A résumé summary is a short paragraph at the top of the page, a few sentences long, that states your professional identity, your most relevant experience, and what you bring to the role you are applying for. Write it last, after the rest of the résumé is tailored, and rewrite it for each kind of job you apply to.
Summary or objective?
An objective says what you want. A summary says what you offer. Jennifer Katz, director of Purdue Global's Center for Career Advancement, says professional summaries are now more commonly used than objective statements. Clark College's career guide lists vague objectives such as "seeking a position in which to grow with a dynamic organization" as something to avoid.
A formula that works
Clark College's guide suggests a short paragraph or a few bullets of only several sentences, opening with a headline that states your professional title. A reliable pattern is:
1. Who you are: your title or field, and your level of experience. 2. What you do best that this job needs: the two or three skills or areas the posting cares about most, in its own terms where they are true. 3. Proof: one concrete result or scope (a number, a size, a scale) that you can defend. 4. Optionally, the direction you are heading, if it is not obvious from the rest.
Leave out "I" and "my", which is the usual convention on a résumé. Skip soft-skill adjectives like "hardworking" or "personable" unless you can back them with something specific.
Examples (illustrative)
Every example below is invented for this guide. The numbers are placeholders: use your own, and never add one you cannot back up.
Recent graduate, software: "Computer science graduate with internship experience building REST APIs in Python and Django. Shipped a booking feature used by the internship team's 200 internal users, and maintained the test suite for a student-run open-source project. Looking for a junior backend engineering role."
Early career, marketing: "Marketing coordinator with two years in B2B software, focused on email campaigns and content. Planned and ran a monthly newsletter to 12,000 subscribers and wrote landing page copy for three product launches."
Mid-career, nursing: "Registered nurse with six years in acute medical wards, including two as a shift lead. Experienced in patient assessment, medication management and training newly qualified nurses on ward procedures."
Skilled trade: "Licensed electrician with eight years in commercial fit-outs and maintenance. Leads small crews on office refurbishments, from first fix to testing and certification, with a clean safety record."
Senior, engineering leadership: "Engineering manager with 12 years in software, the last five leading teams of up to 15 engineers. Led the migration of a payments platform to cloud infrastructure and built the hiring process for two new teams."
Operations, director level: "Operations director with 15 years in third-party logistics. Runs three regional warehouses and a team of 140, responsible for budgeting, carrier contracts and service levels for retail clients."
Career changer, teaching to instructional design: "Secondary school science teacher moving into instructional design. Seven years designing lessons and assessments for mixed-ability classes, plus a completed certificate in e-learning design and two published course modules in Articulate Rise."
Returning after a break: "Accountant with five years in audit and management accounts, returning after a two-year career break. Recently completed a refresher course in current reporting standards and is ready for a full-time role in management accounting."
Tailor it to each job
The summary is the easiest part of the résumé to tailor, and the one a reader sees first. Clark College's guide recommends writing a separate summary for each different career objective. In practice, keep the facts the same and change which ones lead, and which of the posting's terms you use to describe them.
When to leave it out
A summary is not required. Leave it out when it would only repeat your most recent job title, when you are a student with one page and the space is better spent on projects or experience, or when you cannot write it without generic adjectives. A weak summary takes up the most visible space on the page and says nothing.
It tends to earn its place for experienced candidates, for career changers who need to explain the direction they are heading, and for anyone returning after a break.
Where Weydr fits
Weydr rewrites your summary for each job description from your own master profile, using the posting's terms only where your experience supports them. See how that works at /tailor-resume-to-job-description, or pick a layout at /resume-templates. Read the result before you send it and remove anything that is not true.