What’s the Point of a Summary of Qualifications, Anyway? (Featuring Resume Summary Examples)

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That’s precisely why you need a resume summary as the first major section under your contact info and headline. This brief description of your qualifications is best used to summarize your strengths, skills, and the ways they align with each company’s needs.

Think of the summary section as a place to highlight all that you have to offer a company and the reasons you are their ideal candidate. This is in contrast to an objective statement, which doesn’t really add any value to your resume because it only describes your goals.

An engaging, attention-getting summary will set you apart from all the other resumes your hiring managers and recruiters receive. Your summary not only engages these readers, it sets the tone for what’s to come and keys readers in on what to look for in your experience section. This is especially important if you’re changing your career or have a gap in experience. It can help defuse red flags and assumptions about your non-linear career path.

Structuring your resume Summary of Qualifications

Here’s some advice that our professional resume writers use to create exceptional resume summaries.

When building your summary, concisely highlight your top two or three hard skills and demonstrate the capacity in which you use them. These should be specific, objective, and relevant to the position, not just generic clichés. This can also be a great place to state your passion or why you are interested in a position if you are transitioning into a new industry or field.

Keep it short — don’t include so much information that the section becomes dense and long. A strong standard summary should be 75-100 words, while an executive-level summary should be 100-175 words.

A resume summary can be in the form of a short paragraph, a few bullet points, or a hybrid of the two:

• Short paragraph style works well for those with some experience under their belt. This format is concise and highlights the client’s skills and accomplishments right off the bat.
• Bullet points can work for almost anyone and are an excellent way to highlight transferable skills in a tactical manner.
• A hybrid format entails a shorter paragraph with two or three bullets underneath that further highlighting your skill set. This is an effective method for executives looking to highlight a career’s worth of highlights and accomplishments.

Strong Summary of Qualifications examples

Once you decide which of your greatest hits to include in your summary of qualifications, use action verbs in a sentence structure. Here at Let’s Eat, Grandma, our writers generally follow a strict format for their first bullet point:

Descriptive Word + Job Title + Level of Experience + Key Feature in Career

Here’s how I did this on my own resume:

• Deadline-driven writer with 20+ years of experience telling journalistic, marketing, and public relations stories

The remaining bullet points typically follow this format:

Adjective + Position Descriptor + Description of Key Credential

Again, here’s an example of what this looks like on my own resume:

• Inquisitive interviewer who thrives on learning more about the world and the people who live here