Writing Your Resume Summary

Writing Your Resume Summary

Think of your summary like an abbreviated elevator pitch. This is your opportunity to give the reader (in 3-4 sentences max) some insights into how you would apply your past experience to a tech role, as well as insight into your motivations, passions, and interests. It also serves as information that the interviewer can use for conversation starters at your interview and provides some clues about your “cultural fit” with the company.

The summary is particularly useful for career changers, who can use it to connect the dots around how their experience and passion make them the perfect fit for a given role. It typically goes immediately after your name and contact information, and is your opportunity to own the narrative of your career progression. This is precious real estate on the (typically one-page) resume, so make every word count!

When writing your summary, consider your audience. What do you want the person reading – most likely a recruiter, hiring manager, or future colleague – to know about you? What would be compelling to them about your background and experience? What is unique to you about your skills, projects, past experience (and what skills you will bring to a tech role), motivations for pursuing (or changing into) a career in tech, and/or passion for this field?

A strong resume summary:

• Is specific. Include the languages and frameworks you want to highlight for the reader (especially those listed in the job description as key qualifications). In addition, go into detail about what draws you to your new field of study or how your background and experience will contribute to your skills in the field.

• Includes factual achievements/skills and not subjective, opinionated traits. Recruiters want facts only, vs. your opinion of yourself. In other words, avoid words and phrases like, “excellent communicator,” “strong work ethic,” or “highly organized”– these are all your own opinions (and not necessarily how others perceive you). Instead, use factual achievements/skills that are substantiated by your previous work and other experiences such as “team leadership,” “client relations,” or “data analysis.”

• Uses the active voice, where possible. The active voice is often more powerful, straightforward, and concise. In active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action. In passive voice, the subject of the sentence receives the action. You can recognize the passive voice because it will include a verb followed by a verb in the past tense. For example: “Coding has taught me…” or “I have learned how to…”

  • Passive voice: Working in advertising has taught me how to work under pressure and meet pressing deadlines while delivering a quality product for the client.

  • Active voice: With a background in advertising, I know how to prioritize competing tasks under pressure, meet deadlines, and deliver a quality product for the client.

• Is personal. Let the reader in on who you are. Imagine they are reading dozens of these. Use your voice and your unique story to engage them and help them remember you among all the others.

• Is customized when needed. While the summary you create for your resume should in general serve as an all-purpose summary across various job applications and interviews, there may be times where it makes sense to tweak your wording. For example, if a job description indicates that a specific skill set (technical or non-technical) is a priority, that you possess, but is not currently in your summary, that would be an ideal time to incorporate it. This helps in not only ensuring your resume’s relevance and appeal, but also can help significantly in search engine optimization and your resume’s visibility and/or ranking on job boards or company ATS’s (Applicant Tracking Systems).

Tips for Writing Your Summary

• Write something out and then challenge yourself to go deeper. For example, “experienced developer with a passion for writing beautiful code seeking to make an impact through technology.” What does experienced mean to you? How much experience? What are the characteristics of beautiful code and to what end are they important? You say you want to have an impact — how will you know you are making an impact through your work?

• Read it out loud. Does it sound like you? Does it sound natural and roll off your tongue? Now put yourself in the reader’s shoes. What are the reader’s biggest takeaways about you?

• Remember that this is and should be an iterative process. Write, review, refine, repeat! It’s often harder to write something short and concise, so start with a longer paragraph that covers everything you would like to highlight and then spend time shortening it.

• Engage with your Career Coach in review and discussion!

Examples of Strong Resume Summaries

• Full stack web developer with six years of experience as a senior research analyst in a commercial real estate firm. Transitioned to coding to help data-driven companies tell their stories intuitively and meaningfully.

• Full stack web developer with experience in Ruby and JavaScript frameworks. Studying opera gave me considerable experience with learning syntax and linguistic pattern recognition, a skill that translates beautifully to writing code. Building and leading music programs from the ground up, I am excited to connect people through technology after dedicating my life to connecting people through music.

• Data scientist and machine learning engineer with a passion and curiosity for solving problems through analytics. Experience in data-mining, statistical analysis, machine learning, deep learning, and over 2 years experience in financial analysis and modeling. I bring strong skills in mining/interpreting data, cross-functional collaboration, and project-management that help teams of any size work efficiently and solidify best practices.

• Data scientist with a passion for finding the narrative within numbers. With an academic background in applied mathematics and past experience working in finance and the AI space, I bring strong analytical skills to tech projects with the compelling desire to build projects that create impact in society.