Do you feel like you’ve been sending out an endless stream of resumes yet aren’t hearing back about the positions you applied for? Consider adding a professional summary. This short paragraph can make all the difference on your security guard resume. It greatly increases the chances it will be seen by the right people and you’ll secure an interview where you can expand on your skills. In this guide, we’ll review what you need to know about writing a professional summary for your security guard resume.
Key Takeaways
- Professional summaries give hiring managers a snapshot of your accomplishments.
- When written well, professional summaries can help candidates increase the chances of hiring managers reviewing their full resume.
- Tailoring a professional summary to each application is known to give a higher interview callback success rate.
What is a Professional Summary?
A professional summary is a snapshot of your career. It’s presented in a way that someone glancing over your resume can see what you bring to the table in mere seconds. While it’s often only a short paragraph totalling less than 50 words, it’s often the reason why the person sifting through resumes might read a particular one in full.
Professional summaries vary based on what someone’s strengths, experience level and job history look like. They offer the opportunity for you to put your best foot forward and to show why you meet the specific criteria needed in a job listing.
Why Do You Need a Professional Summary?
Attention spans—even for hiring managers—are relatively short in today’s society. As a result, it’s difficult to intrigue them to read a full CV, even when it’s their job to do so. Your resume could be one of hundreds that a company needs to sift through, and if something in it doesn’t stand out, it’s going to be placed in a pile and forgotten. A professional summary can make a hiring manager spend more time looking at your resume, making it worth the effort to highlight your key capabilities.
In some cases, your resume may not even reach a set of human eyes unless you include the right keywords because it will be sent through an applicant tracking system (ATS). A professional summary is a chance to tailor your resume to the job’s description so that it’s more likely to pass any algorithm that’s narrowing the field.
How to Write a Professional Summary
The strategy for creating a professional summary for a security guard’s resume depends on the unique experiences and skills of the applicant. This is your opportunity to show how you stand out from others in your field and what you have to offer that other candidates don’t. Here are some ways you can do that:
Do Your Homework
Show the hiring manager that you’ve researched the business you’re applying to. Including some indicators that you understand what the company does, the role of security guards in its mission, and how long it has been in business showcases that you have a personal investment in the job opportunity.
Write a New Summary for Each Job Opportunity
It can take time to write a new summary for each job application you submit, but hiring managers deal with resumes copy and paste resumes constantly. If you tailor your summary to include terms in the job listing, you’re more likely to get past their ATS and land your resume in the hands of a person looking to hire someone like you.
Tell the Hiring Manager How You Fit the Role
If your professional summary accurately describes how you fit the job specifics by highlighting your experiences and skills, it shows that you took the time to understand what the company needs. When hiring new staff, businesses want to know how a candidate could help them achieve their goals. Try to present your personal experiences and skills in a way that makes those aspirations attainable.
Get Specific
Instead of using generic terms in your professional summary, get specific. If you have a lot of experience with a certain skill, state what that experience is and how it has improved. If you have any achievements or certifications relevant to the listing, write them front and centre so that the hiring manager sees, almost immediately, how qualified you are for the role and why you might be a valuable asset to the business.
Choose Your Top Accomplishments
Keep in mind that this is a professional summary, not a comprehensive review. The rest of your resume will cover your skills and achievements over your entire career. Your professional summary should showcase two or three of your greatest accomplishments, how they made you an invaluable asset to your past employers, and why they are relevant to the role you are applying for.
Stand Out in the Security Landscape
Adding a professional summary on your security guard resume gives you the best chance of sticking out as a strong candidate. In a few sentences, you can capture the attention of busy hiring managers or bypass the ATS and potentially secure an interview for the position.
After you’ve polished your resume, browse our job board to find the latest careers in security that suit your skills and experience.
