A profile on the Hence Roster isn’t static like a résumé. And it’s decidedly not a cumbersome and dated personal website. A Roster profile is an easily updated representation of you, not ten months or two years ago, but in the moment.
And that brings advantages. When I built my profile in November, I was pursuing an envisioning project that would see me helping a client with their positioning, planning, voice, and later their content strategy. Now, three months later, I’m pitching a few potential clients on native storytelling packages that will include superteams of creatives recruited from the Hence Roster.
There’s no guarantee that I’ll secure that work, but to better my chances, I spent a few hours customizing my Roster profile for those specific prospects. That meant swapping out images, updating my biography, and tweaking stats and language to better play up my background as an editor-in-chief—which is a project lead, content strategist, photo editor, and writer all rolled into one.
I didn’t overthink the updates because in the Roster we aren’t working in marble. To save effort in the future, I copied my original Roster bio into a doc so the next time I’m going after an envisioning project I can quickly revert. By the end of the year, I’m sure I’ll have three or four bios, stat collections, and other assets at the ready as new opportunities arise. Visual creatives could easily do something similar with galleries.
#
A Roster profile doesn’t just sit there like your website. And it’s also more readily shared. At least that’s how I see it. When a creative places a link to a personal website in their email signature, I think time suck, and skip it. But add a link to an easily browsable Roster profile and it serves as your digital business card. That’s another way Hence helps you break through the noise. —Marc Peruzzi
