your profile and post offshore vacancies. Don’t hesitate to share your profile link with friends and on social media, to introduce yourself and Crewlinker to peers from the industry.

If you still have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact us via: hello@crewlinker.com. Our team is there to make Crewlinker more user-friendly and valuable for you. Your feedback is important to achieve that.