Luke chose to list the academic degrees he has been awarded and his patents. Many employers will not even bother reading about your experiences if the “Summary of Qualifications” section doesn’t appeal to the challenges they are facing at their organization. The average resume is reviewed for roughly forty-five seconds. Again, the theme of your resume is your passions and your success highlights. Next, note that Luke chose to generate a bulleted list of his areas of expertise. In most companies, other than very entry level roles, the problems that need to be solved are a bit more complex than can be summarized by a job title.An “Objective” clause is generally very generic and it doesn’t differentiate the candidate from all the other candidates applying for the same position.

Some people still choose to use these, but there are generally two problems with this approach: You may be accustomed to using an “Objective” statement here. A prospective employer should be able to take a look at this section and quickly identify the difficult problems you are capable of solving for an organization. The purpose of this section is to provide the reader with a very efficient statement about your passions and your success highlights. If the resume creates a first impression for you, then the “Summary of Qualifications” (also sometimes be called the resume “Objective”, “Overview”, or “Profile”) section creates a first impression for your resume. Summary of Qualifications / Resume Objective Some of the free resume templates offered on our site illustrate some tasteful use of color and separating lines in more modern resume formats. Whether you choose to use a separating line, choose to justify the text to the left, center, or right, among other things will depend on how the document balances when it is complete. Note, also, that Luke chose to add an aesthetic horizontal separating line below the heading and above his “Summary of Qualifications.” You will likely experiment with several different styles as you write your resume. Judicious use can however, help your resume stand out. These days, it is still uncommon to use color and I would discourage going overboard with it. Tradition limits the resume to purely black and white, but that tradition came to be due to the fact that printers were limited to black and white and color printing was expensive. Also, note that the email address is colored blue. These fonts are crisp and do not cause unnecessary distraction. For example, which font will you use? Most professional resumes stick with Times New Roman, Arial, or Century Gothic. There are some other subtleties to consider with the heading block. This is optional and most employers are able to easily locate those resources on the internet even if you do not provide it on your resume. These days, some candidates choose to include their LinkedIn or personal webpage, as well. Study below, our fictitious employee’s resume, Luke Forjobson.Īt a minimum, the heading contains your name, mailing address, contact phone number, and email address. We welcome you to explore these recommendations and utilize them on your own resume. We will walk through the major sections of this resume and highlight the key things for you to consider in each of these sections. But it’s important to understand the type of content you want to include in each part of your resume which is why we’ve constructed a fictitious resume that employs a modern, well-balanced style. We’ve provided various free resume templates on this page for you as well. There are many resources online that provide a variety of good sample resumes.

Our team of counselors and industry experts can help guide you through that process so that you can confidently present the best of what you have to offer in any occasion. What many do not realize is that polishing a resume requires a lot of introspection – a process of discovering and re-discovering who you are and what your passions are. Take comfort in knowing that what you are feeling is normal. Times of transition are marked with a feeling of uncertainty and possibly even anxiety. We realize and empathize with the fact that it usually doesn’t feel very exciting. Whether you are looking for a change or just want to refine your career story, this is a very significant activity. Everyone knows that it is important to have a crisp, effective resume – a polished resume.

Free modern creative resume templates