Starting Your Resume with an Attention-Grabbing Profile Washington DC

Summary

• A profile highlights the best of what you have to offer.
• Outline your skills, traits and accomplishments.
• Consider how employers think, and add info that reflects that.

Research has shown that your resume will probably get only a few seconds of a busy employer's time -- perhaps 30 seconds if you're really lucky. So the sooner you can highlight your best offerings on your resume, the better the chance you'll make an immediate impact on readers and nudge them to read on.

You can start your resume with a bang by featuring a profile -- also known as a summary -- section immediately beneath your contact information. The idea is to succinctly and clearly communicate to employers the very best you have to offer, your cream of the crop skills, traits and accomplishments. Think of it as the CliffsNotes version or executive summary of your full resume. It's what you want readers to remember about you if they remember nothing else.

As you might imagine, figuring out what to include in your profile section is easier said than done. After all, it's difficult enough to distill your life into a one- or two-page document. Further condensing that document into four or five key points might seem next to impossible. But it's not.

To develop an effective profile section for your resume, follow this approach:

List Your Skills, Traits and Accomplishments on Scratch Paper

You may have already done this when you developed your resume. If not, take some time now, using your resume as a guide if needed, to write down your best, including the following:

• Skills: These are things you're good at, whether it's programming in C++, developing and implementing fundraising initiatives, designing posters and fliers to publicize events, or whatever.
  
• Traits: This includes being highly organized, knowing how to juggle many projects at once, being able to meet deadlines and so on.
  
• Accomplishments: The award you received for participating in community service, the commendation you got from your internship supervisor for making the company's Web site more user friendly, the satisfaction you got from starting a new student organization from scratch and the like.
...