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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.”