Writing your resume? Consider adding a 'profile' ... and here's a Web page that shows you how to do it

A couple of days ago, a student showed me a resume with a one-paragraph "Profile" in the space just below her name on her resume. It was not one of those lame "career objectives" I used to write when I was in college - like "seek rewarding career in newspaper industry" or "seek Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing by the time I'm 30." Instead, it was a brief list of skills, attitudes and goals that a potential employer might want to use. I'd never seen one before, but she showed me how it worked, and I was impressed. Here it is:

Possesses strong work ethic, has a high level of integrity and honesty, strives for excellence, self-driven, patient and understanding, works extremely well with others on team projects, displays a positive attitude, highly adaptable to fast-paced assignments, open and encourages new ideas, is culturally aware, takes on difficult challenges and tasks with an optimistic approach, and is well composed under pressuring circumstances.

Each phrase was supported by a bullet point in the student's list of specific professional skills she exercised on the job, from her internship with a not-for-profit agency to her former job as a flight attendant and relevant student activities. It wasn't just a piece of fluff.

So I went home and did a couple of Google keyword searches, and I came up with a Web page by Emily Sanderson of Preferred Resumes, an online resume service, that explains how to write a profile for your resume that can help land you a job. It's apparently a growing trend, and a good one.

The key to it, according to Sanderson, is to emphasize your skills. What can you do that an employer needs you to do?

Here's how it works. Sanderson says:

Use a profile or statement of qualifications on your resume when a summary of your accomplishments, skills, and career focus would be helpful in guiding potential employers, such as when you are changing career pursuits or entering a new market, whether it be a different geographic area or a different industry sector. A profile can emphasize transferable skills, those skills you have already gained in your career which make you marketable for your current career pursuits. A profile can emphasize transferable skills, those skills you have already gained in your career which make you marketable for your current career pursuits.

Potential employers give your resume an average of 20 seconds upon first review. That means you want to provide the most pertinent and relevant information in a format that is easy for them to absorb and that will make the best impression of you as a strong and viable candidate. Placing a profile or statement of qualifications at the top of your resume is one way to summarize this information.

If I were doing my resume, I'd do the profile last. I'd write the chronological list of work experience first, then I'd build my profile around the skills I had acquired or demonstrated on the job. Here's an example from one of Sanderson's clients:

Results-oriented and talented marketing professional with strong analytical and strategic planning abilities paired with superior client and project management skills. Expertise in developing promotional materials. Firmly committed to earning and inspiring rapport and confidence with all members of the team.

See how much this focuses on specific skills -- strategic planning, for example, and on-the-job tasks from designing promotional material to managing working groups - that an employer might be looking for?

But what if you're a college student and don't yet have a lot of professional experience? Sanderson says you can still use this strategy:

Individuals who are fresh out of college who don’t have a lot of work experience outside of an academic setting can still benefit from using a profile. At this time of economic uncertainty, profiles should be strategically written not to pigeonhole you but to emphasize your strengths and those skills which could be applied to multiple sectors within your industry.

A profile uses a different structure than the rest of your resume or your cover letter. The text of the profile is comprised not of sentences but of a series of strategic phrases that include actions and that express enthusiasm and zeal. Be careful that the profile doesn’t follow a classified ad format — save your career objective, if mentioned at all, for the end of the profile.

Even as students, you are acquiring transferrable skills - learning how to do the things an employer needs you to do - in off-campus jobs, internships, work-study gigs and student activities.

Warning: Actually, a couple of them:

• Preferred Resumes is a business, and basically it is giving away some of its product - career advice - on the Web site in order to attract customers. It's like the free samples you get on a toothpick at the supermarket. Their other services will cost you money if you decide to use them.
  
• If you are required to prepare a resume on campus, you may be directed to follow a specific format that does not include a profile statement and emphasizes schoolwork rather than your on-the-job experience. In that case, you should follow the directions you are given. But consider saving your school resume to your hard drive and adding the profile later when you apply for work in the real world.