Content in University staff profiles plays a dual role in highlighting the achievements and important work of University employees and showcasing the institution as a centre of excellence. A profiles project sought to learn what staff needed from their online profiles. This post collates insights into profile content requirements, based on what staff shared in interviews.

As part of the Role of Profiles project, a survey was circulated to staff between August 2024 and January 2025. It captured comments relating to the content in staff profiles which fell into several themes:

• Display and presentation of profile content
• Balancing needs for customisability versus consistency of profile content
• Streamlining, reusing and integrating profile content from multiple online locations

Read more about the project and the findings from the survey in the related blog posts:

The Role of Profiles: our new project researching needs and potential for online profiles

Staff perspectives on online profiles: findings from our University-wide survey

Interviewing 40 staff throughout March 2025 provided the opportunity to learn more about these themes and other considerations relating to the content within profiles. Staff interviewed included those owning profiles (profile owners), those managing profile content for their designated School or business unit, (profile coordinators) and those accessing and utilising content within profiles (profile consumers). They spoke about various aspects of profiles including overall design, variability of profile content, styles of written content (in relation to audiences), use of profile sections, and images.

Read more about each of these profile stakeholders in the related blog post:

Profile owners, coordinators and consumers: Making sense of multiple perspectives on staff profiles

Overall design of profiles

Staff raised several points on the look and feel of profiles based on their experiences of using profiles in EdWeb, and their other online profiles. Several staff felt that the current design of profiles with the red accordions (sometimes called concertinas) was outdated, and others said they would have preferred to see content displayed more openly, without the need to expand individual accordion sections.

I find the University level one is …very dry isn’t it? Very basic and not at all visual – academic staff member, CAHSS

I feel like the bio [biography section] shouldn’t be in a concertina. That should always be visible, because that’s like a first useful point, and concertina[s] can get a bit frustrating – professional services staff member, CSE

You’ve got all these plus buttons [accordions] … How much attention span [does] somebody have? …Wouldn’t biography just be better open. Rather than having to click on it? – academic staff member, CMVM

Text content within profiles

Those interviewed spoke about content within their own profiles as well as content in other peoples’ profiles, and shared different examples of profiles they had prepared and also used. Overall, there was very little consistency or uniformity to the content within profiles – with a person’s name and job title being the only factors common to all profiles mentioned in the interviews.

For some professional services staff, including name, job title and contact details was enough

Reflecting on their own profiles compared to those of academic colleagues, several of the professional services staff interviewed said they didn’t feel the need to include anything more than basic details in their profiles, considering how this content was used.

We’re [referring to professional services colleagues in their team] boring people. We don’t write lots of stuff about what we do – professional services staff member, ISG

I don’t really encourage anybody to do anything more than just telephone, email, location and then office hours because we don’t really need people to know as much about us, whereas obviously for academic staff it’s a lot more – professional services staff member, CAHSS

This is not something that people [professional services staff] are going to want to spend a whole lot of time on because selling themselves as individuals is not something that most professional services staff are going to need to do – professional services staff member, CSE

There was a need to add explanatory detail for some roles and job titles

Having viewed other peoples’ profiles for the purposes of finding out more about their roles and areas of responsibility, several staff members felt it would be beneficial if profiles contained descriptive detail about their roles and responsibilities, which wasn’t clear from their job title alone. Furthermore, some academic staff felt their job titles were not descriptive or reflective of their work and wanted to include details of their academic titles as well.

I need to change this job title – it’s horrific. Most professors have Professor but I have Personal Chair in blah blah blah. Externals don’t know what Chairs are unless they are seasoned academics…In titles, we should use the titles that people are familiar with – academic staff member, CAHSS

Feedback from our external consultants was that it would be useful to have more information on what a role does and also that we could use them better to show things like the working environment and I guess progression – professional services staff member, CSE

Depending on the intended audiences, there was a need to customise content or direct elsewhere

Reflecting on how they had updated their profiles over the course of their careers, several staff noted the need to write content in a particular style depending on the audiences they were trying to reach. For example, to attract applications from PhD students required writing in a certain way, as did building communities, preparing for funding bids, announcing research projects and sharing publications. In some cases, staff had found it more appropriate to update other sources (such as PURE and other research repositories, or personal websites or recruitment sites like Find A PhD) and use their profile to direct audiences there, either through integrations or direct links.

Preparing profile content for prospective PhD students required a specific approach

Several academic staff spoke of the ways they adapted their profile content to reach prospective PhD students.

For the academics and PhDs that want to study with me, then I want them to see that I’m competent, But mainly I want them to see that I’m nice” – academic staff member, CAHSS

If you look at my website, there is a sentence, it’s like if you want to do a PhD with me …click that link, so that points you to another page that has detailed instructions to apply for a PhD  – academic staff member, CSE

One professional services staff member spoke of the need to provide specific instructions for prospective PhD students.

From a recruitment perspective, what you want is a little bit more guidance along the lines of what do I do next. Can I contact this eminent person or do I need to fill out a form? Do I send my research proposal that’s 20 pages long or do you just want a CV? Or is it something in between that? – professional services staff member, USG

Appealing to specific audiences required nuanced content

Academic staff described varied techniques they wanted to take to reach particular audience groups.

People want to put in stuff they’re working on [in their profile] that’s pre-prints or things on arxiv [research sharing platform]. ..a lot of my colleagues, especially the ones who are very research active, they now publish stuff on open repositories while it’s under submission … they want the world to see that they are working on X Y Z  – academic staff member, CSE

This is not simply a standard academic profile, …I’d like them [audiences] to grasp that there is a range of different possibilities for collaborations that we’re interested in working with non academics. It’s more knowledge-exchange impacting and public-facing. I’d like them to pick up a sense of those overall aims rather than the more limited and technical focus of my academic work – academic staff member, CAHSS

Profile sections in EdWeb didn’t align with what some staff wanted to achieve with their profiles

Analysis of the content in EdWeb profiles from 2024 had shown that for the 7425 profiles published at the time, Biography was the most commonly-used section, but even that section was only included in 54% of profiles. In the interviews, academic staff described using the research, publications, projects and PhD supervision sections. Some explained that aspects of their work did not always fit the pre-defined categories and they would have welcomed some more flexibility about the arrangement and labelling of these sections to better accommodate the information they wanted to share.

Academic staff wanted to be able to adapt sections to better describe their work

Staff gave examples of how they used the existing sections in EdWeb and how they wanted to be able to tailor them to describe aspects of their work and their careers. In some cases staff wanted to use the pre-defined sections but felt that their content didn’t quite fit, in others, they wanted to add a different set of sections or to structure the content completely differently.

Arguably you’ve got ‘projects’ and ‘publications’ [separate sections] and also ‘research’ ..for me … these all sit within the same theme – academic staff member, CAHSS

I have a transdisciplinary background ..[that] is atypical and a bit eclectic so it [my profile] is slightly vague but that ..is an accurate representation of what I do at the minute  – academic staff member, CMVM

A lot of our community focuses their research outputs on kind of sharing best practice at conferences rather than publications, although they are important – for me, I thought it was important to have that as its own heading [section] – academic staff member, CSE

Professional services staff felt the sections were tailored for academics

When asked about their use of the existing EdWeb staff profile sections, many professional staff said they didn’t use them at all or made minimal use of them as they felt they didn’t fit how they wanted to describe their work and achievements.

There could be a biography type thing [for professional services staff] but I probably wouldn’t call it biography. Maybe something like career history… so people can see what areas I’ve worked in and what my job titles were – professional services staff member, CSE

I think it’s better not to have the red drop-down things [accordion sections] in my profile if there’s nothing to actually populate in them. I felt these were often more applicable for academic staff rather than professional services – professional services staff member, CSE

I presented at a conference back in …December and noone could tell me where I could put up the slides. They’re actually on my LinkedIn profile at the moment but maybe I should put them on my staff profile as well?” – professional services staff member, USG

I think I would like my profile to be more substantial. It’s just that slight cringe factor of what I’d put, and also a feeling that I don’t really think that a lot of the categories … are necessarily applicable. People contacting me about an … administration issue don’t really need to know where I got my degrees from” – professional services staff member, CSE

Multimedia content within profiles

Linked to comments about profile design, the capacity to display images within profiles as a visual element, and the overall importance of images were topics mentioned by several interviewees.

Individual staff chose their own profile images unless there was guidance to follow

Not all staff interviewed displayed an image on their online profile, and for those that did the styles of image depended on conventions in the School or business unit and individual choice. Some Schools and business units had adopted a consistent style with the images on profiles of staff members, and had communicated the required styles to staff members through guidance or instructions. Others had more flexibility and left it to the individual to choose their profile images. Some staff wanted to change their profile pictures but were uncertain of the type of photo to include, and several wanted to include images not of themselves, but representative of their work.

At [my last] School, we got staff photos done” – professional services staff member, CSE

I’ve got [a photo] that’s like your normal science photo …of me in a lab coat, or at the microscope or something. So one of those would be fine [on my profile] – academic staff member, CMVM

I have been tempted to change it [profile image] for a picture with me and my dogs – academic staff member, CAHSS

[I would like to] put a picture up. We have beautiful research data images [to include on profiles]… that can be quite striking – academic staff member, CMVM

Profile images were useful for students and colleagues to identify staff members

Sharing their perspectives of viewing profile content, several interviewees said they appreciated seeing pictures of staff faces to help them recognise colleagues, and in a similar use case, some staff spoke of the value of profiles having images to allow students to identify and get to know staff members.

It’s quite nice as a new student going in like starting your studies or …moving year where you’ve got new staff to get to know, that you can look at a staff profile and see just what they look like – professional staff member, CSE

When they’re [students] looking at choosing our courses, they can see who we are and it actually looks a bit more professional – academic staff member, CMVM

Yeah I found it really helpful when people have a photo that is actually of them – professional services staff member, ISG

I don’t like faceless institutions and I think the more we can do to show the people that make up the University to each other and to the people we serve the better – professional services member, CSE

Some staff wanted videos to be accessed through their profiles

A few staff expressed a preference to be able to display video content on their profile (either included within the profile or held in a separate source).

I know [videos] are really important to academic colleagues in their work. Every time they give a presentation, there’s really cool demo videos. And that really brings it to life – academic staff member, CSE

I’d like to be able to have videos on it, especially for my colleagues who are deaf, who are sign language users – academic staff member, CAHSS.

Structured content within profiles

Some Schools and business units had made use of structured data and associated mechanisms within their staff profiles. This approach enabled creation of dynamic lists, pulling together individual profiles, and it also facilitated filtering collections of staff profiles by categories like department, research theme and subject discipline. To achieve this sort of functionality, individual profiles needed to follow a strictly defined structure which restricted flexibility in favour of consistency and uniformity. Several staff commented on the value of this sort of structured approach, noting the infrastructure and processes required to implement it successfully.

Staff have not got a free-for-all on what they can do. …we sometimes have staff coming to us and saying ‘my job title’s being updated’ and it’s like ..for a consistency point of view, we rigidly follow what HR put on that – professional services staff member, CAHSS

A lot of Schools have done a lot of work to make their websites navigable… I think it falls down when our structures aren’t obvious. When somebody has interdisciplinary interests and [audiences] need to look in three parts of the University. Some topics are notoriously hard to pin down, like psychology exists in about five parts of the University” – professional services staff member, USG

In conclusion: Open, flexible profiles accommodated individual staff representing themselves

Overall, staff expressed a need for flexibility when it came to publishing profile content.

At one end of the spectrum, staff said a basic profile with minimal information suited their needs, at the other, staff needed the option to add descriptions, tailor content for audiences, direct to other sources (such as external repositories or other online profiles), and adapt the sections within profiles according to the work they wanted to promote.

Staff felt the existing set of sections in EdWeb profiles had been limiting, with both academic staff and professional services staff wanting the option to adapt them to suit the changing narratives of their career paths over time.

Taking a wider view beyond the individual level, some staff recognised the benefits of having staff profiles with defined structures as part of a taxonomy which could allow dynamic aggregation and searching of staff profiles by category, which some Schools had implemented as part of internal processes to managing web content.

Read more about management of profile content in the separate blog post:

Keeping profiles up-to-date: Practices and processes for managing the end-to-end lifecycle of staff profiles