Innovate Your Resume: Ditch the Summary for a Sales Pitch
Want your resume to stand out? Innovate your resume and ditch the Summary for a Sales Pitch.
Summaries are great areas to deposit tired descriptors such as: detail-oriented, team player, competent professional, organized and multi-tasker (to name a few). Hiring managers, recruiters and HR professionals have seen all of the worn-out professional adjectives and will automatically skip over most paragraphs labeled ‘Summary’, ‘Objective’ or similar.
Market Yourself
Whether you like it or not, as a professional seeking a job, you must market yourself. You have to sell your skill set, expertise, professional impact and value to stand out from your competition. As a career coach and resume expert, most professional profiles include a list of roles, responsibilities or objectives headed by a bone-dry list of overused adjectives. You must innovate your resume!
Ditch the Summary for a Sales Pitch by defining what value you bring to an organization and how you plan to deliver that value you WILL stand out!
Understand Your Value
Defining your value for organizations is a HUGE step towards job search success. Without this, you will not be able to hook a hiring manager’s attention. To understand and communicate your value proposition, answer these key questions:
What makes you stand out from other leading professionals?
What are you the ‘go to’ person for?
What do you consider your expertise or core competencies?
Top Tip: Please do not use the words “Core Competencies” in your resume. It is not fantastic marketing for your professional brand. Use the words “Professional Expertise” instead.
Written words have power and an intrinsic meaning that affect the brain differently depending on what word is chosen and where it is placed.
The Sales Pitch
As a ___________, I will ___________ .
In order to ditch the Summary for a Sales Pitch effectively, you must change your approach from the robot language of the third person and speak directly to the reader. By understanding your personal brand and your value you will be able to clearly communicate why a hiring manager will want to contact YOU.
A successful Sales Pitch has the following components:
- Your Branding Statement
- Your Focus
- Your Expertise / Value / Unique Skillset
- What results can you obtain? Or, your value proposition.
Pitch Your Expertise!
An example of a Sales Pitch could be:
As an experienced leader in Public Relations, Marketing and Communications with over ten years of proven success as a multi-media strategist, I will add value to your organization by dramatically improving engagement through the management of specifically designed and targeted audience interaction platforms as well as outreach programs through popular media channels to drive increased profitability.
Another example:
As an accomplished Program Manager, I will demonstrate my proven ability to manage multiple projects of varying size and complexity concurrently while building and maintaining strong relationships. I will also leverage my capabilities as a strong connector with subject matter experts at all levels of the organization in developing sustainable solutions to complex business problems.
A successful Sales Pitch does NOT have unnecessary fluff, overblown adjectives (wonderful, fantastic, dynamite, etc.) or tell your life story. Attention spans are short. Make sure that a hiring manager will actually want to read your resume so keep it concise and to the point.
As a ___________, I will ___________ .
Use the power of the written word, ditch the Summary for a Sales Pitch to innovate your resume and market your value to potential hiring managers!
Erin Urban LSSBB, CPDC and member of the Forbes Coaches Council is a certified professional development coach and culture change expert with over 8 years in mentoring and coaching successful professional transformations. With an extensive background in leading individual, cultural and organizational change initiatives: her mission is to lift others up to defy their limits and exceed their goals.
[…] Shorten your Summary or Opening Clause to a sales pitch format. […]
[…] the system. Use plain formatting! Don’t use pictures, graphs, charts, tables, symbols and so on. Ditch your Summary for a Sales Pitch! What makes you unique and special? Sell that and tell hiring managers what you will do for them […]