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How to write Professional Summary in CV

Professional summary is considered as an introduction of your CV to reader and should appear directly below contact information at the top of the resume. It should consist of few lines of text which can be written either in paragraph form or bullet points.

Summary statement should reflect your career goals and place emphasis on key strengths in an easy to follow up format. It should be designed to pull together most relevant skills and career accomplishments to date and demonstrate how these make you the best person for the job. Remember, when written well it can be powerful selling tool to get you a job interview.

Great Tips to start writing professional statement

To write powerful statement, tailor it to match the job descriptions. Job applicant needs to prove that he or she is the perfect fit for the position and company to work for. Remember, professional summary is often the first item read so get it to the point as why you are the best person for the job.

Aim to:

• Identify main strengths, skills and core competencies that are unique to you for the job or role you are applying for (for example these can be excellent customer service skills, ability to lead, manage and motivate team or expertise in drawing technical engineering plans)

• Demonstrate how your strengths and unique selling points benefit the employer (at this stage it is important to align acquired skills and competencies directly with company's job descriptions; for example if one is applying for project manager role he needs to demonstrate that he can manage resources within budget and ensure that assignment/work gets completed in time)

• Touch upon notable accomplishments that would intend to repeat in the prospective role

• Keep it short and concise (4-5 lines max.) Even though one may be tempted to make statement longer, perhaps someone would have varied experience and would like to tell the employer in more details, resist the temptation. Note that most hiring managers skim through you CV and spend only seconds reviewing it. Hence avoid writing large chunks of text as the eyes tend to skip over these sections.

• Skip the 'I, me, my' stuff - remember resume statement should not be written with first person pronouns because it places the focus on the applicant. Note that the main goal of curriculum vitae is to sell the hiring manager what you can do for him or her - hence write your CV as if you were the understood subject, which will allow the focus to remain on employer needs. To demonstrate this, refer to an example of curriculum statement as below:

• Finally, write the professional summary after you have completed other sections of resume as this should be outline of CV to give prospective employer condensed version of your professional career path.