Of all the sections on your resume, the most important might be the resume headline. Sometimes called a professional summary, the resume headline should catch the reader's eye and focus attention on your best attributes.
For many jobseekers, your resume is the first contact you’ll have with a recruiter or hiring manager. A good resume headline encourages further reading, and that can be the difference between getting called back for an interview and getting passed over.
What Belongs in the Headline of a Resume?
There are no hard and fast rules about what you can add to a resume headline, but here are some items that are great additions:
- Years of experience in the field
- A high-level professional achievement
- Skills that are relevant to the role
- Data relevant to past performance, such as impressive sales numbers
- Important soft skills, such as communication or problem-solving
- Special skills, such as being fluent in several languages
6 Tips for Writing a Resume Headline
1. Give Your Resume Headline a Professional Title
Each section of your resume must be clearly labeled to break up the text and make your document easily scannable. Choose a simple title for your resume headline such as, "Career Highlights" or “Professional Summary,” both of which sums up nicely what a recruiter can expect to find in that section.
If you're turning in a functional resume, you may want to focus the recruiter on your relevant skills. In that case, calling the headline of a resume "Summary of Qualifications" works well, too.
2. Put the Headline of a Resume at the Top
Like in a news story, the headline of a resume goes at the top of the page, immediately under your contact information. Nothing should go above this section other than your header containing your contact details. This helps ensure that even a brief scan of your resume allows a hiring manager take in the key information you put in this section.
3. Brevity is Key
A study of resume recruiters' behavior has revealed that, although the average hiring manager estimates they spend around five minutes looking at each resume, the actual figure is between five and seven seconds. That time limit puts you under a bit of pressure to make the resume headline both powerful and attractive. After all, it may be the only thing many hiring managers read. When you're writing, nothing makes for a more attractive and easy-to-read section than brevity. Big blocks of text are intimidating, so the shorter this section of your resume can be, the more inviting it is.
4. Introduce Yourself
The purpose of a resume headline is to introduce yourself as succinctly as possible. To that end, you can make your first sentence a very basic introduction, using whatever terms you think are best for the job at hand.
Popular favorites here are to describe yourself as "ambitious," "driven," and/or "experienced." These are all keywords that convey both your pride in yourself and your confidence you can get the new job done well.
The purpose of a resume headline is to introduce yourself as succinctly as possible. To that end, you can make your first sentence a very basic introduction, using whatever terms you think are best for the job at hand.
5. List Your Major Strengths and Skills
The headline of a resume is no place to be a shrinking violet. Remember, you have very limited time to really sell yourself as a good hiring prospect, so discretion is not helpful here. If you have skills that translate to the new job's requirements, briefly mention your degrees and certificates.
If you have experience that is directly related to the role, this is the first place to mention that. If you have special skills that you’ll bring to the job, such as excellent research skills, by all means make sure to mention them in your resume headline.
The main exception to this rule is for unrelated or tangential skills. Most employers are not hiring Renaissance men; they want professionals who know their job well enough to hit the ground running. If you happen to be a good auto mechanic, for instance, that fact is unlikely to help you land a job as a paralegal. It's best to leave the extraneous talent off of this list and play to your position-specific strengths.
6. Bullet Points Help with Readability
When listing things, one fantastic way to break up a monotonous block of words is with bullet points. These keep the content easy-to-scan and less foreboding than solid blocks of text.
Make sure to keep formatting the formatting of bullet points consistent by starting all bullets with an action verb and leaving off ending punctuation unless it's a full sentence.
When you're ready to make a change, a great resume — and a great resume headline — should be your first step.
