The Professional Summary Statement: A Better Alternative to a Resume Objective

 

The top half – if not top third – of your resume is prime real estate. You shouldn’t waste that all important space.

One thing to understand is that an HR employee who receives your resume will probably spend only a few seconds to scan through it. Then they’ll decide if they should toss it aside or keep it handy for their second round of eliminations. That’s their first step, essentially to eliminate the bulk of applicants, keeping maybe 10 to 15 resumes for their second round. You’ll want to make sure you are not eliminated right away and sent to the recycling bin.

Out of those first few important seconds, the HR employee’s eyes will focus mostly on the top part of the first page of your resume. That's where you need to show the employer your worth in relation to the job you are applying for. Let’s see how to best use this space.

The Outdated Career Objective

Even today, we can see every now and then resumes with resume objectives. Career or resume objectives used to be the standard… but nowadays? Not so much.

The top part of a resume with a career objective might look something like this:

That’s almost three lines of useless very basic and standard banter. The bottom line is that this type of elevator pitch is meaningless to an HR talent acquisition employee. It wastes their time.

There isn’t much added value here and no noticeable differentiating elements either. With a career objective like this, you’ll blend right in with the other dozens if not hundreds of other applicants, even if you are perfectly qualified for the job. In other words, you are not standing out, in addition to the fact that you are not helping the HR employee who receives your resume.

The major factor as to why career objectives fell out of favour is basically because they are self-centric. They are about you, your needs and your wants. And the bottom line is that employers just don’t care about you, at least at this point during the recruitment process. Just like you, employers are self-centred. They care about their needs and their wants. Everything a company does is with its own interests in mind, not yours (even though sometimes it might feel or seem like they care). It’s about their profit margin and their revenue. It all comes down to money.

In this day and age, you must make it easy for a potential employer to see and understand how they would benefit from having you as an employee. You must focus on the employers’ needs and wants.

The Summary Statement

An alternative to the outdated career objective is a summary statement, which essentially provides an overview of how you are qualified for the job for which you are applying. And yes, it must be adapted and tailored specifically for the job you are applying for, otherwise, you can say hello to the recycling bin.

The statement is usually in the form of 2 or 3 sentences, but you would be wiser to consider a bullet list instead (HR talent acquisition staff and managers – just like so many of us these days – don’t have time to read sentences… they’d much prefer a list of relevant terms, which would make their job easier and quicker).

Other terms used for this section of a resume can be summary of qualifications, professional summary, profile or synopsis, which are boring generic titles without much impact. Here is an example of what a summary statement might look like for a more senior professional. Note that this section is often followed by an Areas of expertise section, which could be combined with the summary section.

This summary is more focused on the needs and wants of an employer and contains many valuable and relevant keywords, and some buzzwords as well, that will stand out, especially in circumstances where a resume is scanned and analyzed by a computer program. It also provides qualifications that may be meaningful to an employer. However, this is long and somewhat boring. Just the sight of a paragraph of this length in a resume is potentially a major turnoff for an HR employee. And if you start with long and boring at the top of your resume, it does not bode well for what’s to come… It also does not appear to be tailored enough… experienced in diverse industries? If this person is applying for an agency job where this type of vast experience would be valued, then OK. Otherwise, it might be best to tailor to the employer.

So what would be a better way to provide an employer with a summary of your qualifications for the job?

The better alternative to a summary statement

The top part of your resume should provide an overview of how you qualify for the job you are applying for. You need to provide a list of your qualifications and skills that are suited for and correspond to what the employer needs and is looking for. It is therefore important to have a good and thorough understanding of the job description (learn how to analyze and understand job descriptions).

In the example below, I’ve included the graduate title (BA Marketing for bachelor’s degree in marketing) right after the last name. This provides a quick indication of the candidate’s education to the HR employee analyzing the resume. Below the name, I’ve included in bold characters a short statement (B2C Marketing and Business Development), which should be tweaked to the job being applied for, and that indicates the focus of the candidate’s career, providing some additional guidance to HR as to the career path and story and the strengths of the applicant. With two simple brief elements, that take up almost no space at all, and which can be glanced at in an instant, you’ve already allowed HR to tick a few boxes from their wish list and now they’ll be more likely to continue scanning your resume.

Now on to the actual summary statement… Directly below the header is where a summary of relevant qualifications should appear. But what’s a better word for qualifications? Let’s call this section of your resume either Competencies, Proficiencies or Expertise. These 3 words say that you are not only qualified, but competent, proficient or an expert in what you do. These words deliver a bit more than just qualifications and definitely more than professional summary.

The relevant skills are presented here in a bullet list format instead of a paragraph. It’s much easier to read and at lot less cramped. Psychologically, someone will be more willing to read a bullet list than to read a paragraph, especially when they are pressed for time. As done in this above example, you can even put important keywords, which an HR employee may be looking for, in bold characters to make it easier and faster to scan.

I also included the phone number, email and LinkedIn profile URL (try to include an embedded hyperlink to make it easier and faster for HR to view your LinkedIn profile – and make sure your LinkedIn is up to date and that there are no contradictions with your resume).

I took the residential address out since with the area code of your phone number, one will already be able to figure out if you are located near enough to the job location. Further, you can include your full address in your signature of your accompanying cover letter. So there is no need to repeat here. Unless relevant for the job, I would focus on projecting a professional image and opt out of including other social media links. (And speaking of social media, make sure you clean up your act and that there isn’t anything on there that might make an employer cringe… because yes, even though you don't provide your Facebook, they'll try to hunt you down online at some point during the recruitment process.)

Another thing I have done is keep everything in plain black and use bold characters to bring focus to important elements instead of color, such as for the graduate title (BA Marketing) and the short statement below the name (B2C Marketing and Business Development). Those are the elements that a spotlight should be shined on, not your name and not the title of the section of the resume as it was in the examples above where blue was used. I switched from color to black here simply because using a color for highlighting the elements worthy of being emphasized would have just looked bizarre combined with color… In case of doubt, always opt for ‘less’ for a professional look (less is more).

Summary

With a ‘professional summary’ like this, you not only show the HR employee that you consider their time to be important (saving them time and effort by making things easier and quicker for them), but you also provide a focus on what you would bring to the table to get things done. It shows the employer you are cost- and time-conscious, that you are efficient and highly professional in addition to being qualified.

Want to easily write your professional resume summary like a pro? Read the Complete Guide to writing a professional summary to stand out and get noticed.