How to Write a Resume Summary

Welcome to the Blue Sky resumes webinar on how to write a resume summary that grabs attention .

One of the most important elements of a successful resume is the resume summary .

And by this , I mean , the introductory section , right under your name and address .

This is the thing people are going to see first and you only get a very short amount of time to make an impression .

People are busy .

They're flicking to resumes quickly , they form an impression about you in seconds and a well written resume summary makes all the difference as to what that impression is .

I'm Louise Fletcher , president of Blue Sky Resumes and I've been writing resumes for over 10 years before that .

I worked as an hr exec and I've hired more people than I care to remember .

So I'm speaking from experience when I say that the resume summary is one of the most misunderstood aspects of resume writing .

The truth is most people write summaries that are almost guaranteed never to be read and it's such a waste of the most importance space on the resume .

So , in this webinar , I'm gonna show you what I mean by taking you through a real resume summary and showing you my thought process as I develop the content , I hope that by going through this real world example , you'll see how you could make changes to your summary .

One quick note , I'm not suggesting that you copy this example .

Not everything I show you will be suitable for your specific situation .

But the general approach should hopefully inspire you to revitalize your own resume by creating a great summary .

So let's have a look .

This client gave me permission to share her resume .

Uh I've disguised the client by changing the name , withholding address , et cetera .

Um But uh the original resume that I'm showing you now cost $400 from another resume writer .

Um The client wasn't happy with the resume .

It hadn't generated results and she came to blue sky resumes to have us try and fix the situation .

Now , this resume summary is typical of too many resumes , in my opinion .

It might look and sound very professional , but here's the truth .

No one will read it .

Every recruiter or hiring manager faced with that big block of text is just going to skip through it to get to the professional history .

The only positive thing about the summary as it stands right now is the headline marketing manager which clearly communicates to recruiters who this candidate is and what types of jobs she should be considered for .

Other than that , it's useless .

But I'm gonna take this resume and rework the summary stages .

So you can see exactly how to spice up your own resume .

Summary .

First , I wanted to deal with the fact that that's just a big block of texts that no one will read .

So I decided to try and break it up and create sub headers and bolded text .

Calling out the most important information that recruiters need to know .

That way .

If somebody wants to skip the introduction , they'll still learn some persuasive facts about Sydney .

And so you'll see that I did that here .

Now , it's better , but I still don't feel that that chunk of text in the middle is going to be read by mass recruiters .

So we have those great headlines , 10 plus years of success , blood us and global campaigns experience in digital marketing .

All that's eye catching .

But then you still have this big chunk of stuff here .

And I also think it's filled with fluff .

Sydney might claim to be a proactive manager , team player and tactical planner who's contributed to revenue growth , but who knows if that's true , there's no evidence there .

So instead of making all those unsubstantiated claims , I'm gonna prove they're true by replacing all those words with short bullet points , highlighting some of Sydney's best successes .

And you can see the results here .

So we have these bullet points like drove revenue gains of 13% in tough economy and increase web traffic 47% .

And we've got bolding to highlight those results .

That's better .

But at this point , I wondered if I could do more .

I wondered how I could use the resume summary to prove that Sydney is really something special .

And one possibility was to go to a linkedin page , look for endorsements , testimonials and pull out some of the best quotes because I could then use them to provide third party proof that Sydney is worth hiring .

And this idea is very similar to what marketers do with products .

When they say nine out of 10 dentists recommend this toothpaste .

The idea is that somebody else saying something about you is always more powerful than you saying it about yourself .

So after going on linkedin , you'll see that I found some great quotes about Sydney .

Sydney is quite simply the best marketing manager I ever worked with .

I would recommend Sydney for any marketing job anywhere , hire her .

Now , these kind of quotes are really powerful .

So I've rearranged my introduction and I now have a headline , some linkedin quotes and some representative achievements .

Now , having done all this , I looked at this and felt like the introduction just got too long .

Now , that's going to be half the first page and you always have the danger when you make an introduction , that's too long that recruiters will just skip through it all because again , they want to get to the career history and they want to see where you worked .

Are you employed now ?

What's your job title now ?

Etcetera , etcetera .

So there's a balance to strike here .

So , even though I , I love all this content , I thought about it and I thought I've really , I've tried to do too much and I need to just now take all of the ideas that are here and compress it into something really powerful using the max in the minimum amount of space , but with the maximum amount of impact and that's what I'm going to show you next in the final version .

And here's the final version .

All that work led me to a resume summary that does everything I wanted .

I decided that I needed to keep the focus on those key facts that prove Sydney is a high achiever .

Uh They'd got bumped down a little bit on the last version if you remember .

Uh So I decided to just choose one quote to use because that quote says it all really , I would recommend Sydney for any marketing job anywhere , hire her .

Now , you really can't say any more than that .

And by placing it where I've placed it on the resume , it's both eye catching , but also doesn't take up too much room and doesn't make the introduction too long .

Um I've also redesigned the resume .

Um Sydney's a marketing manager for the tech industry and so her resume shouldn't look like something from a bank in 1986 should look modern , should look uh a little bit funky uh and the redesign resume summary might not be to everyone's taste , but I bet good money that it's going to be more effective during a job search than the one that she was using previously .

So one last time , here's the original resume with that old fashioned design and the big solid block of text filled with kind of fluffy claims and no facts .

And here's the new version uh with uh much more modern design , more white space uh packed with results , much more concise and yet much more .

I would argue much more impactful than what she originally started out with .

Now , do you know as you were looking at this resume summary that this exact approach might not be right for you .

You might not have a linkedin testimonial that works in this way .

Um You might not have as many results and you might want to place more emphasis on linkedin testimonials or on something else .

For example , you might want to highlight awards you've won .

Uh You might want to start your resume with a quote from yourself about how hard working or how effective you are .

Um The key to success isn't to copy anybody else's approach , but to just take these lessons that I've showed you and think of the resume summary as the place to grab attention , prove value , put your very best foot forward and do it in as concise a way as possible .

So , good luck in restructuring your resume summary .

And if you need any more help with writing your resume , do check out our free course .

Um It's completely free .

We send emails every couple of days and I walk you through the entire resume creation process from start to finish , your resume will never be the same again .

This has been a blue sky resumes webinar .