Add Your Professional Resume Summary Statement
A resume summary statement is a short paragraph or section of bullet points at the beginning of a resume that highlights your professional skills and experience. Your summary should expand on your headline and communicate to recruiters and hiring managers why you are a good fit for the job.
Summary statements are not ideal for all job seekers. If you dont have much job experience or are changing careers, you might use the space to expand on your work history section, skills section, or write a strong resume objective statement instead.
Note: Career experts rarely recommend including a resume objective statement, but these summary alternatives can work in special circumstances such as in the case of career changes.
How To Write A Professional Summary
As we said before, a good professional summary should compel an employer to read the next section of your resume thats all. If it manages to do that, then it has accomplished its purpose.
However, doing this is easier said than done, as it can be tricky to cram the most exciting bits of your career into a 3-5 bullet points summary.
Luckily, theres a few tips and tricks you can use to craft an impressive resume summary.
Heres how you can do that:
Is There Such A Thing As A Correct Resume
Not necessarily. There is no right and wrong when it comes to resume content and format. Each resume is as unique as the individual it represents. It is up to you to select the appropriate content that best highlights your skills for the employment you hope to acquire, and then effectively communicate your qualifications in a format that is clear and easy to read.
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Bonus Tip Your Resume Contains A Link To Your Personal Website
Weve been seeing an interesting trend in 2017. Job seekers who add a link to a personal branding website are getting more job interviews and in turn getting more job offers. The fact is, having a simple personal website that highlights your skills and more importantly your personality go a long way to creating a three dimensional persona for the hiring manager. A personal website makes you stand out when compared to all the other candidates who just hand in a resume and cover letter. To find out more check out this blog post.
How To Make A Resume
Before you even start working on your resume, you need to decide how youre going to build it.
And no – you shouldnt use a basic text editor. While this IS the most popular method for creating a resume, its very far from the best.
With a basic text editor resume, youll need to spend hours playing with the formatting. You make a minor change and BAM! Your entire resume layout gets messed up.
Instead of using a text editor, we recommend choosing a resume builder, such as Novorésumé. Our resume builder is fast, easy, and to put the icing on the cake, a Novorésumé looks much better and can fit more information than your average, cookie-cutter resume…
To get the most out of this guide, you can head over to the resume builder and start building your resume on-the-go as you read this guide.
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How To Write An Effective Resume Title
It is important to have a resume that stands out from the competition as many candidates apply for a single job position. Having a properly curated resume title will make the recruiter notice your resume and help them understand your fitness for the job. Below are a few steps you should follow while writing a title for your resume:
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Who Should You Address Your Resume To
Thats the awkward part of writing a resumeyou dont really know who gets to lay their eyes on it. An external recruiter? A member of an in-house HR team? Or, perhaps, your prospective boss?
At some point, it will likely be all of the above mentioned. But the person you should address your resume to is the hiring manager72% of our respondents advise to do so.
Why? Firstly, its the most important decision-maker in the process. Secondly, this is the person most likely to understand your career progression, scope of responsibilities, or the nature of your day-to-day tasks. Finally, external recruiters or HR teams run the recruitment at the actual hiring managers requestif they like your resume, they will show it to the top stakeholder anyway.
One bonus tip? Avoid the uncertainty of who might get to review your resume and apply directly to the hiring manager.
At the same time, wait for it, only 0.14% candidates use this strategy! You connect the dots. Deciding to apply directly to the manager of the team youre hoping to join is the single best thing you can do to boost your chances of getting hired. Especially since it helps you avoid automated screening softwareheartless robots deciding whether or not youre a fit for the job based on their cruel algorithms. More on that in the next section.
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Putting It All Together
So there you have it. Weve covered what a resume objective statement is, who should use one, and how to properly execute it.
While some people might claim that the objective statement for a resume is outdated and old fashioned, if done properly, it can mean the difference between being on the top of the pile and ending up in the circular file.
For people with more experience, the resume summary approach is the way to go, but for job seekers who are changing careers, targeting a specific job, or feel that their resumes lack the skills and experience that make them stand out, an objective statement is a quick and easy way to ensure that the hiring manager knows at a glance who you are, where youve been and where you plan to go with your careerno pink paper or perfume needed!
Good luck!
How Long Should Your Resume Actually Be
A study by Zety revealed that, in 2021, most recruiters prefer two-page resumes. For senior roles, a two-page resume is 2.9x more likely to score an interview than a single-pager. But that also holds true for entry-level jobs .
Plus, 77% of recruiters think candidates with 5+ years of experience should never submit a one-page resume.
Dont get me wrongtwo-column resumes are still the way to go. They make resumes easier to review quickly and find whatever is most important to the recruiter. Its just that you dont need to squeeze everything onto a single page.
One more thing
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Tailor Your Resume To The Job Description
Tweaking your resume so that it aligns with the position is vital. Start by carefully reading the job description to identify keywords and key phrases. Next, insert these terms throughout your resume wherever applicable. Most hiring managers will search for keywords related to critical skills, even if the resume is processed through an applicant tracking system.
If you’re having trouble finding keywords, you can run the job description through a word cloud generator, which should help you identify prominent words and phrases. Once you’ve finished crafting your resume, run it through that same generator to see whether its keywords align with those in the job description.
Ask Your Contacts To Be A Reference
It’s important you ask your contacts for permission to be a reference before you provide their names. Not only is this a common courtesy, but it also gives them time to prepare for a phone call or email from the employer. Giving your references plenty of notice also makes sure that they have time to recall specific examples that highlight why you’re the best candidate for the role.
You can do ask someone to be your reference over the phone, by email or in person. If you can, it’s best to ask them in person or over the phone for a more personal approach. Your best references will be people who enjoyed working with you and are excited to discuss your talents. Be sure to list the more relevant contacts at the top of the document.
If you are calling or speaking to someone i n person, approach the topic in a positive manner. Be sure to speak to why they would be a good reference. You can also help to give them speaking points or touch on what you hope they would say. Always let the reference know what job and company you are interviewing for so they have some background information when the employer reaches out.
Here is an example of an email you can write when asking a contact to be a reference for you:
Hi Jack,
If you agree to be a reference, could you please send over the best email and phone number for me to include on my resume reference list?
Thank you in advance for your consideration and I hope all is well!
Rebecca Jones
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So How Long Should A Resume Be
Once upon a time the fast and hard rule was keep your resume to one-page MAX! Job seekers who found their resumes exceeding the one page limit were forced to either cut out valuable information or tweak their formatting, font sizes and/or margins to make it work, often resulting in either difficult formatting or incomplete histories.
Nowadays the rules are a little more relaxed and the new rule is: Your resume should be long enough to entice the hiring manager to call you in for an interview.
Confused? Dont be.
First off, your resume is an introduction to who you aregive them enough information to get them comfortable, but brief enough that theyre left wanting more
This isnt a novel. It isnt a 10-page dissertation on who you are or a 20-page essay on everything youve done from your first moments on earth to the moment you sent it to the company.
Its a career marketing tool and should be used exactly like any good advertising is usedto build excitement, pique curiosity, and encourage the viewer to ask Okay, I like this so farwhat else?
Remember our hiring manager from story time at the beginning of this article? Remember, theyre looking through hundreds, if not thousands of resumes and the last thing you want to do is to hand them a long document theyll have to pour over to get the info they need.
Be concise. Be brief. Be clear. Be professional.
The best way to determine how long your resume should be is to follow these simple rules:
Good.
Lets go!
Resume Formats: Defining Structure
Now that were done with the visuals, lets move on to the magic of text. The most fundamental division of text in resumes is based on content format:
- Reverse Chronological
- Functional
- Combined .
The Reverse Chronological format is not only the most common one, but also the most widely accepted among various employers and industries. The biggest benefit of a reverse chronological resume is its straightforward, easy to understand and linear structure.
It displays your professional experience and past work experience from most recent to oldest. This is great when you have a continuous history of work, and you can showcase some important recent positions. But what should you do if youre a fresh graduate or have a sizable gap in your employment history? This is where the Functional and Combination formats come in.
A Reverse Chronological order also takes advantage of short attention spans and busy schedules of recruiters by demonstrating your most recent and impressive positions first. Take advantage of those 6-7 seconds of eye time!
The Functional resume format leans on soft and hard skills as its main focus-point. If you lack experience as an entry level job seeker due to recently graduating college, or are in the process of moving to a new industry, the Functional format is one you should consider. You can also make the resume more robust by mentioning past projects, social initiatives, experience in other fields and so on.
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Add Your Name And Contact Information
The top of your resume should include the following information:
- Name
- Location
- Email Address
- LinkedIn profile URL
It might seem obvious, but job seekers sometimes forget a key piece of contact information in this section. Double check and make it as easy as possible for recruiters to contact you for a job interview.
A Guide To Crafting A Perfect Resume Objective And Summary Statement
Ask one person about including an objective statement on your resume and theyll say its paramount. Ask another person and theyll say its outdated. Who knew a couple of sentences could be so polarizing? Youre bound to find conflicting information about this topic, making the objective statement, well, subjective.
A resume objective is a short statement that outlines your career direction. Objective statements were once the standard on every job seekers resume. A decade or so ago, you wouldnt have sent out a resume without one. But times change, and what recruiters look for in a standard CV has changed, too.
Read on to learn about resume objectives, why they are important and how to distinguish your resume objective from thousands of other job seekers.
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Write A Pithy Objective
Whether youre switching careers or feel slightly underqualified for the job you are applying for, Kim suggests including an objective at the top of your resume. This will help hiring managers understand the thought process behind your decision to change industries or why you are applying for the job. She says you can fill the gaps in between your experience by detailing the inspiration and motivation behind your move.
This objective statement should be limited to two or three sentences explaining what you are trying to accomplish and what you can contribute, Kim says.
And dont be discouraged by the job description: Schweikert notes that it is written for the perfect candidate and hiring managers know that so they likely expect that you wont fit each bullet point on a posting. Theres also a relatively simple way to determine if youre right for the role. Most job descriptions are written most important criteria to least important criteria, Schweikert says. So if youve got a lot of the first couple of bullets of the job posting, you are probably in a pretty good place.
It’s Easy To Write A Resume With Our Builder
Now that youve learned everything about writing an excellent resume, let us help you out even more. Hlooms Resume Builder is a top-of-the-line resume-writing tool. If writing a resume on your own sounds intimidating, our builder will be your helpful guide. Take advantage of our professionally designed templates and automatic suggested text to craft a resume that looks and sounds professional.
Refined
This simple layout features a traditional font and the clever use of section borders to help each section of your resume stand out.
Standout
This distinctive two-column resume template identifies your name and professional experience in a bold color and clean presentation.
Original
A clever design that breaks each of your professional accomplishments into distinct sections while following a format that will pass applicant tracking systems.
Acclaimed
The elegant initials, simple header and strategic use of bullet points in this template help keep your professional accomplishments well-organized.
Accentuate
The bold use of a colorblocked heading paired with an elegant resume layout helps your name and contact information stand out.
Insightful
This structured design combines a two-column approach with bullet points to highlight your key accomplishments and professional history.
Whitespace
A traditional template uses a crisp combination of dark text and thin borders to radiate professionalism. Your name sits prominently above your professional history.
Knowledgeable Remarkable
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The Creative Angle: An Infographic Resume Or Resume Website
This resume type is characterized by how its formatted visually. You may choose a reverse chronological order or skills-based style to organize your information, but also use graphics, colors, unique fonts, and even multimedia elements to help that information pop. Keep in mind that any creative resume is still likely subject to an ATSand certain elements may be unreadable by a robot. So consider going this route only if you know a human will be reading your resume .
Who its good for: People applying to creative roles , startups, or fun companies, or to jobs where a creative resume is encouraged, if not required.
Not a designer but want your resume to look just as pretty as this example? Check out these articles:
Your resume is a living, breathing document. So while you wont go through this whole process every time you apply for a job, you should be thinking about all these things as you go to update your resume for your next career step. You might decide later on to switch up the order, or remove or add things, or even get creative and try out a whole new format. If youre not getting the calls back you expect, you may decide to scrap it and start overand thats totally OK.
Fast Company
Decide How To Send Your Reference List
You should only send your resume reference list if a potential employer explicitly asks for it. You can send over the list of contacts in the body of an email or create a document and send it as an attachment. Have physical copies of your reference list ready to offer during in-person interviews.
You can also save space on your resume by removing âreferences available upon request.” Recruiters assume that you have a list of references should they ask for one during the hiring process.
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