A resume is a story about you. You are showing the reader a curated window into your life and your experience, in order to convince them to hire you for a specific type of job.
A summary introduces a reader to your resume. After your name and contact information, it is the first thing the reader sees. It tells them what you do, what you want out of a job, what you’re good at. It’s a preview of what’s to come.
A summary shows what kind of resume it is, to convince people to read it.
A recruiter or hiring manager is trying to fill a specific job. When you apply, your resume shows up in their inbox, along with 10, 50, 100, maybe 500 other resumes. It can be a lot of work to filter through, read, and understand everyone’s work history. They might skim it quickly. They might miss something important. They might make assumptions about you that are not accurate.
An effective summary can help the reader form an opinion, maybe even make a decision about you, before they’ve even read about your skills, experience, or education.
What does the reader need to know?
Imagine a manager found only the summary of your resume, ripped off and sitting on the ground. What information would they need, in order to say, “I should call them!”?
What You Do
It is absolutely critical for them to know what you do. Are you a software engineer? Bartender? Writer? Welder? Greengrocer? Babysitter? Bramble-picker? Did you even apply for the right job?
What You Want
It will usually also help if you tell them what you want. Are you looking for a similar role or something completely different? Are you interested in a broad range of roles or something specific?
Your Unique Angle
It can only help you to also include one or two things that are unique about you. What are you good at? What do you like? Of the 500 resumes on a manager’s desk, what can they remember about you specifically?
What You Do
In a sentence or less, tell the reader what you do, very clearly and directly.
Include:
- Your primary role/skillset
- Any specializations
- Seniority / Experience Level
Role
What role/skillset do you want to show the reader you have experience in?
- Software Engineer
- Software Engineer and Systems Administrator
- Technical Communication and Support Professional
- A software engineer trying to be a software engineer is a Software Engineer
- A software engineer trying to be a hotel manager may be a Technically-Minded Professional
Specialization
What is your niche? Be as specific as your reader will understand.
- Full Stack Software Engineer
- Software Engineer with Full Stack and Mobile Experience
- Technical Professional with Development and Support Experience
- A software engineer wanting to be a software engineer would mention their tech stacks, mobile, database, etc.
- A software engineer wanting to be a business analyst would mention the general categories of job function they’ve had.
Experience Level
How long have you been doing this type of role? What is your skill level?
- University Graduate Full-Stack Software Developer
- Senior Full-Stack Developer
- Software Architect with Full-Stack Experience, Specializing in Back End
- Experienced Network Engineer
- Network Engineer with 10 Years of Experience in Large Data Centers
What You Want
Why are you looking for a job? What is it you want that is different from your current situation? Consider one or more of the sections below.
Something Specific
Is there something in particular you’re aiming to do?
- Eager to work on Emerging Technologies
- Looking for an exciting new project in healthcare or fashion
- Looking for a people-facing role
- Looking to develop my back-end skills
- Looking to establish myself in Portland with a technical role
- Seeking a fast-paced role in a startup or innovation-minded company
- Seeking to pivot from startups to a more stable situation
Change
If you’re looking to change to a new kind of role.
- Pivoting to a support-focused career
- Looking to establish a new career
- Looking to move into a more technical role
- Recently relocated to Memphis
Progress
If you want to stay on a logical career path from your most recent role.
- Looking to establish my career in software engineering.
- Seeking to further my career with an exciting new role
- Seeking a leadership role
- Looking for a new project
- Looking to develop my skills
- Seeking to prove myself in a role with more responsibility
- Seeking to build on my solid track record
Your Unique Angle
Give the reader something interesting and relevant to remember. Ideally this will be something that also shows up in the Experience section of your resume.
Something You’re Known to Do
This might be your approach to problem solving or a job function you often take on.
- Pushing projects to completion by proactively supporting team leadership.
- Spearheading creative initiatives to clear organizational blockage.
- Proactively curating accurate, accessible information to streamline process and mitigate risk.
- Experienced in taking multiple products through the complete software development life cycle.
- Building lasting relationships and establishing stable processes.
Something You’d Like to Do More
You might mention special interests, or things that you’d prefer to do but aren’t deal breakers.
- Currently specializing in finance, also interested in branching out into robotics and home automation.
- Capable of working on all mobile platforms; particular interest in the Apple ecosystem, especially apps written in Swift.
A Particularly Impressive, Relevant Achievement
Are you an established person of interest in your field?
- Owner of several patents in network infrastructure and topology.
- Contributor to RFC-1138 industry standard on droid repair.
Putting it Together
The options above should provide you a solid foundation to assemble a convincing resume summary. These aren’t all the options, and you may not need to use all of the categories above. Below are a few examples.
Example: Steady Career, Specific Goals
- Product Support Specialist with significant experience in Finance, looking for Support roles, ideally in a fast-paced environment. Prefer to act quickly to solve problems, providing exemplary service to high-touch, high-profile clients.
Example: Shifting Roles
- People-focused Support and Technical Communications professional. Proactively curating accurate, accessible information to provide clarity, streamline process, improve product, and mitigate risk.
Example: Fresh Graduate
- Computer Science graduate looking to start my career on a solid footing, ideally in web or mobile development. Special interest in augmented reality and machine learning.
Example: Restarting Career
- Creative Professional with 15 years solid work experience beginning a new career in Front-End web development after taking time to raise a family. Eager to bring my extensive creative skills to an exciting new project.
Example: No Experience
- Highly-motivated individual looking for a position in sales or retail. Approaching each day with a positive attitude, personable demeanor, and excellent reliability.
Best Practice
A summary is a summary.
Treat your summary as just that, a summary. It’s not a sales pitch or a demonstration of your motivation. It’s an at-a-glance view of your resume.
Keep it short.
To avoid giving the reader an essay to read (which increases the chance they’ll skim it and miss something important), include only the one or two most impressive things about you, that are backed up in the rest of your resume.
Tell the parts that are most impressive, that you want to draw attention to.
Keep it real.
Avoid vague feel-good terms you can’t back up, such as “Highly-Motivated” or “Team Player.” If it’s something anyone in the world could claim, it’s not helping to tell your story.
- Exception: If you have limited experience, and you are leaning heavily on your motivation and positive energy to get you the job.
- Exception: If your work history can back it up. For example, if your Experience section shows examples of you pulling more than your weight in a team environment, “Team Player” would be appropriate. Or if you have initiated projects that helped your employer, you might rightly call yourself a “Self-Starter.”
