Are you a career changer? Or are you satisfied with your stable career but interested in updating your resume? Are you a professional who has tried different things but you are still looking for the type of work that best suits you? Whatever your career situation, what your resume needs most is a stellar career summary.
What difference can a career summary make for you? Here are 4 reasons why you need one in its abstract:
1.) A career summary communicates more about you and does so more powerfully than a mission statement.
2.) Employers love career summaries and use them to preview your resume. If they like your resume, they are more likely to read your entire resume.
3.) A resume does a superlative job of masking weaknesses in your work history (too much experience, too little, too many different types of jobs, gaps in employment, ineffective titles, and everything else you can think of)
4.) A career summary tells the employer what you most want them to know, up front. Therefore, it sells you well and sets you up to be asked the kind of interview questions you really want to be asked.
Alright, so a run summary is a good thing. How does it look? A summary can be a short paragraph of 2-4 sentences, or a short sentence or sentence featuring a series of 4-8 bullet points, depending on your preferred communication style. It can be preceded by a job title or a list of specialty areas that you want to highlight. The summary forever It goes to the top of the resume immediately after your name and contact information.
In general, a good career summary will outline a combination of the following types of critical details:
- A brief description of the breadth and scope of your experience.
- Academic credentials, if applicable
- 3-5 skill sets that set you apart from the competition
- 3-5 personality characteristics that describe the workplace in which
- Advice on your most important work-related values.
Well, that all sounds good, but what does a career summary look like? Here are two different versions of a summary that you can play around with and make your own:
Career and Workforce Development Administrator
Coaching… Training and Development… Program Design
Experienced, eloquent and visionary professional with more than 19 years of experience in all facets of career and employment development in corporate and social service settings. Possess excellent verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills and an inherent ability to build effective and cohesive teams. Deeply value creativity and lifelong learning.
Experienced, eloquent and visionary professional with over 19 years of proven experience in:
- Career development
- Workforce Development
- Corporate Consulting
- Delivery of social services
- Teamwork
- program design
- lifelong learning
- Communications
The key is to start with a brainstorm of solid content. Choose your descriptive language carefully. Make every word count. Create content first; write a draft second. Then share your draft with others you trust before finalizing it for your resume.