For many individuals, the professional summary is one of the most difficult things to write
on the resume.
In this video, I'm going to share with you a four step process that will help you craft
a professional summary that's going to get you noticed and called in for interviews.
Hi, everyone.
If we haven't been introduced, my name is Bill Benoist.
I'm a certified professional career coach here in Silicon Valley.
I upload new career tips and strategies every Tuesday.
If you're in career transition or you find career development to be important, make sure
that you subscribe to this channel.
That way you're not going to miss anything.
By the way, if your are in career transition, make sure that you stay to the very end of
this video to learn how you can get my free download "The top five interview questions
that any hiring manager wants to know about you and best practice answers to those questions."
Years ago, perched at the top of any resume was job objective.
The job objective was just usually one or two words.
It was kind of the goal that you were going after.
It may have been bank teller or project manager or software engineer.
Today you don't see job objectives anymore.
Well, rarely.
What you do see are professional summaries or professional profiles.
This is your way of introducing yourself to the recruiter and the hiring manager and letting
them know what are the skills that you have, what it is that you're going to bring to the
table.
Now before we go any further, I want to let you know something.
If you've watched my previous videos, you've heard me talk about this before.
Your resume is not going to be read.
It's going to be scanned.
A recruiter only spends about six seconds on a resume nowadays because they simply don't
have time to be reading all of them that come through.
You need to be strategic when you are creating your resume, and this goes for the professional
summary just as well.
When I work with my clients, I talk with them about creating a professional summary using
four elements, and these are the elements that I want you to consider.
They're questions that I want you to ask yourself.
The first element, who are you in the present sense with a value-added proposition.
The second element, industries and/or environments that you've worked in.
The third element, what are you skills, what are your strengths that you're going to bring
to the table.
The final element, what is it that makes you unique.
If you need to pause this video and rewind it a little bit, please do so because these
are four questions that as you kind of ask yourself and you map out your answers, this
is going to craft your professional summary.
Let me give you an example.
Here's an example of the first element.
Full Stack Developer with a passion for bringing together together and healthcare to improve
quality of life.
Now I want you to understand something.
This first element, it's a real life example, came from a student who had just gone through
a very intense 14 week full stack development coding program.
Well, the students in general were putting in 90 hour weeks.
They were coming out very well-experienced, but this gentlemen, his previous work experience
had nothing to do with technology.
I can't exactly remember what it was, but it was not technology.
This was the goal that he had in mind, so it was his way of introducing himself as a
full stack developer.
He hadn't previously done it, but that's what he was going after.
As far as the passion for technology and the healthcare industry, that was something that
he had decided upon based upon some upbringing that he had as a caregiver.
This was his goal.
He wanted to use technology to make improvements in the healthcare industry.
Now here's another example of the first element, Marketing Executive with proven track record
driving revenue growth in start-ups and large pubic companies.
Notice we answer who we are and we also again added a value-added proposition.
These are a couple of examples of the first element.
You can come up with one of your own I'm sure, but essentially answer the question who you
are at the title, put it in there, and if you can, add a value-added proposition.
Here's an example of the second element.
Remember, the second element is industries and/or environments that you've worked in.
The reason why I say or because sometimes younger individuals, people that are fresh
out of college, they don't have industry experience, but they'll definitely have some environmental
experience.
Here's an example of a second element, Fifteen plus years management experience in healthcare
leading culturally diverse teams.
You notice healthcare is an industry.
It's not a company name.
You want to use an industry, and culturally diverse teams is an environment.
Now here's a second example of the second element.
Experience in private, public and government industries managing 11 remote technicians
throughout the US and Canada.
Again do you notice that we didn't talk about company names, but we talked about industries?
Managing a remote team, that's an environment.
Remote is an environment.
Moving on to the third element, the third element is what are you strengths, what are
your skills that you're going to bring to that company?
Here's an example of the third element, Grounded in engineering, specialize in developing competitive
strategies through global alliances, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions.
Again this is what kind of experience that you're going to bring to the industry.
Finally, another example, Known for keen balance of hands-on and strategic management coupled
with the ability to build and lead high performance teams.
Repeated success in all aspects of outbound and inbound marketing.
We just went over the first element, who you are in a present sense with a value-added
proposition.
The second element, industries and environments that you've worked in.
The third element, the strengths and skills that you're going to bring to the table.
You know what?
That's enough to stop right there.
You can stop and you're already light years ahead of the of the competition, but if you
want to take it one step further, what it is that makes you unique?
What is it that separates you from the crowd?
Let me give you one more example here, Major strengths include ensuring executives are
always in the right place, at the right time with the right preparation.
I love that one.
That was one from an actual resume from administrative assistant to the C-level suite.
Let's go ahead and take what we've learned about the four elements and put them together
and craft a couple of professional summaries.
In this first example, what I'm going to use is a QA analyst.
Highly respected Quality Assurance Professional with a track record for ensuring quality of
products meets the standard set by a company, and expectation by end users.
Over 17 years experience in the Biotechnology industry, leveraging strengths in manufacturing
processes, quality procedures and quality systems.
Ability to quickly foster partnerships across multiple domains to ensure compliance with
all relevant FDA and EU regulations and guidelines.
There we've incorporated all four elements into this professional summary.
Here's another example.
This individual would be an operations manager in the finance industry.
Experienced Sales, Operations, and Support Professional with over 10 years progressive
experience in the financial industry.
Expert in enabling teams to be fully engaged in department goals and objectives.
Background in human resource functions, executive administrative functions, and managing end-to-end
processes.
Will measurably improve the success, value and performance of department by providing
world class communication, organization and administration and problem solving.
Series 7 certification.
That's the uniqueness right there, but you see all of the elements in both of these examples.
If you're struggling with creating a resume and you're just looking at a blank screen
with a heading "professional summary" and you don't know what to write, use these four
elements.
It's really going to be a great foundation for creating a rock star resume, one that's
going to get you noticed and called in for an interview.
Finally, as I mentioned in the beginning of this video, I do have a free download, "The
top five interview questions any hiring manager wants to know about you and also the best
practice answers to those questions."
Check it out in the note section below.
There's a link directly to the download.
Finally, I also have an online program that I recently launched called "Finding Work That
Fuels Your Passion."
This is a three hour course that not only covers how to write the resume in great detail,
step-by-step process, kind of like what I led you through just with this video here
but a lot longer, also a way to develop your LinkedIn profile.
It goes into interviewing and finally even how to create a job search strategy, identify
companies that you believe you would be a great fit for, and how to develop relationships
within those companies.
If you're in career transition, you might want to check out that link as well.
Again thank you for stopping by and I will look forward to seeing you in the next video.