The Summary of Qualifications section consists of a summary of your experiences emphasizing your critical strengths. This is a great place to make an immediate and favorable impression to entice a potential employer to read more.
As you build your outline of a resume, remember that this section allows you to define your personal brand, and summarize why you are qualified for the job. Your goal is to highlight some of your best skills and qualifications. So, make sure you that you handle this section with care.
Focus on skills and strengths that match the employers’ needs while defining what you are looking for. Also, remember, you do not want to list all your best information here. You will need to save some for the rest of your resume.
The following information typically make up this section of the resume:
- Functional specialty or job title (example of specialties: accounting, graphic design, adminstrative support, teaching)
- Number of years of industry experience (examples of industries: insurance, finance, manufacturing, education)
- Expertise, strengths, or specialization
Usually, each description in this section is 3 to 4 lines long. Example:
- Highly dedicated, caring, and experienced English Teacher with proven track record of inspiring students to learn and succeed. Results reflective of national test scores, improvement graduation rates, and increased college entry amongst assigned students.
From the above example, can you see how this teacher created her personal brand? Not only does she want to be known as an experienced teacher, but as caring and dedicated as well.
Furthermore, she entices this potential employer to read more by backing up her claim with vital information about her results in which she can provide more detail later in the resume. Please notice, the idea is not to repeat the same information later in the resume, but to effectively advertise and sell your skills and services throughout your resume. Never forget, you are building a strong case as to why you are best qualified for the job you seek.
If you decide to use a Summary of Qualifications, then you may not want to use an Objective Statement. How can you decide? Following are several criteria to consider. You may want to use a Qualifications Summary if:
- You have at least five years of experience at your specialty or using your skills.
- You have a broad base of generalist skills you want to highlight.
- Your most impressive accomplishments won’t be seen until the latter part of your resume.
- You are targeting a job that calls on experience found only in the early stages of your career.