How to Write a Self-PR: Complete Guide with Templates by Job Type and Experience Level
Published:
Last Updated:
Category: Job Search Preparation & Interview Tips, Job Change
Authors: Shusaku Yosa
Published:
Last Updated:
Category: Job Search Preparation & Interview Tips, Job Change
Authors: Shusaku Yosa
Many people stumble on the “self-PR” section during a job search. “I don’t know what to write,” “I can’t think of a strength,” “I can’t differentiate myself from other candidates”—the worries pile up. Yet self-PR is a key element that appears in résumés, work history sheets, and interviews. Whether you can clear this hurdle can change the entire selection outcome.
This article systematically explains how to write a self-PR for a job change, covering the basic structure, frameworks, and example texts by job type and experience level. You’ll find templates for sales, engineering, marketing, administration, and retail roles, as well as for early-career, mid-career, 30s, 40s, and managerial positions—so you can find a case close to yours and use it as a direct reference.
Start by understanding the definition of self-PR and what recruiters actually look at. Getting this right shapes the direction of everything you write.
A self-PR is “a section that conveys your strengths and how those strengths will be applied at the company you’re applying to.” Its purpose differs from a motivation statement or a self-introduction.
Self-PR is about “what you can do,” while a motivation statement is about “why you want to work here.” The two are distinct, but closing your self-PR with a line like “At your company, I want to contribute as ××” ties it back to motivation and adds emotional weight.
In limited time, recruiters try to read these three things into your self-PR:
In other words, recruiters ask, “Are you translating your past results into this company’s context?” Simply listing strengths isn’t enough—you need to step into what you can deliver at the target organization.
Self-PR follows a template. If you write to the template, you’ll naturally produce logical, persuasive copy. The two key frameworks are “PREP” and “STAR.” Combining them lets you cover your strength, the evidence behind it, and how it will be applied at the target company.
PREP is a four-step framework:
Stating your strength up front means busy recruiters grasp the point instantly. Résumé screening is often decided in tens of seconds per application, so leading with the conclusion is essential.
STAR is a framework for fleshing out the “E (Example)” in PREP.
Writing in STAR order injects concreteness and numbers into otherwise abstract episodes, making it easy to judge reproducibility. Keep the simple structure in mind: “Faced with X, I did Y, and produced Z.”
Aim for roughly 200–300 Japanese characters (about 100–150 English words) for a résumé self-PR field, 300–500 Japanese characters (around 150–250 words) for a work history sheet, and 1 minute (about 300 characters, or 150 words) for an interview. Allocate as follows:
Make the episode the longest part, and close with how you’ll apply your strength at the target company. Include at least one number in the episode and your persuasiveness jumps dramatically.
Here are the four steps for writing a self-PR from scratch. Follow them in order and you’ll naturally land on content that resonates with the company you’re applying to.
Start by listing your past work in chronological order. Project names, your role, outcomes, and difficulties—write them all out as bullet points. At this stage, don’t narrow down to strengths; the trick is to capture as much as possible.
Useful angles for the inventory:
Next, read the job description, careers page, and employee interviews to understand the skills and stance the company welcomes. The keywords in “the person we’re looking for” and “nice to have” sections are exactly the points to emphasize in your self-PR.
A self-PR that simply lists your strengths leaves recruiters wondering, “Okay, but what can you do for us?” Translating into the target company’s context turns it into a self-PR that actually resonates.
From your inventory, pick the one strength (at most two) that best matches the company’s needs. Listing strengths in parallel blurs the focus and leaves recruiters unsure what you’re actually good at.
The overlap between “the company’s needs” and “your experience” is the most evaluated core of a self-PR.
Once you’ve organized this much, draft your text along the PREP+STAR template. After finishing, ask a recruitment agent, friend, or family member to read it. They’ll spot the awkwardness or unclear passages you can’t see yourself.
Below are self-PR templates organized by job type. Each runs about 300–400 Japanese characters in the source, sized to slot directly into a work history sheet.
Sales is the role where numerical results are most heavily valued. Pack in specific figures like revenue attainment rate, new account count, and retention.
My strength is problem-solving sales that starts with the customer’s challenges. At my previous company I handled SaaS sales to mid-market clients in a crowded market where differentiation was difficult. Before every meeting I made it a rule to review the customer’s industry reports and earnings trends, and I shifted to building proposal decks that addressed their management challenges directly. As a result, the close rate on my proposals improved from 18% to 32%, and revenue in my territory grew to 142% of the prior year. At your company, I would like to contribute to both new business development and growing existing accounts by anchoring my work in a customer-first proposal style.
For engineering roles, presenting your technology stack together with the challenges you used those technologies to solve makes it easier for reviewers to evaluate you.
My strength is improving system performance issues through measurement-driven engineering. At my previous company I worked as a backend engineer on an in-house e-commerce service, and rapid growth created API response latency. I introduced an APM tool to identify the bottlenecks, then optimized SQL queries and added a cache layer. As a result, average response time dropped from 850 ms to 220 ms, and peak-time server costs were reduced by ¥200,000 per month. I have hands-on experience with Go, TypeScript, and AWS (ECS / RDS / ElastiCache), and I make a point of improving systems incrementally while keeping observability high. At your company, I want to contribute to solving technical challenges through measurement and hypothesis validation.
Marketers should combine the logic of “why this initiative” with metrics such as CPA, CVR, and LTV.
My strength is digital marketing power: designing initiatives starting from data analysis and rapidly iterating PDCA. At my previous company I led B2B SaaS lead generation; monthly lead volume was growing, but the deal-conversion rate was low. I broke down deal conversion by acquisition channel and discovered that inbound traffic from a specific keyword cluster converted to opportunities at three times the rate of others. I optimized our ad budget allocation and landing pages for that theme, growing monthly opportunities from 52 to 118 and reducing CAC by 28%. I have hands-on experience with GA4, SQL, and Looker Studio for analytics, plus operating Google Ads and Meta Ads. At your company, I want to contribute to maximizing marketing ROI by grounding decisions in data.
Back-office roles can feel hard to quantify, but there are many angles for it—process improvements, transaction volumes, error reduction rates, and more.
My strength is improving routine work through better systems. As a sales administration specialist at my previous company, I handled order processing, invoicing, and revenue reporting; more than 40 hours of overtime per month had become standard at month-end. I mapped the workflow stage by stage and cut order-processing effort in half by introducing Excel macros and a unified template. After moving invoicing to an accounting-system integration, month-end overtime dropped to an average of 8 hours, and the 15 monthly rework cases caused by input errors fell to zero. I have experience with Excel functions, macros, and building lightweight apps in kintone. At your company, I want to contribute by staying close to operations and improving processes to reduce the burden on the team.
Retail and service roles read best when you tie “customer interaction” to “store numbers,” making your skill set reproducible.
My strength is balancing customer service that draws out each guest’s needs with the store’s operational numbers. As assistant store manager at an apparel shop, I served customers while also running store operations. With foot traffic dropping below the prior year, I rebuilt our staff’s service notes and standardized the products we recommended to repeat customers by season. I also created a weekly cadence for sharing successful cases among staff. As a result, average transaction value reached 118% of the prior year, repeat-customer rate rose from 23% to 34%, and we became the top-ranked store of ten in our area by revenue. Staff turnover also dropped to one-third of the prior year. At your company, I want to apply on-the-ground service insight to improve sales-floor operations.
For designers, the portfolio carries the work itself—so the self-PR should emphasize how your output contributed to the business.
My strength is product design that works backward from business challenges. As a UI designer on a SaaS product at my previous company, a high churn rate was our biggest business issue. I analyzed cancellation reasons in regular meetings with Customer Support and identified friction in initial onboarding as the main cause. I redesigned the setup flow into three clean screens, built a Figma prototype, and ran user tests. As a result, 30-day retention of new users improved from 42% to 61%, contributing to a 22% reduction in annual churn. I have experience with Figma, Adobe XD, and operating a design system. At your company, I want to contribute through design that aligns business metrics with user experience.
Next, here are self-PR templates by years of experience and position. Pick the one closest to your career stage.
Even with a short track record, early-career candidates can shine by focusing on portable skills and a hunger to grow.
My strength is the attitude of understanding the meaning behind the work I’m given and adding my own touch to produce results. At my first job out of school, I worked as a sales assistant handling meeting notes and proposal decks. I started out simply following instructions, but as I read through meeting histories I noticed, “each senior has a deck structure with a higher close rate.” I categorized that on my own and shared a deck with the team. It was adopted as our proposal template and later used to train new hires. From here, I want to take a more proactive role facing customers and sharpen my proposal skills. At your company, I want to contribute by stacking careful observation with steady improvements.
When targeting a different field, talk about how the portable skills (the cross-functional capabilities) you built in past work will transfer to the new role.
My strength is the analytical ability to capture frontline feedback in numbers and translate it into improvement actions. As a restaurant manager at my previous job, I faced a sales drop and ran a POS-data and customer-segment analysis, identifying the loss of weekday-evening business diners as the cause. I shifted to a layout that encouraged limited-menu use and “second visits” after meetings, and improved weekday revenue to 122% of the prior year. I have no marketing experience, but I believe the perspective of reading customer behavior in numbers and running hypothesis-validation cycles transfers directly. I’m currently self-studying SQL and GA4, and I can handle simple analytical tasks. At your company, I want to combine on-the-ground customer understanding with data analytics and quickly become productive as a marketer.
Candidates in their 30s are judged by specialization and reproducibility, plus experience like coaching juniors or leading projects—the breadth that defines a ready contributor.
My strength is project management: pushing multiple efforts forward in parallel while bringing the team along. As a director at a web production agency, I led teams of three designers and engineers while juggling five to seven projects at a time. With delivery slips becoming the norm, I switched to a weekly cadence for surfacing risks and revisiting priorities, reducing requirements-confirmation delays by 80%. The average gross margin on my projects improved from 18% to 27%. I also coached two junior directors—one of whom has grown to handle projects of the same scale I run. At your company, I want to contribute to both moving multiple projects forward and developing junior talent.
In your 40s, you’re evaluated on business perspective, management ability, and your power to move an organization. Don’t just talk about your individual contributions—describe the results you delivered for the organization.
My strength is connecting business plans with on-the-ground execution to build a structure where the organization can deliver results. As head of sales at my previous company, I was asked to turn around a department that had missed plan three years in a row. I broke down the sales process and identified the low deal-conversion stage as the issue. In partnership with sales operations, I revamped our pipeline-management rules and ran weekly reviews with four managers. As a result, the department grew revenue 1.6x over three years, and operating margin improved from 9% to 17%. Team engagement scores also rose above the company benchmark. At your company, I want to combine business numbers with on-the-ground capability to drive organizational results.
For managerial transitions, the rule is to talk about results as “business numbers × organizational change.”
My strength is business management that drives numerical targets and organizational change on parallel tracks. As head of Customer Success for a SaaS business at my previous company, the biggest issue was a high churn rate. I assembled a cross-team unit spanning Customer Success, Support, and Product, designed a health-score model, redesigned onboarding, and built a system for proactive follow-ups based on usage data. As a result, annual churn dropped from 14% to 6%, and NRR (net revenue retention) improved from 108% to 124%. At the same time, I reset career paths for six frontline leaders and built a system for filling manager-level seats through internal promotions. At your company, I want to contribute to business growth from both the numbers and the organizational angles.
Even a carefully written self-PR can lose points to a few common pitfalls. Watch out for these classics.
Lines like “My strengths are drive, collaboration, and analysis” blur the picture and don’t stick. Picking one strength and digging in with an episode is far more memorable.
“I worked hard on process improvement” or “I was loved by customers” doesn’t land. Use numbers wherever possible: “X% reduction,” “X cases improved,” “NPS up X points in customer surveys.”
Strengths unrelated to the target company’s needs don’t score points. Don’t reuse the same self-PR across every application—the basic rule is to adjust the emphasized points for each company.
Phrases like “Although I am still inexperienced” or “There are many ways I fall short” repeated too often signal anxiety. Speak from the facts, don’t exaggerate, but speak with calm conviction—that’s a grown-up self-PR.
Lines like “the evaluation system at my previous company was unfair” don’t belong in a self-PR. If the same complaint comes up again, reviewers worry you’ll quit quickly. Acknowledge facts as facts, then speak in forward-looking terms.
Self-PR appears in three formats: résumé, work history sheet, and interview. The expected level of detail differs across the three, so plan accordingly.
The self-PR field on a résumé has limited space. Sum up your strength, one representative result, and the application at the target company in 200–300 characters. The work history sheet and interview can fill in the details, so don’t worry about covering everything.
On the work history sheet, expand PREP+STAR carefully and describe the episode in detail. Aim for 300–500 characters that cover strength, situation, action, result, and application at the target company. The templates in this article are sized for this version.
Interviews often open with “Tell me about yourself in a minute.” Convert your text into spoken language and structure it for a 60-second delivery. Reading the written version aloud sounds unnatural, so practice out loud until you can talk at a natural conversational rhythm.
Prepare for follow-up questions by organizing the numbers, proper nouns, and rationale behind decisions that appear in your episode. That way you can answer with confidence.
If you’re struggling to put your strengths into words, here’s a list of strengths that tend to be valued in business contexts. Pick the ones close to your own experience and pair them with concrete episodes.
Keywords alone don’t earn points—always pair them with “the situation where the strength was demonstrated.”
Write down experiences where others praised you, behaviors that don’t feel like work to you, and moments when bosses or peers recognized you. What feels obvious to you often turns out to be a strength to others. Borrowing a third-party view—for example, in a meeting with a recruitment agent—is also effective.
Even without direct revenue figures, you can quantify case counts, headcount handled, duration, or before-and-after improvements. Phrases like “on a team of X,” “managing the account for X years,” or “driving X monthly complaints to zero” add persuasive power even with modest numbers.
Anchoring your self-PR on portable skills (capabilities that transfer across roles) is more than enough. Logical thinking, communication, and problem-solving are valued in every role. Analyze the skills required for the target role and pull experiences from your past that map to them.
Reusing the same content is risky. The core strength can be shared, but choose different episodes, angles, and applications for each company. Even within the same role, the ideal profile varies subtly by employer.
As a rule, narrow your self-PR’s core strength to one. If you absolutely must include two, clearly assign roles—a main strength (primary) and a supporting strength—and dive deep into the primary with an episode while adding the secondary in a single line.
Frame what you did during the gap—studying, earning certifications, raising children, or caring for family—as positive experience. The center of a self-PR is your strength and reproducibility, so don’t use the gap as an excuse. State plainly what you can do now and your eagerness to contribute.
Self-PR isn’t the work of listing your strengths—it’s the work of translating your strengths into the target company’s context. Inventory your experience, identify the overlap with the company’s needs, and write it up logically with PREP+STAR. Follow this flow and anyone can produce a self-PR that meets a solid baseline.
Key takeaways from this article:
Self-PR isn’t a one-and-done deliverable—you keep polishing it for each company. Use the templates here as a base, weave in your own experience, and complete an original self-PR. When your strengths land properly with the target company, both résumé screening and interviews should move forward dramatically.
A complete guide to writing resignation emails for internal and external recipients. Covers timing, subject lines, recip...
A thorough explanation of what "isshinjo no tsugou" (personal reasons) means and how to use it correctly in a letter of ...
A comprehensive guide to using paid leave when resigning in Japan. Covers your legal rights, schedules for 30 or 40 rema...
