From the course: Writing a Resume

Your summary of skills section

From the course: Writing a Resume

Your summary of skills section

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- Also known as a summary of qualifications or a professional summary, this section has a number of formats that work well depending upon the type of skills and information you need to demonstrate. It's a great place to highlight the particular skills for the job you've applied to. You can use a bulleted list, you could use a column format, or you can use a paragraph form. I do advise you to stay away from using paragraphs on your resume because they're difficult to read. Reading a paragraph requires concentration and focus and someone who is skimming your resume may miss important features. I recommend the single bulleted list or a two or three column format. Each style is shown in the Exercise Files and which one you choose depends upon a couple of things. The first is how many skills or qualifications you plan to list, and the second is whether you plan to use sentence phrases or one to two word comments. For example, I might list the following skills on my resume. Outplacement specialist, career strategist, interview expert, and resume writer. These are all two-word descriptions, so it would be strange to add 12 years of experience including financial services recruiting within a top tech company. Instead, I might add expert tech recruiter or tech recruiting specialist. So how do you determine which skills to list? Take a look at the job description you're applying to. That description will provide all of the important items you need to make sure to address within your resume. But don't stop there. Take a look at other job descriptions from other companies, because there may be additional skills you possess that you didn't include. Skills the job you are applying to didn't mention or skills you didn't really think would be essential to the job that would make sense for you to add. This section is a great place to add an aspirational quality. For example, if you desire to be a project lead and you know that requires project management skills and you took a project management course, add it to your summary of qualifications even though project management may not be required for this particular role. It shows that you possess advanced skills and that you are constantly improving. And if the role you've applied to is one with growth potential, you have subtly set yourself up as a candidate of choice. So what are you waiting for? Start that list.

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