3 Reasons You Need a Branded Resume Summary in 2024: Help hiring managers select you for interviews!

Your resume, along with other career marketing materials such as a LinkedIn profile and cover letters should demonstrate that you offer unique value to an employer. Yet, we still see resumes that start by telling employers what the jobseeker wants, rather than making a case for addressing an employer’s business problem. They seem to say little more in the opening paragraphs than “I need a job.” Instead, as a jobseeker, you want to tell an employer why they need you, not why you need them.

An effective way to do this is for you to open the document with a branded summary instead of an objective statement. Specifically, we suggest that you consider three points when deciding whether to use a branded resume summary or an “old school” objective statement:

1. Objective statements describe your goals and not the benefits of hiring you,
2. Branded summaries offer reasons that hiring managers should “buy” your services, and
3. The top section of your resume becomes its “executive summary.”

Put simply, objective statements are outmoded. Yet we continue to see them. Even worse, we see resumes that consist only of the candidate’s contact information followed by a recitation of the candidate’s job descriptions, education, and training. The document is little more than word salad with no strategy. These resumes do not tell an employer how you will solve their problems.

Objective statements do not tell our prospective employers what they need to know.

Classic objective statements tell potential employers what you want to do, where you want to do the work, and what kind of organization you want to do the work in. As a result, I’ve seen many resume objectives that read something like this:

“Objective: A challenging Customer Service role in an expanding company that will utilize my skills and give me an opportunity to grow.”

This statement would probably lead hiring managers to reject this job candidate’s resume without reading any further because:

• It does not communicate anything about the job candidate. The recruiter already knows the candidate is applying for a customer service job because the candidate sent the resume. Additionally:
• It tells the manager to reject the resume if the job, in their view, is not challenging, if the company is not expanding, or if the position offers no growth.

In other words, this objective statement told the prospective employer nothing useful. It will, at best, be ignored. Even worse, it could cause the candidate to be rejected before the hiring manager sees it because it has no keywords that would cause automated software to select it for further review.

Put succinctly, the objective statement is about you.

 Branded summary statements resolve this problem.

A more productive approach is to write a headline and paragraph that tells an employer what you bring to the table instead of telling them what you want.

The first step is to set the reader’s expectations using a personal brand at the top of the resume, right below the contact information. For example, we used the following resume heading and subheading for one of our most successful clients.

SENIOR GOVERNMENT RELATIONS DIRECTOR

A leading policy advocate that influences legislative agendas at the state and federal level

Then we wrote the following accomplishment-based summary.

Campaign Leader with extensive, progressively responsible experience as an advocate on behalf of non-profit organizations. Expert at moving legislation on issues including caregiving, affordable utilities, Older Adults Protective Services, Work and Save Retirement Plan, reduced prescription drug prices, veterans affairs and the aging population.

Accomplishment Highlights:

• Led advocacy on behalf of AARP that resulted in enactment of the CARE Act of 2016, Transportation Funding Act of 2015, Medicare Part D, Pennsylvania Lottery Fund protection, unemployment compensation for older workers, PACE/PACENET, Family Caregiver Support Program expansion, long term care reform, CHIP and State Senate passage of telemedicine reimbursement legislation.
• Initiated the Citizen Advocacy Team program for AARP Pennsylvania to foster key contact involvement in the state and Federal legislative process.
• Established the Alliance for Retired Americans presence in Pennsylvania for action in key Congressional campaigns.

Would you want to learn more if your task is to hire someone that will advocate for your organization with legislators? Yes.

We communicated the benefits of hiring the candidate rather than stating that she wants to advocate for state and federal legislative changes on behalf of an organization. That’s powerful—and my client landed her dream job within weeks. You can read the complete resume here.

Write the summary last.

The brand headline and its accompanying paragraph are similar to an executive summary or cover summary for a business report. It is a brief synopsis of the rest of the document. That means you may not know what to write until you develop the rest of your resume content. So, for best results, write the summary after you write the rest of the resume.

This approach is especially challenging for career-changers that seek to use their transferrable skills in another occupation, another industry, or both. Yet it does work. A client who was a fashion buyer moved into an accounts payable role in the construction industry because her summary demonstrated that she cut costs and increased profit margins through spreadsheet analysis and business relationships with vendors.

Last, but not least, research shows that hiring managers read summaries. A 2022 survey published on LinkedIn indicated that 72% of hiring managers read summaries.

Concluding comments

One of the most powerful sections of your resume should be the headline and paragraph just below your contact information. It briefly tells the reader what you will deliver in your next role. In other words, it communicates the benefits of hiring you. So, do not write an objective statement, and don’t leave this section out!