Writing a Professional CV Summary [15+ Examples for Different Jobs]
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A CV summary, or Curriculum Vitae summary, is a paragraph that contains the highlights of your professional career. It is a strong statement that summarizes who you are, what makes you unique, your expertise, and your accomplishments.
A CV summary is often confused with CV objectives. However, it is important to note that CV objectives are often utilized by freshers, to speak to hiring managers about their goals and prospects.
In this article, we will provide useful information on CV summary, including guide to writing a professional curriculum vitae summary, who should and when to include a CV summary, tips on writing a professional summary for CV and professional CV summary examples.
What Is a CV Summary?
A CV summary is a short paragraph on the top of a resume that narrates a job seeker’s talent and performance. It is essentially a summary of your qualifications that allows the hiring manager to scan through your most impressive accomplishments.
A CV summary is also called:
- Resume summary
- Career summary statement
- Professional summary
- Personal profile
- Profile summary
Although they may be different in names, they are all similar in purpose.
The goal of a CV summary is to make a powerful introduction of yourself to hook the manager into understanding more about you.
When You Should Include a CV Summary
Although often recommended, a CV summary section is not a requirement in all CVs. How do you decide if you want it or not?
Here are the people who can benefit from adding a career summary statement on top of their CV:
You are an experienced professional.
A CV summary is ideal for job applicants with more than three years of professional experience. Your professional skills can be proven by past performances, which is highlighted in the professional summary for your CV.
You have notable work achievements.
A CV summary acts as a highlighter for professional experience. If you have outstanding work achievements, adding them in the CV summary will help it get noticed.
You want to catch the recruiters’ attention with a summary of your experiences and skills on the CV.
The CV summary section can be a strong opening that emphasizes the experience that makes you unique. If you want to catch the recruiter’s attention, craft the personal summary for your CV carefully.
You want to make your CV more eye-catching.
Most CVs share a similar structure, which can be dull and repetitive. A CV summary section allows more space for personalization, which can be more eye-catching to the recruiters.
You want to introduce yourself with sentences instead of bullet points.
The CV summary is like a shorter version of a professional cover letter. In simple narration, it speaks to the hiring manager about your most notable achievements, prospective contributions, and attributes that make you unique. It adds a more personal touch and allows room for more character in your language use compared to using bullet points.
How to Write the Best Summary for a CV
A CV summary is a preview of your resume experience and achievements. But how do you write the CV summary exactly?
✨ First sentence with a powerful adjective
Always remember that your CV summary can make or break the first impression that you bring to the reader, so it’s important that you start with a powerful opening. Add one or two powerful adjectives to describe your experience or personality.
Examples of powerful adjectives to insert in the CV summary:
- Self-motivated
- Data-Driven
- Certified
- Detail-oriented
- etc.
✨ Your professional title and years of experience
Next, add your position title. It should appear as early as possible as it really is the part that describes you as a professional the most.
By now, it should look like this:
Certified medical assistant with three years of experience in urgent care clinics.
Note that what makes a CV perfect is its relevance to the job. Be sure to tailor your CV summary by adding some keywords directly from the job description.
✨ How you can help the employer to reach their goal
When writing a professional CV summary, think from the hiring manager’s angle. They’d like to know what you can contribute. Address how you can help them in your CV summary.
For example:
Eager to assist FastOn in developing an effective marketing strategy with data-supported service products.
This part of your CV summary is also a good chance to show off your motivation, vision and interest in the company by telling them how you want to contribute to the further development of the company.
✨ Your most impressive work achievements
Finally, you want to show your ability in providing assistance. The next sentence of your CV summary should focus on demonstrating your best achievements.
For example:
Increased member base by 10% by integrating and monitoring multiple digital marketing channels to project unified marketing campaigns.
💡 Pro Tip: Adding quantified measurements related to your achievements/responsibilities increases credibility and makes your statements more persuasive.
Tips on How to Write a Summary in a CV
As you begin writing a career summary for your CV, here are some useful tips to follow through:
💡 Write only 3-5 sentences.
The goal of the CV summary is for the hiring manager to glance quickly. Therefore, a solid and concise CV summary will always beat a long and unimpressive one.
💡 Use numbers and details.
Take some time to look back on your work. Calculate the result with percentages, dollar amounts, time span, and so on. Including metrics and data in your CV summary will make your achievement more persuasive.
💡 Pro Tip: This is why it is always important to keep track of your performance at work. However, if you do not have your hand on the necessary data, ask your supervisor or colleagues, or do a self-assessment.
💡 Keep it relevant to the job.
Before taking any action, read closely through the job posting ad. Remember, the hiring manager is not looking for someone competent, but someone who is competent for the job role. When writing your CV summary, always relate your work experience with the desired job description. It will surely make your CV summary attractive in the eyes of the hiring manager.
💡 Omit personal pronouns (e.g., I) in the CV summary.
Writing in personal pronouns may make a CV look a bit childish. After all, if it isn’t you, who else could it be? Instead, try to start your CV summary with a sentence starting with an impressive and impactful adjective.
💡 Include other relevant experience if you have limited relevant professional experience.
Writing a CV summary with no experience can be a headache for freshers or junior applicants. Most recent graduates or students don’t have enough professional experience to even summarize into an introduction.
However, you can dig into other related experiences and add in your CV summary to seize attention. For example:
- School projects/courses
- Volunteer experience
- Freelance work
- Personal projects
- Internships
- Hobbies & interests
- GPA & degree (for students/recent graduates)
These are all valuable experiences where you can surely seek relevant material to put in your professional summary on a CV.
15 Resume Summary Examples
Outline:
- CV Professional Summary for Freshers
- CV Summary with No Experience
- CV Summary Examples for Students
- Executive CV Summary
- Teaching CV Professional Summary
- Customer Service CV Summary
- Project Manager Professional Summary for CV
- Accountant CV Summary
- Career Changer Summary Statement Example
- Nurse Professional Summary Example
- Professional Summary Examples for Sales CV
- Career Summary for NGO Job
- IT Professional Summary Example
- HR Professional Summary Example
- Data Entry CV Summary Example
CV Professional Summary for Freshers
“Hard-working and creative design graduate from Rochester Institute of Technology with a GPA of 3.9 seeking an entry UX designer role in Rene Inc. to optimize usability. Increased usability score by 60% with a new wireframe for crucial function in previous UX design intern role at Covision.”
CV Summary with No Experience
“Proactive student pursuing B.A. in Media Studies at Northwestern university. Seeking to join iGula as a digital marketing intern to develop online marketing campaigns and establish robust relationships with customers. Organized a large event that attracted over 500 people with successful channel planning.”
CV Summary Examples for Students
“Disciplined and motivated sophomore student with expected B.S. in Information Technology (GPA 3.9) from University of Boston. Eager to join Arbus as a back-end engineer to help optimize API reports and algorithms. Previous half-year internship at MM Data and experience with SQL database and user analysis.”
Executive CV Summary
“Organized executive with 14+ years of experience in digital strategic planning, business development, and financial management. Increased annual revenue by 43.5% by incorporating a new user monitoring analytic system. Recognized for affiliative and pacesetting leadership. Skilled at reexamining and implementing cross-functional collaboration and marketing communication arrangements.”
Teaching CV Professional Summary
“Personable high school teacher with 7+ years of experience in English teaching. Incorporated interdisciplinary instructional material to facilitate literature understanding and class participation by 67%. Adept with multiple learning methodologies to utilize 350+ students that received a 35% exam improvement rate.”
Customer Service CV Summary
“Driven customer service clerk with 2.5 years of experience in providing technology solutions. Eager to assist Berrywell’s users in solving complex software problems. Received response time by 50% by establishing problem flow systems for common questions.”
Project Manager Professional Summary for CV
“Agile project manager with 5+ years of professional experience in cyber security. Assisted 15+ international clients in developing and implementing malware activity tracking systems. Outstanding problem-solving and communication skills will help Seal Inc. retain and secure new client relationships.”
Accountant CV Summary
“Meticulous and dedicated Certified Public Accountant with 4 years of experience helping companies organize $2M financial analysis, budget, and audits. Finalized financial data reports and helped save company expenses by 8%.”
Career Changer Summary Statement Example
“Versatile sales associate with 3+ years of experience in the automobile industry seeking to leverage service skills as a customer support specialist at ITP. Grew sales by 20% and achieved a 99.8% positive rate that surpassed colleagues by 15%. Eager to provide spotless service to help ITP secure current users.”
Nurse Professional Summary Examples
“Trilingual professional registered nurse with 6 years of experience in geriatric nursing. Eager to join Smiths Hospital to provide effective nursing planning and care solution experience as RN at St. Patrick Hospital. Supervised medication schedule of 18 patients with accurate standard procedure.”
Professional Summary Examples for Sales CV
“Charismatic sales associate with 3 years of experience in high-end fashion brands. Eager to join Austen fashion to help generate brand awareness. Exceeded company KPI by 35% for 7 months in a row. Awarded best sales associate for two consecutive seasons.”
Career Summary Example for NGO Job
“Personable marketing professional with 6+ years of experience working for rare diseases NGOs. Utilized digital marketing strategy to implement successful campaigns that raised and exceeded donation by 300% and fan base by 400%. Eager to join TaYou to help raise awareness for the cranium.”
IT Professional CV Summary Example
“Passionate IT professional consultant with 10+ years of experience working with banks in the FinTech industry. Skilled in identifying procedure weaknesses. Cut loading time by 50% and assisted 20+ clients by building a technical self-diagnosis report. Seeking to leverage technical skills as senior IT consultant at Xemeo.”
HR Professional CV Summary Example
“Keen Human Resource generalist with 4+ years of experience managing employees. Seeks to enhance Focus Inc.’s applicant quality. In previous position, developed a two-week onboarding training program to boost positive participation by 20%. In addition, cut average recruitment time by 35% by seeking effective channels and posting eye-catching ads.”
Data Entry CV Summary Example
“Detail-oriented and speedy data entry clerk with 2 years of experience organizing complex data. Cut data-entry time by 30% with 100% accuracy. Skilled at excel functions and generating visualized reports to help employers understand problems.”
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--- Originally written by Wu Chao Min ---
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