Summaries, Objectives, and Profiles Oh My!

If you are a client of mine or read this blog with any frequency you probably know that I am not a fan of summaries/objectives/executive profiles or any of the other lengthy chunks of information that some people use to fill the first ½ page or so of their resumes. My reasons are simple: recruiters aren’t interested in subjective statements that represent your opinion of yourself and that are what most folks (and many resume writers) include at the top of the resume. In my opinion those sections are mostly a waste of space. I started my career as a recruiter and spent many years in all kinds of recruiting and HR roles and never once did I spend a lot of time reading those sections. I just jumped right to the “Experience” section to see if a candidate had the right experience and impressive accomplishments.
Having said all of that, I recently had a great conversation about this very topic with the CEO of a top technology recruiting firm, HireStarter, named Marc Davis. Marc is one of the most highly respected recruiters in the technology industry in Central Texas so when he told me his perspective on summaries I really sat up and took notice.

The following is what Marc has to say about summaries:
Basically, most summaries are terrible – they are filled with useless subjective statements that most recruiters and hiring managers just simply skip over and completely ignore as they go straight for the “Experience” section. With that said, there is a down-side to writing a resume that cuts to the “Experience” section without setting the context: recruiters may make a snap judgment about what you want to do and what you are capable of doing simply because of the most recent job you have held.
If the job you are looking for is a linear progression from the job you currently have, then you can either eliminate the summary section altogether or keep that section very short (1 – 2 sentences). But, for someone whose most recent job was, for example, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), the resume-skimming recruiter will see “CTO” as their most recent job title and may say “I don’t need a CTO right now and this candidate won’t be happy in the other technology jobs we have available.” or the reader may think, “This candidate probably makes too much money and wouldn’t want to do X.” A short summary that is very tight and very objectively written can *sometimes* get a person to perceive you a little differently because you can position things a little bit before they dive into the experience section.
What I’m saying is to take no more than the top 1/4 of the page to do share this information. Start off with a statement that gives some rationale for the types of roles you’ll be applying for but make sure that this statement isn’t too restrictive. Continuing with our CTO example, you could create a statement that, in a nice way, says, “Don’t worry, I don’t want your CTO’s job, and I’d be OK with a lesser role – I’d actually like to make a contribution to your organization in a role such as X or Y.” Then a short-but-sweet summary that is purely an objective statement about the main areas you feel you can make contributions in. Don’t say something like, “great people skills” because that is an absolutely horrible and useless statement but if someone wrote something like the following, I’d read it and probably look down into the rest of the resume for more detail:
Management and Leadership: 8 years of experience in building and leading software development organizations that range in size from 5 – 20 people. Consistently recognized for my ability to retain, motivate, and develop employees.
If you include 3 or 4 of these short statements about the areas of expertise you want to emphasize, I don’t think it’s going to do any harm and it might just get someone to look at you in a different way.
In a perfect world, I think this kind of stuff would not be necessary… but I’ve often watched recruiters do stupid things. I once asked a recruiter, “Why did you not consider this guy?” and the recruiter responded, “Well, it said he was the Vice President in his last job and I figured he’d be too senior for this Director role and wouldn’t be interested in the job.” I’m not saying that a summary is going to stop that from happening, but you might get a chance to interest a recruiter who might otherwise jump to the wrong conclusion about you with a summary that is very well written.
One other point about writing summary statements – if you have had multiple jobs across a variety of industries, a well written summary can draw the reader’s attention to other parts of the resume – kind of like a table of contents. For example, if you spent the first half of your career in the Automotive industry but made a switch in your last job to the Healthcare industry, you run the risk that the reader may just see all the healthcare stuff on the first page and jump to the conclusion that you aren’t a good fit for a job in their Automotive Sales Group. In that case, you could potentially write a summary statement like this:
Industry Expertise – 4 years of deep healthcare industry experience working as a General Manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield and 12 years of in-depth automotive industry experience as Director of Manufacturing for GM and Delco Electronics.
Someone just skimming experience might not get to the second or third page, but if you can grab their attention in the summary and direct them to the pertinent parts of your resume, there’s a chance they’ll go digging for more info.
A lot of candidates say to me “Well, that’s the kind of thing I write in a cover letter.” In all of my time interviewing candidates, no one has ever asked me to interview someone and handed me their resume AND their cover letter. Cover letters are deleted by the front-line recruiter/HR people and never stay with the resume… I feel like the resume needs to stand alone.
– Thank you Marc for these valuable insights!
Article by Liz Handlin and courtesy of Ultimate Resumes

Originally posted by Candice A