Career Blog: What makes a good resume summary?

A well written resume summary can draw a hiring manager in, increasing the chances he/she will spend time reading the rest of your resume.  A badly written resume summary can mire a reader down with useless information, distracting him/her from all the good stuff you have to offer.

There’s a lot of confusion as to what a resume summary is and what makes it powerful.  As a career counselor in Boston, I advise clients to include the strengths and qualifications that make them a good fit for a particular job as revealed by their concrete accomplishments.  While it’s a summary, it should still include supporting details with concrete accomplishments.  Otherwise, it can turn into a list of empty, unsubstantiated and generic-sounding qualifications.

To get started, here are five things your resume summary should include and another bonus five things that it should not!

Avoid: Objective. If you’ve chosen to use a resume summary instead of an objective, you may already know this, but a resume should be about what you can do for the employer, not what they can do for you.  Make sure to focus on what makes you a good candidate for the specific job you’re applying for.
Include: Years of Experience. A good start to a resume summary is to cite the specific number of years of experience you have in the industry in which you’re trying to get hired.  While being honest, try to highlight your experience in as relevant terms as possible.

Avoid: Listing General Job Requirements. You should absolutely determine what is relevant enough to include in your resume summary based on the job description, but avoid directly repeating it.  On the other hand, you may choose to include useful resume keywords.
Include: Nice to Haves. It’s crucial to demonstrate you would excel at the basic job functions in your resume summary.  Beyond that, it’s often worth specifically mentioning any skills you have which the job posting indicates are “preferred,” but not strictly required.

Avoid: Wordy Language. Since the resume summary should be short and concise, avoid any wordy language that doesn’t add any value.  Using the phrase, “many successful accomplishments,” doesn’t tell the hiring manager anything.
Include: Concrete Accomplishments. While you shouldn’t directly repeat any of your resume bullets, it’s okay and even powerful to use some of your concrete figures or examples of accomplishments in the resume summary.  If you managed a budget of $10 million, that’s a lot more impressive than managing a budget which my have been $1,000.

Avoid: Less Relevant Degrees or Skills. It’s fantastic that you have a bachelor’s degree, but if you have had one or two years of professional experience since then, it’s not worth mentioning in your resume summary.  The same goes for the ability to use Microsoft Word or anything that’s not going to set you apart as an exceptional candidate for this particular job.
Include: Relevant Degrees and Certifications. If it’s relevant to the job at hand, you should include your MBA, MSW, CFA, insurance license, real estate license or doctorate degree.

Avoid: Fluffy Soft Skills. Having “excellent written and oral communication skills” and “attention to detail” are certainly useful for nearly any job, but are too generic and overused to add any weight to your resume summary.
Include: Technical Skills if Applicable. If you’re an engineer, computer programmer or scientist, it often makes sense to list your very marketable technical skills or languages in your resume summary.  Using Microsoft Word may not be very impressive, but knowing C++ is.